He mounted guard beside the door.
For an instant his captive seemed reluctant to rise; free, he lay without moving, getting his breath in great heaving sobs; only his gaze ranged ceaselessly from Ember's face to Whitaker's and back again, and his hands opened and closed convulsively.
Ember moved to his side and stood over him, balancing the revolver in his palm.
"Come," he said impatiently. "Up with you!"
The man sat up as if galvanized by fear, got more slowly to his knees, then, grasping the edge of the table, dragged himself laboriously to a standing position. He passed a hand uncertainly across his mouth, brushed the hair out of his eyes and tried to steady himself, attempting to infuse defiance into his air, even though cornered, beaten and helpless.
Whitaker's jaw dropped and his eyes widened with wonder and pity. He couldn't deny the man, yet he found it hard to believe that this quivering, shaken creature, with his lean and pasty face and desperate, glaring eyes, this man in rough, stained, soiled and shapeless garments, could be identical with the well set-up, prosperous and confident man of affairs he remembered as Drummond. And yet they were one. Appalling to contemplate the swift devastating course of moral degeneration, that had spread like gangrene through all the man's physical and mental fibre....
"Take a good look," Ember advised grimly. "How about that pet myth thing, now? What price the astute sleuth—eh? Perhaps you'd like to take a few more funny cracks at my simple faith in hallucinations."
"Good God!" said Whitaker in a low voice, unable to remove his gaze from Drummond.
"I had a notion he'd be hanging round," Ember went on; "I thought I saw somebody hiding in the woods this afternoon; and then I was sure I saw him skulking round the edges of the clearing, after dinner. So I set Sum Fat to watch, drove back to the village to mislead him, left my car there and walked back. And sure enough—!"
Without comment, Whitaker, unable to stand any longer without discomfort, hobbled to a chair and sat down.