ou shall die by my hand before I leave this place if you don't
act with me and leave the place with me. Keep that in your mind as fast
as you can. You shall never leave this place alive unless you and I
leave it free men together. Remember that!'

'You are always bullying me,' the big man whimpered.

'Hold your tongue!' Copping said savagely. 'Here is Sir Rupert coming
back.'

Sir Rupert came back, and in a moment was followed by the Dictator.

CHAPTER XXVI

'WHEN ROGUES----'

'I have put out the fire, Sir Rupert,' Ericson said composedly, 'or,
rather, I have shown your men how to do it. It was not a very difficult
job after all, and they managed very well. They obeyed orders--that is
the good point about all Englishmen.'

'Well, what's to be done now?' Sir Rupert asked.

'Now? I don't know that there is much to be done now by us. We shall be
soon in the hands of the coroner, and the magistrates, and the police;
is not that the regular sort of thing?'

'Yes, I suppose we must put up with the ordinary conventionalities of
criminal administration. Our American friends, these two gentlemen here,
Professor Flick and Mr. Copping, they are rather anxious to be allowed
to go on their way. We have taken up some of their valuable time already
by bringing them down to this out-of-the-way sort of place.'

'Oh, but, Sir Rupert, 'twas so great an honour to us,' Mr. Copping said,
and a very keen observer might have fancied that he gave a glance to
Professor Flick which admonished him to join in protest against the
theory that any inconvenience could have come from the kindly acceptance
of an invitation to Seagate Hall.

'Of course, of course,' Professor Flick murmured perfunctorily.

'I don't see how we can release our friends just yet,' Ericson replied
quietly. 'There will be questions of evidence. These gentlemen may have
seen something you and I did not see, they may have heard something we
did not hear. But the delay will not be long in any case, I should
think, and meanwhile this is not a very disagreeable place to stay in,
now that we have succeeded in putting out the fire, and we don't expect
any more dynamite explosions.'

'Then the fire _is_ all out?' Sir Rupert asked, not hurriedly, but
certainly somewhat anxiously, as anxiously as a somewhat self-conscious
Minister of State could own up to.

'Yes, we have got it under completely,' the Dictator replied, as calmly
as if the putting out of fires were