I waited, for form's sake, till Glossop and Mr Abney had filled their cups, then went to my room, where I lay down in the dark to wrestle with a more than usually pronounced fit of depression which had descended upon me. Solitude and darkness struck me as the suitable setting for my thoughts.
At this moment Smooth Sam Fisher had no place in my meditations. My mind was not occupied with him at all. When, therefore, the door, which had been ajar, began to open slowly, I did not become instantly on the alert. Perhaps it was some sound, barely audible, that aroused me from my torpor and set my blood tingling with anticipation. Perhaps it was the way the door was opening. An honest draught does not move a door furtively, in jerks.
I sat up noiseless, tense, and alert. And then, very quietly, somebody entered the room.
There was only one person in Sanstead House who would enter a room like that. I was amused. The impudence of the thing tickled me. It seemed so foreign to Mr Fisher's usual cautious methods. This strolling in and helping oneself was certainly kidnapping de luxe. In the small hours I could have understood it; but at nine o'clock at night, with Glossop, Mr Abney and myself awake and liable to be met at any moment on the stairs, it was absurd. I marvelled at Smooth Sam's effrontery.
I lay still. I imagined that, being in, he would switch on the electric light. He did, and I greeted him pleasantly.
'And what can I do for you, Mr Fisher?'
For a man who had learned to control himself in difficult situations he took the shock badly. He uttered a startled exclamation and spun round, open-mouthed.
I could not help admiring the quickness with which he recovered himself. Almost immediately he was the suave, chatty Sam Fisher who had unbosomed his theories and dreams to me in the train to London.
'I quit,' he said pleasantly. 'The episode is closed. I am a man of peace, and I take it that you would not keep on lying quietly on that bed while I went into the other room and abstracted our young friend? Unless you have changed your mind again, would a fifty-fifty offer tempt you?'
'Not an inch.'