CHAPTER XXIX.DOT AND DASHFor a long time after the retreating footsteps of Strangwise and Bellward had died away, Desmond sat listless, preoccupied with his thoughts. They were somber enough. The sinister atmosphere of the house, weighing upon him, seemed to deepen his depression.About his own position he was not concerned at all. This is not an example of unselfishness it is simply an instance of the force of discipline which trains a man to reckon the cause as everything and himself as naught. And Desmond was haunted by the awful conviction that he had at length reached the end of his tether and that nothing could now redeem the ignominious failure he had made of his mission.He had sacrificed Barbara Mackwayte; he had sacrificed Nur-el-Din; he had not even been clever enough to save his own skin. And Strangwise, spy and murderer, had escaped and was now free to reorganize his band after he had put Barbara and Desmond out of the way.The thought was so unbearable that it stung Desmond into action. Strangwise should not get the better of him, he resolved, and he had yet this brief interval of being alone in which he might devise some scheme to rescue Barbara and secure the arrest of Strangwise and his accomplices. But how?He raised his head and looked round the room. The curtains had not been drawn and enough light came into the room from the outside to enable him to distinguish the outlines of the furniture. It was a bedroom, furnished in rather a massive style, with some kind of thick, soft carpet into which the feet sank.Desmond tested his bonds. He was very skillfully tied up. He fancied that with a little manipulation he might contrive to loosen the rope round his right arm, for one of the knots had caught in the folds of his coat. The thongs round his left arm and two legs were, however, so tight that he thought he had but little chance of ridding himself of them, even should he get his right arm free; for the knots were tied at the back under the seat of the chair in such a way that he could not reach them.He, therefore, resigned himself to conducting operations in the highly ridiculous posture in which he found himself, that is to say, with a large arm-chair attached to him, rather like a snail with its house on its back. After a certain amount of maneuvering he discovered that, by means of a kind of slow, lumbering crawl, he was able to move across the ground. It might have proved a noisy business on a parquet floor; but Desmond moved only a foot or two at a time and the pile carpet deadened the sound.They had deposited him in his chair in the centre of the room near the big brass bedstead. After ten minutes’ painful crawling he had reached the toilet table which stood in front of the window with a couple of electric candles on either side of the mirror. He moved the toilet table to one side, then bumped steadily across the carpet until he had reached the window. And then he gave a little gasp of surprise.He found himself looking straight at the window of his own bedroom at Mrs. Viljohn-Smythe’s. There was no mistaking it. The electric light was burning and the curtains had not yet been drawn. He could see the black and pink eiderdown on his bed and the black lining of the chintz curtains. Then he remembered the slope of the hill. He must be in the room from which he had seen Bellward looking out.The sight of the natty bedroom across the way moved Desmond strangely. It seemed to bring home to him for the first time the extraordinary position in which he found himself, a prisoner in a perfectly respectable suburban house in a perfectly respectable quarter of London, in imminent danger of a violent death.He wouldn’t give in without a struggle. Safety stared him in the face, separated only by a hundred yards of grass and shrub and wall. He instinctively gripped the arms of the chair to raise himself to get a better view from the window, forgetting he was bound. The ropes cut his arms cruelly and brought him back to earth.He tested again the thongs fastening his right arm. Yes! they were undoubtedly looser than the others. He pulled and tugged and writhed and strained. Once in his struggles he crashed into the toilet table and all but upset one of the electric candles which slid to the table’s very brink and was saved, as by a miracle, from falling to the floor. He resumed his efforts, but with less violence. It was in vain. Though the ropes about his right arm were fairly loose, the wrist was solidly fastened to the chair, and do what he would, he could not wrest it free. He clawed desperately with his fingers and thumb, but all in vain.In the midst of his struggles he was arrested by the sound of whistling. Somebody in the distance outside was whistling, clearly and musically, a quaint, jingling sort of jig that struck familiarly on Desmond’s ear. Somehow it reminded him of the front. It brought with it dim memory of the awakening to the early morning chill of a Nissen hut, the smell of damp earth, the whirr of aircraft soaring through the morning sky, the squeak of flutes, the roll of drums... why, it was the Grand Reveillé, that ancient military air which every soldier knows.He stopped struggling and peered cautiously