“Oh, yes! At best.”
“Meantime, the compound will fall at the first really determined attack. They've been afraid of Pour-mont's machine guns—I heard some of their talk last night, and the night before—but let Kang come to a decision to drive them in and they'll go. That will settle it in a day.”
“Will they have the courage?”
“I think so. You and I know these people, Henry. They're brave enough. All they lack is leadership, and organization. And this crowd have a strong fanaticism to hold them up. Once let Kang appeal to their spirit and they'll have to go in to save face. For if they can't be seen the only danger is of an accident here and there. And, for that matter, Kang may simply be waiting for Pourmont to use up his ammunition. It can't last a great while, not in a real siege, which this is.”
“By the way,” said Withery a little later, “here is a lot of mail for Pourmont's people. It's been accumulating. There was no way to get it to them.”
“I'll take it in,” said Doane.
“You? You don't mean that you're going to ran that gauntlet again, Grigg?”
“Yes.” He untied the packet, and looked through the little heap of envelopes. One was a cablegram addressed to Jonathan Brachey. He held it in tense fingers; gazed at it long while the pulse mounted in his temples. “Oh, yes,” he said, almost casually then, “I'm going hack in. They'll be looking for me.” But his thoughts were running wild again.
Withery said, before he left, “I'm going to ask you not to answer Hidderleigh's request until you've thought it over carefully. My own feeling is that he is right.”
“Suppose,” said Doane, “my final decision should be—as I think it will—that I can't go back. What will they do?”