He had glanced at the prostrate counterfeiter, and his last exclamation was in answer to a voice from the room where I had left Lossing guarding the senseless Delbras.
Following Dave's significant gesture, I went with him to the door of the room, where, to my surprise, Delbras, his face quite bloodless with rage and weakness together, was slowly dressing himself under the sternly watchful eye and steadily aimed pistol of Sir Carroll Rae.
The latter had gathered the garments together while Delbras lay unconscious, keeping a watchful eye and ready weapon the while, and had placed them close at his side, first removing from a pocket a small sheathed knife. And now, with his own weapon in hand and those of Delbras collected on the table at his side, he was compelling the Frenchman to make his toilet at the point of the pistol, and his set face left in the mind of the enraged and baffled rascal no room to doubt him when he said:
'Unless you have put on those garments within a reasonable time I will call a pair of policemen to dress you; and if you make one sound or movement other than in obedience I will shoot every bullet in this weapon into your body, and do it with pleasure.'
'How was it?' I asked Dave while this toilet was proceeding, and we stood ready for the trick or attempt at resistance we more than half expected from the Frenchman.
'I guess you heard it about all. Trent lay there wide awake, mighty blue, and too weak to lift his head; and a big negress was half-dozing in her chair by the bedside, with a pistol at her elbow. She made a grab for it, and yelled, as you probably heard. Trent was assaulted and half-killed, nursed back to life for what there was in it, and has just come to his senses, awfully weak, but game enough to resist their efforts to make him appeal to his father for a big ransom. That's all I've had time to hear.'