‘Hullo!’ he said. ‘There’s a note. Read it, Wyatt, will you, while I get on with this. These are Whitby’s things, I suppose. It almost looks as if he was expecting trouble.’
Wyatt took the slip of paper off the tray and read the message aloud in his clear even voice.
‘We are not joking. No one leaves this house until we have what we want.’
‘There’s no signature,’ he added, and handed the note to Prenderby, who looked at it curiously.
‘Looks as if they have lost something,’ he said. ‘What the devil is it? We can’t help ’em much till we know what it is.’
No one spoke for a moment.
‘Yes, that’s true,’ said Martin Watt at last, ‘and the only thing we know about it is that it isn’t an egg.’
There was a faint titter of laughter at this, but it soon died down; the party was beginning to realize the seriousness of their position.
‘It must be something pretty fishy, anyway,’ said Chris Kennedy, still white with the pain of his wound which Abbershaw was now bandaging. ‘Else why don’t they describe it so that we can all have a hunt round? Look here, let’s go to them and tell them that we don’t know what their infernal property is. They can search us if they like, and when they find we haven’t got it they can let us go, and by God, when they do I’ll raise hell!’
‘It is precisely for that reason that I’m not inclined to endorse that suggestion, Kennedy,’ said Abbershaw without looking up from the bandage he was winding. ‘Our friends upstairs are very determined, and they’re not likely to risk a possible visit from the police before they have got what they want and have had reasonable time to make a good getaway.’