Page:Walpole--portrait of man with red hair.djvu/321

 "Now tell me," Harkness said, looking at Dunbar, "the rest that I don't know."

"There isn't much to tell. We were only there another ten minutes. When you fainted off I felt a bit queer myself, but I just kept together, and then heard some one running up the stairs.

"I thought it was one of the Japs returning, but there was a great banging on the door and then shouting in a good old Cornish accent. I called back that I was tied up in there and that they must break in the door. That they did and burst in—two fishermen and old Possiter the policeman from Duntrent. He's somewhere about the house now with two of the Treliss policemen. Well, it seems that a fellow. Jack Curtis, was going up the hill to his morning work in the Creppit fields above the wood here when he heard a strange cry, and, turning the corner of the road, finds on the path above the rocks, Crispin—pretty smashed up you know. He ran—only a yard or two—to the Possiters' cottage. Possiter was having his breakfast and was up here in no time. They got into the house through a window and saw the two Japanese clearing off up the back garden. Curtis chased them but they beat him and vanished into the wood. They stopped two other men who were passing and then came on Hesther tied up in the library. She sent them to the Tower."