out into the dusk. The time for darkening the windows must be at hand, he thought, for in most of the houses the blinds were already drawn. Here and there, however, an oblong of yellow light showed up against the dark mass of the houses on the upper slopes of the hill. The curtains of his bedroom at Mrs. Viljohn-Smythe’s were not yet drawn and the light still burned brightly above the bed.The whistling continued with occasional interruptions as though the whistler were about some work or other. And then suddenly “Buzzer” Barling, holding something in one hand and rubbing violently with the other, stepped into the patch of light between the window and the bed in Desmond’s bedroom.Desmond’s heart leaped within him. Here was assistance close at hand. Mechanically he sought to raise his hand to open the window, but an agonising twinge reminded him of his thongs. He swiftly reviewed in his mind the means of attracting the attention of the soldier opposite. Whatever he was going to do, he must do quickly; for the fact that people were beginning to darken their windows showed that it must be close on half-past six, and about seven o’clock, Barling, after putting out Desmond’s things, was accustomed to go out for the evening.Should he shout? Should he try and break the window? Desmond rejected both these suggestions. While it was doubtful whether Barling would hear the noise or, if he heard it, connect it with Desmond, it was certain that Strangwise and Bellward would do both and be upon Desmond without a moment’s delay.Then Desmond’s eye fell upon the electric candle which had slid to the very edge of the table. It was mounted in a heavy brass candle-stick and the switch was in the pedestal, jutting out over the edge of the table in the position in which the candle now stood. The candle was clear of the mirror and there was nothing between it and the window. Desmond’s brain took all this in at a glance. That glance showed him that Providence was being good to him.A couple of jerks of the chair brought him alongside the table. Its edge was practically level with the arms of the chair so that, by getting into the right position, he was able to manipulate the switch with his fingers. And then, thanking God and the Army Council for the recent signalling course he had attended, he depressed the switch with a quick, snapping movement and jerked it up again, sending out the dots and dashes of the Morse code.“B-A-R-L-I-N-G” he spelt out, slowly and laboriously, it is true; for he was not an expert.As he worked the switch, he looked across at the illuminated window of the room in which Barling stood, with bent head, earnestly engaged upon his polishing.“B-a-r-l-i-n-g-ack-ack-ack-B-a-r-l-i-n-g-ack-ack-ack”The light flickered up and down in long and short flashes. Still “Buzzer” Barling trilled away at the “Grand Reveillé” nor raised his eyes from his work.Desmond varied the call:“O-K-E-W-O-O-D T-O B-A-R-L-I-N-G” he flashed.He repeated the call twice and was spelling it out for the third time when Desmond saw the “Buzzer” raise his head.The whistling broke off short.“O-k-e-w-o-o-d t-o B-a-r-l-i-n-g” flickered the light.The next moment the bedroom opposite was plunged in darkness. Immediately afterwards the light began to flash with bewildering rapidity. But Desmond recognized the call.“I am ready to take your message,” it said.“S-t-r-a-n-g-w-i-s-e h-a-s g-o-t m-e ack-ack-ack,” Desmond flashed back, “f-e-t-c-h h-e-l-p a-t o-n-c-e ack-ack-ack: d-o-n-t r-e-p-l-y; ack-ack-ack; s-e-n-d o-n-e d-o-t o-n-e d-a-s-h t-o s-h-o-w y-o-u u-n-d-e-r-s-t-a-n-d ack-ack-ack!”For he was afraid lest the light flashing from the house opposite might attract the attention of the men downstairs.He was very slow and he made many mistakes, so that it was with bated breath that, after sending his message, he watched the window opposite for the reply.It came quickly. A short flash and a long one followed at once. After that the room remained in darkness. With a sigh of relief Desmond, as quietly as possible, manoeuvred the dressing-table back into place and then jerked the chair across the carpet to the position where Strangwise and Bellward had left him in the middle of the floor:It was here that the two men found him, apparently asleep, when they came up half-an-hour later. They carried him down to the red lacquer room again.“Well, Desmond!” said Strangwise, when their burden had been deposited on the floor under the crimson lamp.“Well, Maurice?” answered the other.Strangwise noticed that Desmond had addressed him by his Christian name for the first time since he had been in the house and his voice was more friendly when he spoke again.“I see you’re going to be sensible, old man,” he said. “Believe me, it’s the only thing for you to do. You’re going to give up the Star of Poland, aren’t you?”“Oh, no, Maurice, I’m not,” replied Desmond in a frank, even voice. “I’ve told you what I’m going to do. I’m going to hand you over to the people at Pentonville to hang as a murderer. And I shouldn’t be at all surprised if they didn’t run up old Bellward there alongside of you!”Strangwise shook his head at him.