“That’s the devil of a plan now, Ember,” said Molloy. “We’ll be no better than rats in a drain.”
“Well, it’s for your safety,” said Ember. “They’re out for blood over this business of Formula ‘A,’ I can tell you, and there’s nowhere you’d be half so safe.”
Jane was listening with all her ears. She decided that Mr. Ember’s solicitude was not all on Molloy’s account. “He thinks that if Molloy and Belcovitch are arrested, they’ll give him away over the big thing in order to save themselves. I expect they’d be able to make a pretty good bargain for themselves, really.” She heard Molloy give a sulky assent. Then Ember was speaking again:
“I want to check the lists with you. Not the continental ones—I’ll keep those for Belcovitch—but those for the States and here. I’ve got them complete now, but I’m not very sure about all the names. Hennessey now, he’s down for Chicago, but I don’t know that I altogether trust Hennessey.”
“It’s late in the day to say that,” said Molloy.
“Well, what about Hayling Taylor?”
Jane listened, and heard name follow name. Ember appeared to be reading from a list. He would name a large town and follow it with a list of persons who apparently acted as agents there. Sometimes these names were passed with an assenting grunt by Molloy, sometimes there was a discussion.
There are a great many large towns in the United States of America. Jane became stiffer and stiffer. At last she could bear her constrained half-crouching position no longer. Very gingerly, moving half an inch at a time, she let herself down until she was sitting on the pile of broken bricks which blocked the tunnel. The names went on. It was dull and monotonous to a degree, but behind the dullness and the monotony there was a sense of lurking horror.
“It’s like being in a fog,” said Jane—“the sort you can’t see through at all, and knowing that there’s a tiger loose somewhere.”
One thing became clearer and clearer to her. Those lists that sounded like geography lessons must be got hold of somehow. Henry must have them.