"How I propose to disband our society," went on Queen Beelzebub, quite unmoved by that agonized wail, "there is no need for you to know. It may be that we shall break up, and each one will go here, there, and the other place. It is certain that we cannot keep together since I have received news of the police being after us."
"Exactly. Headed by your friend Laurance. I should like to punish him, but there is no time, so you will have to bear his punishment as well as your own, Mr. Halliday. What have you to say why we should not torture you and kill you, and force you to die by inches?"
Fists were shaken, feet were stamped, and a dozen voices asked the same question. Dan looked round at his foes calmly, and shrugged his shoulders in contempt. There was a burst of jeering laughter. "You won't look like that," said Queen Beelzebub, significantly, "when----" she broke off with a dreadful laugh and glanced at the fire-place.
There Dan saw irons of curious shape, pincers and files and tongs, and, what was worst of all, in the centre of the flames reddened a circle of steel. He could not help turning pale as he guessed that this would be placed on his head, and again he comforted himself with the memory that Mrs. Jarsell, even at the eleventh hour, might help him. When he changed color, there was a second burst of laughter, and Halliday glared fiercely around.
"Are you human beings or fiends?" he asked, "to think of torturing me. Kill me if you will, but shame as men and women should prevent you mutilating a man who has done you no harm."
"No harm?" It was Queen Beelzebub who spoke, while her subjects snarled like ill-fed beasts. "You dare to say that when you have brought us to this pass?"
"I acted in the cause of law and order," said Dan, boldly.
"Yet you are now being brought to book by what you despise," retorted the prisoner, and again there came that unhuman snarl.
"The more you speak in that way the worse it will be for you," said Miss Armour, coldly; "yet you can escape some tortures if you will tell us all how you came to learn the truth about us."
"I don't care a damn about your tortures," said Dan, valiantly, "and I will explain what you ask just to show that, clever as your organization is, it cannot escape discovery. Nor has it. You are all snared here like rats in a trap, and, should you venture out of this house, you will be caught by the authorities, to be hanged as you deserve."