He insisted gently that he would be the one responsible for the safe
shutting of that door.
"You wouldn't like me to get into trouble, I'm sure," he urged; and
the Ugly-Wuglies, for the last time kind and reasonable, agreed
that this, of all things, they would most deplore.
"You take it," Gerald urged, pressing the bicycle lamp on the
elderly Ugly-Wugly; "you're the natural leader. Go straight ahead.
Are there any steps?" he asked Mabel in a whisper.
"Not for ever so long," she whispered back. "It goes on for ages,
and then twists round."
"Whispering," said the smallest Ugly-Wugly suddenly, "ain't
manners."
"He hasn't any, anyhow," whispered the lady Ugly-Wugly; "don't
mind him quite a self-made man," and squeezed Mabel's arm with
horrible confidential flabbiness.
The respectable Ugly-Wugly leading with the lamp, the others
following trustfully, one and all disappeared into that narrow
doorway; and Gerald and Mabel standing without, hardly daring to
breathe lest a breath should retard the procession, almost sobbed
with relief. Prematurely, as it turned out. For suddenly there was a
rush and a scuffle inside the passage, and as they strove to close
the door the Ugly-Wuglies fiercely pressed to open it again.
Whether they saw something in the dark passage that alarmed
them, whether they took it into their empty heads that this could
not be the back way to any really respectable hotel, or whether a
convincing sudden instinct warned them that they were being
tricked, Mabel and Gerald never knew.
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