"What are you
doing? Why was I not warned? Surely you could tell? Someone will suffer
for this. The man must be kept quiet. Are the doorways closed? All the
doorways? He must be kept perfectly quiet. He must not be told. Has he
been told anything?"
The man with the fair beard made some inaudible remark, and Graham
looking over his shoulder saw approaching a short, fat, and thickset
beardless man, with aquiline nose and heavy neck and chin. Very thick
black and slightly sloping eyebrows that almost met over his nose and
overhung deep grey eyes, gave his face an oddly formidable expression. He
scowled momentarily at Graham and then his regard returned to the man
with the flaxen beard. "These others," he said in a voice of extreme
irritation. "You had better go."
"Go?" said the red-bearded man.
"Certainly--go now. But see the doorways are closed as you go."
The two men addressed turned obediently, after one reluctant glance at
Graham, and instead of going through the archway as he expected, walked
straight to the dead wall of the apartment opposite the archway. A long
strip of this apparently solid wall rolled up with a snap, hung over the
two retreating men and fell again, and immediately Graham was alone with
the newcomer and the purple-robed man with the flaxen beard.
For a space the thickset man took not the slightest notice of Graham, but
proceeded to interrogate the other--obviously his subordinate---upon the
treatment of their charge.
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