“But—see here! You’re making an awful mistake, donchuknow! I’m not the fellow you were told to get, donchuknow. This is a hideous mistake, fellows.”
It was the Duke who was making this piteous appeal.
But he had little hope that it would be heeded, since up to this time he had not been listened to and had been given such shameful treatment; moreover, there was small hope that he would be rescued soon by his friends. The Pavilion had been chosen by him because he knew it was far down the lake and isolated.
It was a lakeside place of entertainment, unoccupied in the winter as a rule. The previous winter the Duke had hired it, and it was understood he had some sort of occupancy claim on it this winter.
The men were still disposed to be rough with him.
“We’ve heard all we want out of you,” he was told; “so, shet up! You was pointed out to us plain.”
“By Bully Carson?”
“No matter about that. Here, Bill; we’ll put him upstairs. Either that, or we got to gag him.”
They took him upstairs and locked him in the little room, just as he was. Then they went back to the lower room, with its table, its pack of cards, and the bottle of whisky that was on it.
That whisky had been furnished by Bully Carson; and their prisoner, according to Carson’s directions, was to be drugged with it; but they liked the taste and smell of the liquor too well to waste it in that way; they meant to drink it themselves.