“You are very ill-advised to reject my offer, Desmond,” he said, “for it simply means that I can do nothing more for you. Our friend Bellward now assumes the direction of affairs. I don’t think you can realize what you are letting yourself in for. You appear to have been dabbling in Intelligence work. Perhaps it would interest you to hear something about this, our latest German method for extracting accurate information from reluctant or untruthful witnesses. Bellward, perhaps you would enlighten him.”Bellward smiled grimly.“It is a blend,” he explained glibly, “of that extreme form of cross-examination which the Americans call ‘the third degree’ and hypnotic treatment. Many people, as you are doubtless aware, are less responsive to hypnotic influence than others. An intensified course of the third degree and lack of sleep renders such refractory natures extraordinarily susceptible to mesmeric treatment. It prepares the ground as it were!”Bellward coughed and looked at Desmond over his tortoise-shell spectacles which he had put on again.“The method has had its best results when practised on women,” he resumed. “Our people in Holland have found it very successful in the case of female spies who come across the Belgian frontier. But some women—Miss Barbara, for example—seem to have greater powers of resistance than others. We had to employ a rather drastic form of the third degree for her, didn’t we, Strangwise?”He laughed waggishly.“And you’ll be none too easy either,” he added.“You beasts,” cried Desmond, “but just you wait, your turn will come!”“Yours first, however,” chuckled Bellward. “I rather fancy youwillthink us beasts by the time we have done with you, my young friend!”Then he turned to Strangwise.“Where’s Minna?” he asked.“With the girl.”“Is the girl sleeping?”Strangwise nodded.“She wanted it,” he replied, “no sleep for four days... I tell you it takes some constitution to hold out against that!”“Well,” said Bellward, rubbing the palms of his hands together, “as we’re not likely to be disturbed, I think we’ll make a start!”He advanced a pace to where Desmond sat trussed up, hand and foot, in his chair. Bellward’s eyes were large and luminous, and as Desmond glanced rather nervously at the face of the man approaching him, he was struck by the compelling power they seemed to emit.Desmond bent his head to avoid the insistent gaze. But in a couple of quick strides Bellward was at his side and stooping down, had thrust his face right into his victim’s. Bellward’s face was so close that Desmond felt his warm breath on his cheek whilst those burning eyes seemed to stab through his closed eyelids and steadily, stealthily, draw his gaze.Resolutely Desmond held his head, averted. All kinds of queer ideas were racing through his brain, fragments of nursery rhymes, scenes from his regimental life in India, memories of the front, which he had deliberately summoned up to keep his attention distracted from those merciless eyes, like twin search-lights pitilessly playing on his face.Bellward could easily have taken Desmond by the chin and forced his face up until his eyes came level with the other’s. But he offered no violence of any kind. He remained in his stooping position, his face thrust forward, so perfectly still that Desmond began to be tormented by a desire to risk a rapid peep just to see what the mesmerist was doing.He put the temptation aside. He must keep his eyes shut, he told himself. But the desire increased, intensified by the strong attraction radiating from Bellward, and finally Desmond succumbed. He opened his eyes to dart a quick glance at Bellward and found the other’s staring eyes, with pupils distended, fixed on his. And Desmond felt his resistance ebb. He tried to avert his gaze; but it was too late. That basilisk glare held him fast.With every faculty of his mind he fought against the influence which was slowly, irresistibly, shackling his brain. He laughed, he shouted defiance at Bellward and Strangwise, he sang snatches of songs. But Bellward never moved a muscle. He seemed to be in a kind of cataleptic trance, so rigid his body, so unswerving his stare.The lights in the room seemed to be growing dim. Bellward’s eyeballs gleamed redly in the dull crimson light flooding the room. Desmond felt himself longing for some violent shock that would disturb the hideous stillness of the house. His own voice was sounding dull and blunted in his ears. What was the use of struggling further? He might as well give up...A loud crash, the sound of a door slamming, reechoed through the house. The room shook. The noise brought Desmond back to his senses and at the same time the chain binding him to Bellward snapped. For Bellward started and raised his head and Strangwise sprang to the door. Then Desmond heard the door burst open, there was the deafening report of a pistol, followed by another, and Bellward crashed forward on his knees with a sobbing grunt. As Desmond had his back to the door he could see nothing of what was taking place, but some kind of violent struggle was going on; for he heard the smash of glass as a piece of furniture was upset.Then suddenly the room seemed full of people. The thongs binding his hands and feet fell to the ground. “Buzzer” Barling stood at his side.
