Jim was pushed roughly into a chair and Macfee went to a closet in the corner, produced a length of rope and lashed Jim so tightly that he couldn’t move. Sheringham moved over to the fire and threw on a white birch log. The firelight cast grotesque shadows across his evil face. Macfee and Cronin lifted the chair in which Jim was tied over to a place on the hearth, directly in front of the fire. Jim turned away, the heat from the flames unpleasantly hot against his face.
“Where,” said Sheringham in a purring voice, “is the necklace?”
Jim shook his head slowly. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Sheringham, and if I did you ought to know that I wouldn’t tell you. You’re wasting time.”
Cronin and Macfee, standing on either side of Jim’s chair, at a signal from Sheringham tilted it slightly forward toward the fire. Sheringham lit a fresh cigarette. “That fire, Garth, will get warmer and warmer the closer you get to it,” he said. “I think before it becomes necessary to bury your face in the flames you may develop a streak of memory. I’m not going to waste much time, I warn you. Where is the necklace?”
“You won’t go through with this, Sheringham,” said Jim steadily, “because it will do you no good to kill me. You won’t know anything then.”
“Oh, I have no intention of killing you,” said Sheringham. “Of course if you are permanently mutilated or blinded by the flames it will be most tragic, I’m sure. I urge you to avoid it. Where is the necklace?”
“I pass,” said Jim.
Cronin and Macfee tilted the chair closer to the flames. The sweat was running down Jim’s face, and in his heart was horrible fear. Nothing would make him talk, but already his eyebrows and hair were scorched and the heat on his face was almost unbearable. He had no doubt that Sheringham would carry out his threat. He moistened his scorched lips with the tip of his tongue.
“I don’t know how you got onto the game to-night, Garth,” said Sheringham, calmly, “but it was unfortunate for you that you did. I think you will wish to God that you had never heard of me unless you tell me at once what you’ve done with that necklace.”
“No soap, Sheringham.”
Again the chair was tilted forward. The flames were only an inch away from his eyes now. Jim clenched his teeth and prayed quietly for courage to endure whatever happened with no outward show of what he felt. Better not to give them that satisfaction.
“This is the last time, Garth,” said Sheringham deliberately. “What have you done with the necklace?”
“Don’t you think,” said a mild voice from the doorway behind them, “that this has gone far enough?”
The chair was dropped back on its legs. Sheringham, Macfee and Cronin turned quickly. Jim twisted his head painfully to see who had saved him for the moment. Standing in the doorway, a benevolent twinkle in his gentle blue eyes, was Martin Hewes. Jim groaned. The fat man was apparently unarmed.
Chapter XIII
Martin Hewes’ Little Bottle
Sheringham whipped the gun out of his pocket and covered the little detective with it. “So,” he said, “the light begins to break! You are behind this, eh, Hewes? Is it possible that you speak Arabic?”
“I list it,” said Martin Hewes, walking calmly into the room despite the menacing revolver, “under my accomplishments.”
“Stand where you are,” Sheringham rapped, “and put your hands as high in the direction of the ceiling as you can.”
Hewes stood still and slowly raised his hands above his head. Sheringham laughed. “You are a fool, Hewes. You’ve just walked into a trap yourself. Neither of you will leave this house until I know where that necklace is. If I can’t make that young idiot talk perhaps you will be easier! Especially when you see what I’ve got in store for him.”
“There seems to be some slight misapprehension as to just who is in control of this situation,” said Martin Hewes calmly. “Apparently, my dear Sheringham, you have not noticed the little glass bottle I am holding in my right hand.”
The others looked, and Martin Hewes wiggled a little bottle he was holding between his fingertips for them to see. “You see,” continued Hewes, “it just happens that this little bottle contains enough high explosive to blow this house and every one in it into the East River. I’m not such a fool, Sheringham, as to think that if we told you where the necklace is you’d let us out alive, so I don’t see that there’s any compromise. Unless you untie Garth and let us out of here in about one minute I shall cook everybody’s goose to a lovely brown turn.”
“You wouldn’t dare!” said Sheringham.
“I can just see the set-up,” continued Martin Hewes. “After we tell you where the necklace is you shoot us in cold blood and tell the police we were house-breakers. No, Sheringham, I much prefer to blow us all up in grand style than to die so insignificantly. Quick; untie Garth before my hand gets paralyzed from holding it up over my head.”
Sheringham hesitated. Martin Hewes was just enough of a quixotic fool to carry out the threat he was making. It was, in short, a Mexican stand-off. After all he had Mr. Singh’s money and he had done his best to get the necklace. That little bottle in Hewes’s hand made him nervous. Nitro-glycerine or some such stuff, in all probability.
“Untie him,” he ordered Cronin and Macfee.
The two released Jim with alacrity. They had heard of Martin Hewes and they knew that behind his mild exterior he was a man of his word. Jim got up from the chair stiffly and moved over beside Hewes.
“Just stand behind me, Jim,” said Martin Hewes. “Then if Sheringham’s trigger finger gets nervous he’ll hit me... and if he hits me I will of course be unable to hold on to this bottle any longer... and when I can no longer hold on to it... poof!”
Jim stepped behind him, smiling grimly. The mild, little fat man was all he had believed him to be when he joined forces with him. Very slowly they backed out of the room. Martin Hewes deliberately closed the door, and locked it.
“I’m leaving the key on the outside,” he called to Sheringham. “Pleasant dreams.”
They hurried out onto the street. A taxi pulled up beside them and Hewes explained that he had it waiting. They got in and Jim leaned back against the seat with a sigh. “That,” he said, “was an unpleasantly close shave.”
Martin Hewes chuckled. “I would not have delayed so long, my dear fellow, but I had the devil’s own time finding the money.”
Jim looked puzzled. “The money?”
Hewes nodded. “Mr. Singh’s four hundred and fifty thousand dollars.” He patted his breast pocket. “Every cent of it!”
“Oh, my aunt!” Jim laughed. “Martin, you’re worth your weight in gold.”
“I am, literally, at the moment,” said Hewes. “By the way, where is the necklace?”
“In an ash can,” said Jim, still laughing. “We’d better hurry before the ash man comes on his rounds.”
“We seem,” said Martin Hewes, “to have done rather well.” He was juggling the little glass bottle back and forth from one hand to the other.
“If you don’t mind,” said Jim, “my nerves have stood enough strain tonight. Just put that bottle somewhere that you’re not apt to drop it.”
“This?” Martin Hewes looked surprised. “Did you fall for that too, Jim? Why, there’s nothing in here but good Croton reservoir water. It is true that I had a gun in my hip pocket. But a gun, while it might have killed one or even two of them, would hardly have cowed that gang enough for our purposes. It was necessary to bluff them entirely, or be prepared to try a fight to our mutual deaths. I naturally preferred to bluff — an accomplishment of mine which I have sometimes, I flatter myself, raised to a high art. It worked, as it happens — for which I am really quite thankful.”