"What d'you think yer doin'?" he asked, when he could articulate once more. "What's the idea? Think you're funny, I s'pose. 'Ere, some one's pinched me clothes...."
He groped his way to the door and opened it. Alf, suddenly conscious that he, too, was wearing nothing but the string to which the Button was suspended, and beginning to fear that Eustace had been once more disconcertingly "'olesale," followed Bill outside. The moonbeams, shining through the glass of the roof into the great hall, faintly lighted up an utterly changed house. At one end of the hall they revealed the great tapestry whose disappearance had caused the vicar such acute pain. But there was no sign of life—the place seemed suddenly haunted and ghostly. The two men retreated hastily into the room they had just left and tripped over two piles of khaki clothing, which lay on the floor, neatly folded; by them lay two sets of kit and two rifles. Otherwise the room was utterly empty.
Alf, without a word, began to dress himself. Bill felt in his tunic pocket and produced a match. By its light he surveyed the strange room, trying to take in the meaning of this last act of Alf's.
"But look 'ere," he said stupidly at last; "Lucy's gone."
"Yes—an' a good riddance too. It's you an' your blinkin' Lucy what's done me in. Get yer clothes on now an' we'll go, too."
"Go? Us?"
Events were moving too quickly for Bill's obfuscated intellect.
"O' course. We still got a fortnight o' our leave left, thank 'Evings. I'm goin' 'ome."
"But...."
"Shut it, Bill Grant. We got to go, I tell yer. Why they'd 'ave 'arf killed me in the village just now if they'd 'a caught me. I've 'ad enough of it. Besides, they're puttin' Scotland Yard on to us."