For a long time after the retreating footsteps of Strangwise and Bellward had died away, Desmond sat listless, preoccupied with his thoughts. They were somber enough. The sinister atmosphere of the house, weighing upon him, seemed to deepen his depression.
About his own position he was not concerned at all. This is not an example of unselfishness it is simply an instance of the force of discipline which trains a man to reckon the cause as everything and himself as naught. And Desmond was haunted by the awful conviction that he had at length reached the end of his tether and that nothing could now redeem the ignominious failure he had made of his mission.
He had sacrificed Barbara Mackwayte; he had sacrificed Nur-el-Din; he had not even been clever enough to save his own skin. And Strangwise, spy and murderer, had escaped and was now free to reorganize his band after he had put Barbara and Desmond out of the way.
The thought was so unbearable that it stung Desmond into action. Strangwise should not get the better of him, he resolved, and he had yet this brief interval of being alone in which he might devise some scheme to rescue Barbara and secure the arrest of Strangwise and his accomplices. But how?
He raised his head and looked round the room. The curtains had not been drawn and enough light came into the room from the outside to enable him to distinguish the outlines of the furniture. It was a bedroom, furnished in rather a massive style, with some kind of thick, soft carpet into which the feet sank.
Desmond tested his bonds. He was very skillfully tied up. He fancied that with a little manipulation he might contrive to loosen the rope round his right arm, for one of the knots had caught in the folds of his coat. The thongs round his left arm and two legs were, however, so tight that he thought he had but little chance of ridding himself of them, even should he get his right arm free; for the knots were tied at the back under the seat of the chair in such a way that he could not reach them.
He, therefore, resigned himself to conducting operations in the highly ridiculous posture in which he found himself, that is to say, with a large arm-chair attached to him, rather like a snail with its house on its back. After a certain amount of maneuvering he discovered that, by means of a kind of slow, lumbering crawl, he was able to move across the ground. It might have proved a noisy business on a parquet floor; but Desmond moved only a foot or two at a time and the pile carpet deadened the sound.
They had deposited him in his chair in the centre of the room near the big brass bedstead. After ten minutes’ painful crawling he had reached the toilet table which stood in front of the window with a couple of electric candles on either side of the mirror. He moved the toilet table to one side, then bumped steadily across the carpet until he had reached the window. And then he gave a little gasp of surprise.
He found himself looking straight at the window of his own bedroom at Mrs. Viljohn-Smythe’s. There was no mistaking it. The electric light was burning and the curtains had not yet been drawn. He could see the black and pink eiderdown on his bed and the black lining of the chintz curtains. Then he remembered the slope of the hill. He must be in the room from which he had seen Bellward looking out.
The sight of the natty bedroom across the way moved Desmond strangely. It seemed to bring home to him for the first time the extraordinary position in which he found himself, a prisoner in a perfectly respectable suburban house in a perfectly respectable quarter of London, in imminent danger of a violent death.
He wouldn’t give in without a struggle. Safety stared him in the face, separated only by a hundred yards of grass and shrub and wall. He instinctively gripped the arms of the chair to raise himself to get a better view from the window, forgetting he was bound. The ropes cut his arms cruelly and brought him back to earth.
He tested again the thongs fastening his right arm. Yes! they were undoubtedly looser than the others. He pulled and tugged and writhed and strained. Once in his struggles he crashed into the toilet table and all but upset one of the electric candles which slid to the table’s very brink and was saved, as by a miracle, from falling to the floor. He resumed his efforts, but with less violence. It was in vain. Though the ropes about his right arm were fairly loose, the wrist was solidly fastened to the chair, and do what he would, he could not wrest it free. He clawed desperately with his fingers and thumb, but all in vain.
In the midst of his struggles he was arrested by the sound of whistling. Somebody in the distance outside was whistling, clearly and musically, a quaint, jingling sort of jig that struck familiarly on Desmond’s ear. Somehow it reminded him of the front. It brought with it dim memory of the awakening to the early morning chill of a Nissen hut, the smell of damp earth, the whirr of aircraft soaring through the morning sky, the squeak of flutes, the roll of drums... why, it was the Grand Reveillé, that ancient military air which every soldier knows.
He stopped struggling and peered cautiously out into the dusk. The time for darkening the windows must be at hand, he thought, for in most of the houses the blinds were already drawn. Here and there, however, an oblong of yellow light showed up against the dark mass of the houses on the upper slopes of the hill. The curtains of his bedroom at Mrs. Viljohn-Smythe’s were not yet drawn and the light still burned brightly above the bed.
