Entwistle clapped his hand to his smouldering garment.
"Thought I could sniff something burning," he said. "There are advantages and disadvantages to most things, and a pistol fired from one's pocket is no exception. Sorry I landed you in a bit of a mess."
"Not at all," protested the sub. "You saved me from—well—a long and decidedly unpleasant fall. What's the depth of a mine shaft?"
"Anything from two hundred to four hundred feet," was the reply. "As a matter of fact I had no doubts on that score. I knew that one against four was long odds, and reckoned on a division of work when you were collared. It was then an easy matter to dispose of a couple of the bounders, and that equalised things.... No, you don't, Fritz; hands up and behave yourself!"
This was to the man Schranz, who was furtively eyeing the open door, the while nursing his bullet-punctured arm. The fellow whom Farrar had floored was still in a dazed condition, muttering incoherently. Of the others, the leader of the gang was stone dead, Entwistle's shot having penetrated the brain; the other was fast shuffling off this mortal coil.
Deftly the sub dressed the arm of his late antagonist, for the small-calibre bullet had ripped an artery.
"Now what's to be done?" he inquired.
"Go without dinner, I'm afraid," replied Entwistle. He glanced at his watch.
"In another thirty-five minutes," he announced, "we will hand over our prisoners to the local police. I took the precaution this afternoon of telephoning to the superintendent at Trebalda. The cottage will be locked up and seals attached to the doors. To-morrow I can investigate its contents at my leisure. Now, our immediate business completed, I think we'll have a pipe—try this tobacco."