“Not in mine,” Drake grated, “but elsewhere, perhaps. You sit still. We’ve been playing blind man’s buff overlong. You sit still. This is loaded, you old fraud. You figure on holding out, hey? Look me in the eye, in ten minutes, and maybe you’ll change your mind.”
M’Ginley quivered. He was gross mountain of a man, and shaking like jelly.
“Ten minutes. What you mean? Why—”
Drake rose.
“If you value your health, sit tight. If you don’t, I play a hard game. I’ve an ace in the hole. A neat little ace, isn’t it, in its shoulder holster. Sit where you are.”
The old man watched him as he walked, cat footed, to the stair, and as he slowly disappeared down it.
“Some one is goin’ to catch plain hell,” said he, “but it won’t be me, M’Ginley. Mebbe, when they finish their rough stuff there’ll be a nice corpse for Scotland Yard and—what’s hid below for M’Ginley.”
But M’Ginley was not down in the alleyway; and it was there that things were due to happen.
First the old captain’s voice, as he cried through the thin partition between Drake’s cabin and Quayle’s:
“Come here, for God’s sake, Cray! I found somethin’...”