Kennedy’s party, though less neat, had been quite as successful, and Chris himself, flushed with excitement, now stood with his man’s loaded revolver in his hand.
‘Have you got his gun?’ he said, in a voice which sounded hoarse even to himself, as he indicated Campion’s captive.
‘No,’ said Abbershaw, and began his search. Two minutes later he looked up, disappointed.
‘He hasn’t one,’ he said at last, and even the man himself seemed surprised.
Kennedy swore softly and handed the gun which he held to Martin.
‘You’d better have it,’ he said. ‘I’m hopeless with my right arm gone. Now, then, Campion, will you go upstairs with the girls? Abbershaw, you’d better go with them. As soon as you’ve seen them safely locked in the room, come back to us. We’re making for the servants’ quarters.’
They obeyed in silence, and Abbershaw led Campion and the three girls quietly out of the room, across the hall, and up the wide staircase. On the first landing they paused abruptly. Two figures were looming towards them through the dimness ahead. It was Jesse Gideon and the heavy, red-faced man whom Abbershaw had encountered outside Dawlish’s door in his search for Meggie. They would have passed in silence had not Gideon spoken suspiciously in his smooth silken voice.
‘Dinner is over early?’ he said, fixing his narrow glittering eyes on Meggie.
She replied coldly that it was, and made as if to pass on up the stairs, but Gideon evidently intended to prolong the conversation, for he glided in front of her so that he and the surly ruffian beside him barred her progress up the stairs from the step above the one on which she was standing.
‘You are all so eager,’ Gideon continued softly, ‘that it almost looks like an expedition to me. Or perhaps it is one of your charming games of hide-and-seek which you play so adroitly,’ he added, and the sneer on his unpleasant face was very obvious. ‘You will forgive me saying so I am sure,’ he went on, still in the same soothing obsequious voice, ‘but don’t you think you are trying Mr Dawlish’s patience a little too much by being so foolish in your escapades? If you are wise you will take my advice and keep very quiet until it pleases him to release you.’