"Burn the old name," Sartoris said. "What has it done for me? You have
been a good sister to me, but your attentions have been a little
embarrassing sometimes. And if you had hoped to change me, you had your
trouble for your pains. You may put me on the rack and torture me, but
not one word do I say."
"It seems so hard, so very hard," Mary moaned. "And when I look back to
the time----"
"Oh, never mind looking back to any time," Sartoris muttered. "The
game's up, I tell you. I have been beaten, and there's an end of it. I
should play the same hand again if I had the chance, so make no mistake
about that. Wheel me as far as the dining-room."
"It will not be of the slightest use," Berrington said in a cold, clear
voice. "I know that you would blow the whole lot of us to Eternity if
you got the chance, as a kind of revenge for our victory, but I have put
an end to that. You will find all the wires disconnected from your
battery. After that you are quite free to go into the dining-room."
Sartoris grinned and displayed his teeth in an evil smile. Heaven only
knows what new form of villainy he was plotting. And he would cheerfully
have blown up the house and destroyed everybody there, including
himself, if he had had the opportunity to complete his revenge.
"We are wasting time," Field said. "Take all the prisoners away, except
Dr. Bentwood. I have very good reasons for asking him to remain."
Bentwood smiled in a mean and sinister way. He had tried to hide himself
in a corner of the room. There was something so cringing and fawning
about the fellow that Berrington longed to kick him. Sartoris spoke in a
waspish whisper:
"So the land lies in that quarter," he said. "We have an informer
amongst us. If I had known that before, my good Bentwood,--if I had
known that before!"
Big as he was, Bentwood looked small and mean at that moment.
"You are quite mistaken," he cried. "You are altogether wrong, my dear
Carl. I am as much of a prisoner as any of you. I was taken in fair
fight outside after a desperate struggle. What have I to gain by an
attitude of unreasonable obstinacy?"
"Oh, nothing," Sartoris replied. "But you can make things easy for
yourself by affording the police information. You will probably get off
with ten years. I would fight the thing out to the bitter end and chance
it. But you and I are made of different stuff."
Mark Ventmore, watching the two men, thought so too, but he said
nothing. One was a mere bag of bones, the other a fine figure of a man,
but Mark would have preferred the cripple, who made no sign and showed
no feeling as he tottered to the door, between the policemen. Mary would
have said something to him, but he waved her back.
"Now don't you trouble about me any more," he said. "I shall be safe for
some years to come, the law will see to that. We shall never meet again,
for the simple reason that a physique like mine will not stand the
prison treatment. I shall die there. Good bye."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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