"'What did it mean?' I asked myself again and again.
"My last match had died out, burning my fingers. I was alone in an empty room—empty save for that terrible thing in the corner.
"And the door was securely fastened from without.
"There was some kind of window, though, the bars of which, though stout, were rusty, as was their setting.
"Gifted, for the moment, with almost super-human strength, I managed to remove two or three of these, and then raised myself on to the ledge. I saw that it was pitch dark, and could not tell whether there was an easy drop or no. However, there was only one thing to do. I must risk it. And I did. Fortunately, I only had to fall a few feet. Then I found myself in a small courtyard.
"How I made my way out of this, what streets I traversed, and how long it took me to reach the barracks I do not know. I recollect being challenged more than once. But I made no reply, and in the darkness I passed through unobserved until I reached some kind of a shed, in which I fell down and slept heavily until daybreak.
"Of course, my absence had been noticed, as had that of Aubrey. Hurriedly deciding my course of action, I craved an interview with the commanding officer, Sir Bromley Lestrange, who had always been most kind and sympathetic to me in the matter of my love affairs, concerning which I had told him all.
"My first idea was to invent some satisfactory explanation of my absence, making no reference to my discovery of Aubrey's dead body, or to the fact that I had laid myself open so indiscreetly to infection.
"To a stranger I might have been able to invent a tissue of lies, but to a friend, no. Accordingly, in the privacy of his own chamber, I told Sir Bromley the whole story. His horror on learning my news was as great as mine had been on perceiving how I had been ensnared by the girl Lilla, and more so when I made the gruesome discovery in the empty room.
"'We must hush this up—that's quite clear,' said Sir Bromley; 'it would never do to publish these facts abroad. Young Aubrey was no doubt drawn to the opium den by the same devilish means as those employed in your case. It will be a lesson to you, Carrington. But of that more anon. First we must recover poor Aubrey's body, and have it decently buried. Then we must do all in our power to have the wretches in the den handed over to justice. I think I can manage this quietly. Leave me now, and I will arrange the best I can. I am sorry for you, truly sorry, Carrington, but you might have expected it.' I knew that in his last sentence he referred to the paragraph in the Times, for I had not withheld any of the facts from him.