Brentin fixed him with his glittering, beady eyes. “Mr. Hines,” he said, “if you are the spokesman of the malecontents, I am perfectly ready to hear what you have to object.”
“You are very good,” Hines replied, stiffly, “but I imagined the scheme was Blacker’s, and not yours at all.”
“The scheme is the scheme,” said Brentin, impatiently. “Neither one man’s nor another’s. Either you go in with us or you do not; now, then, take your choice, right here and now. You know all about it, what we are going to do and how we are going to do it. There are no flies on the scheme, any more than there are on us. We don’t care ay ginger-snap whether you withdraw or not; but at least we have the right to know which course you intend to pursue.”
“The difficulty appears to me,” Forsyth struck in, in conciliatory tones, “that none of us have ever been to the place, so that we can’t really tell whether the thing is possible or not.”
“Exactly!” murmured Teddy Parsons.
Brentin gave a gesture of vexation. “Monte Carlo has, of course, been thoroughly surveyed before this determination of ours has been arrived at—from a distance, ay considerable distance, I admit. Still, it has been surveyed, though, naturally, through other parties’ eyes. Every authority we have consulted agrees that the thing is perfectly feasible; every one, without exception, wonders why it has never been done before; every one admits it is a plague-spot which should be cauterized. Shall we do it? Yes or no? There is the whole thing in ay nutshell.”
Teddy Parsons observed, “There is one thing I should like to know, and that is—er—will there be any bloodshed?”
“Not unless they shed it,” was Brentin’s somewhat grim reply.
Teddy shuddered and went on, “But I understand we are actually to be armed with revolvers.”
“That is so,” said Brentin, “but they will not be loaded, or with blank cartridge at the most. Experience tells us that gentlemen are just as badly frightened by an unloaded as by a loaded gun.”