e your gags. You will probably all try shouting. I can assure you
that it is quite hopeless. This room looks out, as you know, upon a
courtyard. The street is on the other side of the house. Every person
under this roof is in my employ. There is no earthly chance of your being
heard by any one. Still, if it pleases you to shout, shout!--Now, Grant!"

The man unfastened the gags,--first Phipps', then Rees', and finally
Dredlinton's. Curiously enough, not one of the three men raised their
voices. Wingate's words seemed to have impressed them. Phipps drew one
or two deep breaths, Stanley Rees rubbed his mouth on his sleeve.
Dredlinton was the only one who broke into anything approaching
violent speech.

"My God, Wingate," he exclaimed, "if you think I'll ever forget this,
you're mistaken! I'll see you in prison for it, whatever it costs me!"

"The after-consequences of this little melodrama," Phipps interposed,
with grim fury, "certainly present something of a problem, I have
wondered, during the last hour or so, whether you can be perfectly sane,
Wingate. What good can you expect to do by this brigandage?"

"The very word 'brigandage'," Wingate observed, with a smile, "suggests
my answer--ransom."

"But you can't want money?" Phipps protested.

"You know what I want," was the stern rejoinder. "You and I have already
discussed it when you came to see me about that young man."

Phipps laughed uneasily.

"I remember some preposterous suggestion about selling wheat," he
admitted. "If you think, however, that you can alter our entire business
principles by a piece of foolery like this, you are making the mistake of
your life."

"We are wasting time," Wingate declared a little shortly. "It is better
that we have a complete understanding. Get this into your head," he went
on, drawing a long, ugly-looking pistol from his trousers pocket, and
displaying it. "This is the finest automatic pistol in the world, and I
am one of the best marksmen in the American Army. I shall leave you, for
the present, ungagged, but if rescue comes to you by any efforts of your
own, I give you my word of honour as an American gentleman that I shall
shoot the three of you and be proud of my night's work."

"And swing for it afterwards," Dredlinton threatened. "The man's mad!"

"The man is in earnest," Phipps growled. "That much, at least, I think we
can grant him. What is the meaning of that piece of mummery, Wingate?" he
added, pointing to