The whistling continued with occasional interruptions as though the whistler were about some work or other. And then suddenly “Buzzer” Barling, holding something in one hand and rubbing violently with the other, stepped into the patch of light between the window and the bed in Desmond’s bedroom.
Desmond’s heart leaped within him. Here was assistance close at hand. Mechanically he sought to raise his hand to open the window, but an agonising twinge reminded him of his thongs. He swiftly reviewed in his mind the means of attracting the attention of the soldier opposite. Whatever he was going to do, he must do quickly; for the fact that people were beginning to darken their windows showed that it must be close on half-past six, and about seven o’clock, Barling, after putting out Desmond’s things, was accustomed to go out for the evening.
Should he shout? Should he try and break the window? Desmond rejected both these suggestions. While it was doubtful whether Barling would hear the noise or, if he heard it, connect it with Desmond, it was certain that Strangwise and Bellward would do both and be upon Desmond without a moment’s delay.
Then Desmond’s eye fell upon the electric candle which had slid to the very edge of the table. It was mounted in a heavy brass candle-stick and the switch was in the pedestal, jutting out over the edge of the table in the position in which the candle now stood. The candle was clear of the mirror and there was nothing between it and the window. Desmond’s brain took all this in at a glance. That glance showed him that Providence was being good to him.
A couple of jerks of the chair brought him alongside the table. Its edge was practically level with the arms of the chair so that, by getting into the right position, he was able to manipulate the switch with his fingers. And then, thanking God and the Army Council for the recent signalling course he had attended, he depressed the switch with a quick, snapping movement and jerked it up again, sending out the dots and dashes of the Morse code.
“B-A-R-L-I-N-G” he spelt out, slowly and laboriously, it is true; for he was not an expert.
As he worked the switch, he looked across at the illuminated window of the room in which Barling stood, with bent head, earnestly engaged upon his polishing.
“B-a-r-l-i-n-g-ack-ack-ack-B-a-r-l-i-n-g-ack-ack-ack”
The light flickered up and down in long and short flashes. Still “Buzzer” Barling trilled away at the “Grand Reveillé” nor raised his eyes from his work.
Desmond varied the call:
“O-K-E-W-O-O-D T-O B-A-R-L-I-N-G” he flashed.
He repeated the call twice and was spelling it out for the third time when Desmond saw the “Buzzer” raise his head.
The whistling broke off short.
“O-k-e-w-o-o-d t-o B-a-r-l-i-n-g” flickered the light.
The next moment the bedroom opposite was plunged in darkness. Immediately afterwards the light began to flash with bewildering rapidity. But Desmond recognized the call.
“I am ready to take your message,” it said.
“S-t-r-a-n-g-w-i-s-e h-a-s g-o-t m-e ack-ack-ack,” Desmond flashed back, “f-e-t-c-h h-e-l-p a-t o-n-c-e ack-ack-ack: d-o-n-t r-e-p-l-y; ack-ack-ack; s-e-n-d o-n-e d-o-t o-n-e d-a-s-h t-o s-h-o-w y-o-u u-n-d-e-r-s-t-a-n-d ack-ack-ack!”
For he was afraid lest the light flashing from the house opposite might attract the attention of the men downstairs.
He was very slow and he made many mistakes, so that it was with bated breath that, after sending his message, he watched the window opposite for the reply.
It came quickly. A short flash and a long one followed at once. After that the room remained in darkness. With a sigh of relief Desmond, as quietly as possible, manoeuvred the dressing-table back into place and then jerked the chair across the carpet to the position where Strangwise and Bellward had left him in the middle of the floor:
It was here that the two men found him, apparently asleep, when they came up half-an-hour later. They carried him down to the red lacquer room again.
“Well, Desmond!” said Strangwise, when their burden had been deposited on the floor under the crimson lamp.
“Well, Maurice?” answered the other.
Strangwise noticed that Desmond had addressed him by his Christian name for the first time since he had been in the house and his voice was more friendly when he spoke again.
“I see you’re going to be sensible, old man,” he said. “Believe me, it’s the only thing for you to do. You’re going to give up the Star of Poland, aren’t you?”
“Oh, no, Maurice, I’m not,” replied Desmond in a frank, even voice. “I’ve told you what I’m going to do. I’m going to hand you over to the people at Pentonville to hang as a murderer. And I shouldn’t be at all surprised if they didn’t run up old Bellward there alongside of you!”
Strangwise shook his head at him.
