“That’s the time of the day, is it? I’ve been conspiring with him, have I? What have I been conspiring about?”
“I have no doubt that that is a point on which Captain Lander will be able to show more than sufficient light.”
My words had at last struck home. What lent them especial weight I could not even guess. But that they had moved him more than anything which had gone before his behaviour showed.
“He will, will he? So that’s the game you’re after. You’re a lawyer, and I’m a poor, silly sailor man, so you think you can play just what tricks with me you please. But there’s something else Captain Lander can tell you if you ask him, and that’s that I can be disagreeable when I’m crossed, and if you don’t move away from that door inside a brace of shakes I’m going to be disagreeable now.”
“Don’t threaten me, my man.”
“Threaten?”
His tone suggested that he scorned being thought capable of threatening only, and his action proved it.
He came at me with a suddenness for which I was unprepared. Putting his arms about me while I was still unready he lifted me off my feet. As he was still holding me aloft, crooking my leg inside his, I bore on him with all my might, and brought him with a crash to the floor. Although he lay underneath, his arms still retained their grip.
While I hesitated whether to attack the man in earnest or to remonstrate with him instead—for Miss Purvis might at any moment look in, and then a nice opinion she would have of me—someone standing behind slipped what seemed to be a cord over my head, and drew it so tight about my throat that in an instant I was all but choked. When, gasping for breath, I put up my hand to free myself, it was drawn still tighter. So tight indeed that not only did it cut like a knife, but I felt as if my tongue was being torn out of my mouth, and I lost all consciousness.