It will be remembered that the night of the 5th of April was the date of
the kidnapping of Mr. Giveen. Early in the morning of the 6th Mr.
Dashwood awoke from his slumbers with a start, looked around him, and
remembered.
The cottage contained only two bedrooms and a living-room. He had taken
a bed the night before from one of the bedrooms and dragged it in front
of the living-room door, which was also the hall door. Here he had
slept, literally making a barrier of his body to the escape of Giveen.
His first thought was of his prisoner, but he was reassured as to his
safety by loud snores coming from the bedroom where he had deposited him
the night before. The morning reflections of Mr. Dashwood, as he lay
watching the mournful dawn breaking through the diamond-paned window,
were not of the most cheerful description.
In seizing the body of Mr. Giveen and forcibly deporting it from London
to Essex, he had broken the law. The fact that Giveen was an enemy of
French and about to do him a cruel injury would, Mr. Dashwood felt,
weigh very little with a jury should the said Giveen take an action
against him for wrongful imprisonment; and he felt distinctly that
Giveen, despite all his softness, was just the man to take such a
course.
The great craft of Giveen was fully demonstrated by the way in which he
had acted on the night before. Believing himself in the power of a
lunatic, he had adapted himself to the situation, feigning unconcern as
a beetle feigns death. Besides gloomy forebodings as to the ultimate
issue of his illegal proceedings, Mr. Dashwood had to face the immediate
prospect of Giveen's close companionship for ten days or so. But, as a
set-off to these undesirabilities, he had the pleasant vision of French
liberated from his difficulties, Garryowen passing the winning-post with
a beaten favourite behind him, and last, but not least, Violet
Grimshaw's face when he told her all.
Enlivened by the thought of this, he sprang out of bed, pulled the bed
away from the door, and opened it. The bleak morning had broken fully
now upon the marshlands and the sea. A cold wind was blowing from the
southeast, bending the wire grass and bringing with it the chilly sound
of small waves breaking on the shore. Electric white gulls were circling
and crying by the distant sea-edge, and the marble-grey clouds were
running rapidly overhead.
He shut the door on this dismal prospect, and turned his attention to
the fireplace.
He remembered that the last time he was here there was some coal and
firewood in the little outhouse at the corner adjoining the shed under
whose shelter he had placed the car. He went out now, and, opening the
outhouse door, found several hundred-weight of coal stacked in a corner
of the shed and a dozen or so bundles of firewood by the coal. An old
basket stood by the coal, and filling this with fuel and sticks, he
returned to the cottage.
Giveen was still snoring, and Mr. Dashwood, who had no desire for his
company, left him to his slumbers while he proceeded to the business of
lighting the fire. Then he undid the package of provisions, and spread
the contents on the dresser. Tinned meat and biscuits formed the
store--nothing else, unless we include two small jars of olives, and as
Mr. Dashwood looked at the row of biscuit bags and tins, he came to the
conclusion that, however learned in eugenics and sociology, Miss Hitchen
was somehow deficient in her knowledge of household management.
When he had untinned a tongue, put some biscuits on a plate, and boiled
some water which, if you drink it hot enough and with your eyes shut you
cannot distinguish from tea, he called his companion, and they sat down
to their cheerless meal, Giveen amiable and even cheerful, seeming to
find nothing extraordinary in his position, but fencing with the subject
whenever Bobby brought the conversation in the direction of Siam,
and--Mr. Dashwood noted--with his eye ever wandering to the door.
After breakfast Mr. Dashwood wrote the letter we have seen to Mr.
French, and put it in his pocket, with a view to finding some means of
sending it later. Then he took his charge out for a walk on the salt
marshes. After dinner, with an old pack of cards, which he discovered in
the dresser drawer, they played beggar-my-neighbour, and dusk closed on
that terrible day and found them sitting without candles or lights of
any sort by the embers of the fire, Mr. Giveen still amiable and even
mildly cheerful.
Had he been obstreperous or quarrelsome, had he even asked questions as
to Bobby's intentions, had he been irritable, the situation would have
been more bearable; but he sat uncannily composed and amiable, and
giving no hint of dissatisfaction with his position and no sign of
revolt or evasion, with the exception of the tell-tale wandering of his
eye every now and then towards the door.
Bobby's watch had run down, and Mr. Giveen had no timepiece, time being
to him of no account, and, at an indeterminable hour, Mr. Dashwood,
yawning, dragged his bed to the door by the light of the flickering fire
and his prisoner retired to the bedroom, and, judging by the sound of
snoring that soon filled the cottage, to sleep.
It was long past midnight, when Mr. Dashwood was aroused from sleep by
cries from the night outside. The clouds had broken and a full moon was
casting her light through the diamond panes of the window as, sitting up
in bed, he strained his ears to listen.
It was Giveen's voice, and Giveen was shouting for help. He dragged the
bed from the door, opened the door, and, without waiting to dress,
rushed out into the night.
The cries were coming from the back of the cottage. Running round, he
came upon the object of distress and the cause.
The front end of Mr. Giveen was protruding from the tiny window of the
bedroom. This window had possessed a bar across it, which bar the
prisoner, by a miracle of patience and dexterity, had removed. He had
got his head and one arm and shoulder through, and there he was stuck.
"Help!" cried Mr. Giveen. "I'm stuck!"
"Try back!" cried Bobby. "Don't push forward, or you'll be stuck worse.
What made you try to get out of that window, you sainted fool? It's not
big enough for a child. Push back!"
"Back, is it?" cried the perspiring Giveen. "Back or front is all the
same. I tell you I'm stuck for good. Help! Murder! Thieves!"
"Come forward, then," cried Bobby, seizing the free arm, "and shut that
row. Now, then, all together! Push while I pull."
"Let up, or you'll have the arm off me!" cried the afflicted one. "Holy
Mary! but you're murdering me! Go round to the room and pull at me legs
if you want to pull. Maybe you'll get me in, for, be the powers, you may
pull till you're black, but you'll never get me out."
"Right," said Bobby.
He ran round, entered the bedroom, which was in darkness, owing to the
occlusion of the window, groped for the afflicted one's legs, found
them, and pulled. Loud bellows from the night outside was the only
result. First he pulled face fronting the window, and with one foot
against the wall for purchase; then with his back to Giveen and with
one leg under each arm, pulling like a horse in the shafts, he pulled.
"Good heavens!" said Mr. Dashwood at last, taking his seat on the bed
and wiping the perspiration from his brow, "I don't know what we're to
do with the bounder, unless we pull the cottage down."