“You are very ill-advised to reject my offer, Desmond,” he said, “for it simply means that I can do nothing more for you. Our friend Bellward now assumes the direction of affairs. I don’t think you can realize what you are letting yourself in for. You appear to have been dabbling in Intelligence work. Perhaps it would interest you to hear something about this, our latest German method for extracting accurate information from reluctant or untruthful witnesses. Bellward, perhaps you would enlighten him.”
Bellward smiled grimly.
“It is a blend,” he explained glibly, “of that extreme form of cross-examination which the Americans call ‘the third degree’ and hypnotic treatment. Many people, as you are doubtless aware, are less responsive to hypnotic influence than others. An intensified course of the third degree and lack of sleep renders such refractory natures extraordinarily susceptible to mesmeric treatment. It prepares the ground as it were!”
Bellward coughed and looked at Desmond over his tortoise-shell spectacles which he had put on again.
“The method has had its best results when practised on women,” he resumed. “Our people in Holland have found it very successful in the case of female spies who come across the Belgian frontier. But some women—Miss Barbara, for example—seem to have greater powers of resistance than others. We had to employ a rather drastic form of the third degree for her, didn’t we, Strangwise?”
He laughed waggishly.
“And you’ll be none too easy either,” he added.
“You beasts,” cried Desmond, “but just you wait, your turn will come!”
“Yours first, however,” chuckled Bellward. “I rather fancy youwillthink us beasts by the time we have done with you, my young friend!”
Then he turned to Strangwise.
“Where’s Minna?” he asked.
“With the girl.”
“Is the girl sleeping?”
Strangwise nodded.
“She wanted it,” he replied, “no sleep for four days... I tell you it takes some constitution to hold out against that!”
“Well,” said Bellward, rubbing the palms of his hands together, “as we’re not likely to be disturbed, I think we’ll make a start!”
He advanced a pace to where Desmond sat trussed up, hand and foot, in his chair. Bellward’s eyes were large and luminous, and as Desmond glanced rather nervously at the face of the man approaching him, he was struck by the compelling power they seemed to emit.
Desmond bent his head to avoid the insistent gaze. But in a couple of quick strides Bellward was at his side and stooping down, had thrust his face right into his victim’s. Bellward’s face was so close that Desmond felt his warm breath on his cheek whilst those burning eyes seemed to stab through his closed eyelids and steadily, stealthily, draw his gaze.
Resolutely Desmond held his head, averted. All kinds of queer ideas were racing through his brain, fragments of nursery rhymes, scenes from his regimental life in India, memories of the front, which he had deliberately summoned up to keep his attention distracted from those merciless eyes, like twin search-lights pitilessly playing on his face.
Bellward could easily have taken Desmond by the chin and forced his face up until his eyes came level with the other’s. But he offered no violence of any kind. He remained in his stooping position, his face thrust forward, so perfectly still that Desmond began to be tormented by a desire to risk a rapid peep just to see what the mesmerist was doing.
He put the temptation aside. He must keep his eyes shut, he told himself. But the desire increased, intensified by the strong attraction radiating from Bellward, and finally Desmond succumbed. He opened his eyes to dart a quick glance at Bellward and found the other’s staring eyes, with pupils distended, fixed on his. And Desmond felt his resistance ebb. He tried to avert his gaze; but it was too late. That basilisk glare held him fast.
With every faculty of his mind he fought against the influence which was slowly, irresistibly, shackling his brain. He laughed, he shouted defiance at Bellward and Strangwise, he sang snatches of songs. But Bellward never moved a muscle. He seemed to be in a kind of cataleptic trance, so rigid his body, so unswerving his stare.
The lights in the room seemed to be growing dim. Bellward’s eyeballs gleamed redly in the dull crimson light flooding the room. Desmond felt himself longing for some violent shock that would disturb the hideous stillness of the house. His own voice was sounding dull and blunted in his ears. What was the use of struggling further? He might as well give up...
A loud crash, the sound of a door slamming, reechoed through the house. The room shook. The noise brought Desmond back to his senses and at the same time the chain binding him to Bellward snapped. For Bellward started and raised his head and Strangwise sprang to the door. Then Desmond heard the door burst open, there was the deafening report of a pistol, followed by another, and Bellward crashed forward on his knees with a sobbing grunt. As Desmond had his back to the door he could see nothing of what was taking place, but some kind of violent struggle was going on; for he heard the smash of glass as a piece of furniture was upset.
Then suddenly the room seemed full of people. The thongs binding his hands and feet fell to the ground. “Buzzer” Barling stood at his side.