‘We can’t do much at the moment, I’m afraid,’ he said slowly; but added, as the boy’s expression grew more and more perturbed, ‘Look here, come up and smoke a cigarette with me in my room and we’ll talk it over.’
‘I’d like to.’ Prenderby spoke eagerly, and the two men slipped away from the others and went quietly up to Abbershaw’s room.
As far as they could ascertain, Dawlish and the others had their headquarters in the vast old apartment which had been Colonel Coombe’s bedroom and the rooms immediately above and below it, into which there seemed no entrance from any part of the house that they knew.
Even Wyatt could not help them with the geography of Black Dudley. The old house had been first monastery, then farmstead, and finally a dwelling-house, and in each period different alterations had been made.
Besides, before the second marriage of his aunt, the enormous old place had been shut up, and it was not until shortly before her death that Wyatt first stayed at the place. Since then his visits had been infrequent and never of a long enough duration to allow him to become familiar with the numberless rooms, galleries, passages, and staircases of which the place was composed.
Prenderby was getting nerves, his fiancée’s terror was telling on him, and, of course, he knew considerably more of the ugly facts of the situation than any one of the party save Abbershaw himself.
‘The whole thing seemed almost a joke this morning,’ he said petulantly. ‘That old Hun might have been a music-hall turn then, but I don’t mind confessing that I’ve got the wind up now. Hang it all,’ he went on bitterly, ‘we’re as far away from civilization here as we should be if this was the seventeenth century. The modern “Majesty of the Law” and all that has made us so certain of our own safety that when a trap like this springs we’re fairly caught. Damn it, Abbershaw, brute force is the only real power, anyway.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Abbershaw guardedly, ‘but it’s early yet. Some opportunity is bound to crop up within the next twelve hours. I think we shall see our two troublesome friends in gaol before we’re finished.’
Prenderby glanced at him sharply.
‘You’re very optimistic, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘You talk as if something distinctly promising had happened. Has it?’