“Oh yes. The river’s risen and the whole place is flooded out,” said Miss Polliter excitedly. “It’s a most stimulating experience altogether. We’ve saved a lot of animals and two children.”
The doctor was holding his head.
“Good Heavens!” he said. “Good Heavens! Good Heavens!”
At that moment two more women descended upon the group. They were the mothers of the infants. They had searched through the village for their missing offspring and at last an eye-witness had described their deliberate kidnapping and imprisonment in the doctor’s house. They were demanding the return of their children. They were threatening legal proceedings. They were calling the doctor a murderer and a kidnapper, a vivisectioner, a Hun and a Bolshevist.
The doctor and the doctor’s wife and Miss Polliter and the two mothers all began to talk at once. William, seizing his opportunity, crept away. He crept down the road towards the cave.
At the bend in the road he turned. The doctor and the doctor’s wife and the two mothers and Miss Polliter, still all talking excitedly at the same time, began to make their way slowly up the hill to the doctor’s house.
He looked in the other direction. There was just a large crowd surrounding the cave; men were just coming along the road from the other direction with pickaxes to dig his dead body from the rock.
He went forward very reluctantly and slowly.
He went forward because he had a horrible suspicion that the doctor would soon have discovered the extent and the cause of the “flood” and would soon be pursuing him lusting for vengeance.
He went forward reluctantly and slowly because he did not foresee an enthusiastic welcome from his bereaved parents.