He took up his hat, walked down the length of the room, opened the door, and went out. “Follow him,” said Long John, nodding to Simpkins as he spoke. Without a word Simpkins also left the room. When the two men had departed, and the sound of their footsteps going downstairs had completely died away, Long John seated himself once more in the old oak chair. He remained gloomy and silent for a moment. Then his voice sounded full and sonorous. “Come up near me, all of you,” he said; “we have an important matter to discuss.” All the men flocked, without a word, to the upper end of the room. Scrivener stood exactly in front of Long John. Long John’s eyes, pathetic to almost unbearable sadness, gazed full into the shifty eyes of his spy, his lips became thin as a line, his face showed white and cadaverous, even more deathly in hue than usual. On each cheek there came out slowly an angry spot of flame about the size of a halfpenny; the eyes grew brighter as the spot deepened. The lips were now so thin that they looked like a mere thread. The men all waited in perfect silence. They knew this mood of their leader, and trembled before it. “There is only one thing to be done,” said Long John; “I name it with regret, but it must be done.” “What is that?” asked Scrivener. “We have had too much to do with our gentleman leader—he has defied us and put us in peril. Men, if we do not wish, each one of us, to taste the sweets of penal servitude, if three or four of us do not wish to swing by the neck until they die, Rowton must go.” “He must go, it is true,” echoed Scrivener. “It don’t seem to me as if that verdict was fair,” said a man on the outer edge of the circle. Long John fixed him with his glittering eyes. “What do you mean, Danvers?” he said. “What I say,” replied the man, getting a little bolder. “Silver may have been wrong about that diamond, but after all, when all’s said and done, he give it to his wife, and, except for the black diamond, we never did have a straighter feller to work with.” “If the black diamond is found by the police,” continued Long John, “we are all undone. The police have information with regard to it which will hang three men. Must three hang for one? I repeat that Adrian Rowton must go.” All the men were silent now. One or two looked eager and impressed, one or two alarmed. Long John, after a silence which might almost be felt, spoke again. “If we don’t give him away, he gives us away.” “No,” said the man called Danvers, “’tain’t in Silver to give evidence agin his pals.”