Pudgy's voice turned raw and raging. "Get me out of here, and I'll tell you. But if we stay here, we're goners." "You'll tell me right now!" Pudgy remained sullenly silent. Then, of a sudden, the single high screeching voice out in the diamond ended, on a frenzied note. _Boom-boom_, crashed out the drums again. The Brotherhood roared, as with the single voice of a mighty beast. The men with torches began to mill, to split off from the main mass, to run into the four main cross streets, shaking their firebrands and shouting. One yelling woman applied her torch to the faded canvas awning in front of the Electric Shoe Repair Parlor. The canvas blazed up, and the drums rolled again. "Jay!" cried Martha. Wales forced Pudgy to his feet, faced him toward the front windows, and the torch-blazing chaos out beyond them. "Martha and I are going, out the back way," Wales said. "We're leaving _you_ here tied and helpless--unless you tell!" CHAPTER VII A throbbing, lurid light beat in through the front windows of the store, as the flames across the Diamond swept up the fronts of old buildings. The hoarse hallelujah-chorus of the Brotherhood, the quickened booming of the drums, was louder. And the fiery light illumined the bloodless, distorted face of their prisoner as he stared up at Wales and Martha. Wales still felt the shock of terrible surprise. He had been so _sure_ that only the mad Brotherhood could possibly be behind the plot to seize Kendrick, the ghastly scheme to keep millions of people on Earth until Doomsday crashed down upon them. Who else but madmen would do such a thing? Who else would have any motive? He didn't know. But their pudgy prisoner knew. And, even at the risk of trapping Martha and himself in the holocaust of Castletown, he meant to find out. "Please," panted Pudgy. "We haven't got a chance if we stay here longer. I've seen these maniacs and their Atonements. They won't leave a building standing here!" Wales looked at Martha's white face. "All right, Martha, we'll get going. We'll leave this fellow here." He started to turn away. "No, it's murder!" screamed Pudgy. "You can't leave me here, my hands tied--" "Then tell," Wales pressed. "Who seized Kendrick? Who's behind all this?" Beads of sweat stood out on Pudgy's dough-white face. His eyes rolled horribly, and then he said hoarsely, "Fairlie. John Fairlie. And others--" "Fairlie? The regional Evacuation Marshal? What about him?" Wales demanded. "He--and friends of his, other Evacuation officials--they're the ones," Pudgy said. "They've got Lee Kendrick. They're the ones that want a lot of people left on Earth." Furious, Wales took their prisoner by his fat throat and shook him. "All right, you had your chance," he raged. "And you tell us a brazen lie like that. By God, we _are_ leaving you--"