“There is only one thing to be done,” said Long John; “I name it with regret, but it must be done.”
“What is that?” asked Scrivener.
“We have had too much to do with our gentleman leader—he has defied us and put us in peril. Men, if we do not wish, each one of us, to taste the sweets of penal servitude, if three or four of us do not wish to swing by the neck until they die, Rowton must go.”
“He must go, it is true,” echoed Scrivener.
“It don’t seem to me as if that verdict was fair,” said a man on the outer edge of the circle.
Long John fixed him with his glittering eyes.
“What do you mean, Danvers?” he said.
“What I say,” replied the man, getting a little bolder. “Silver may have been wrong about that diamond, but after all, when all’s said and done, he give it to his wife, and, except for the black diamond, we never did have a straighter feller to work with.”
“If the black diamond is found by the police,” continued Long John, “we are all undone. The police have information with regard to it which will hang three men. Must three hang for one? I repeat that Adrian Rowton must go.”