It was exactly at that moment, said Dwight-Rankin, that someone at the table let out a yell. Who it was, no one can tell to this day. But someone, even as Lord Marketharborough spoke, sobbed:
“But we are! We are thirteen!”
You can’t, said Dwight-Rankin, describe in so many words the effect of that sob of terror. It must have been as though someone had turned a tap somewhere and let out the blood from all their faces. One might imagine them, said Dwight-Rankin, as all eyes, blanched eyes, staring frantically at the empty chair on which had been but a moment before the person of him who called himself Captain Charity.
“But this is too much!” sobbed Lady Pynte.
Lord Marketharborough, however, appeared to be quite unmoved. He said: “When is a chap not a chap? When he falls under the table before even the port has been round.”
But Captain Charity wasn’t, said Dwight-Rankin, under the table. He wasn’t, in fact, anywhere to be seen in the large room. They looked everywhere, while the bewildered silence was broken only by the breathing of Dame Warp, who had notable adenoids.
“Talbot!” cried Lady Surplice.
“I’m afraid poor Talbot won’t be much use on this occasion,” murmured Shelmerdene.
“But the man can’t have disappeared!” cried my lady. “Talbot, did you see Captain Charity leave the room? Answer me at once, Talbot. Is this a time for silence?”
It needed, said Dwight-Rankin, only the base terror on the man Talbot’s rugged face to seal the terror of the company.