As the two men moved towards where he stood, Laurence's interest gave way to dismay. What might not these unscrupulous folks do when they discovered eavesdropping a man who had betrayed grave suspicions of the nature of their "secret"? At any rate, Laurence realised that he had a good start, and, as Doctor Meadows, throwing down a dog-whip which he had held in his hand, moved towards the panelling and ordered his convict servant to fetch the necessary tools, Carrington moved noiselessly down from his perch. He was about to turn back and effect his escape, when something—something like the lash of a whip—brushed past his face and suddenly caught his neck. At the same time two hands from out of the darkness behind seemed to strike against the sides of his head, a knee was planted in the small of his back, a leg seemed to entwine itself round his, and, like a flash of lightning, his senses left him, as Laurence Carrington fell like a dead man upon the stone pavement of the secret passage.
CHAPTER XXV
IN THE OAK-PANELLED HALL
It seemed to him like an age, but was really only a few minutes, before Laurence Carrington recovered consciousness. When he did so it was with a violent pain in his head and neck.
Old "Doctor Meadows" was bending over him as he lay on a bench in the hall at which he had peeped through the keyhole of the great oak door. The servant, Horncastle, was not to be seen.
Laurence struggled to rise, but the burning pain in his neck, and a feeling of dizziness and extreme weakness, prevented him. The "doctor" motioned to him to keep still.
"You will be better soon," he said encouragingly; "thank Heaven we were in time, or the brute would have done for you. Strange, stranger than strange," he went on, half aloud, "that we should have returned from the distant East, have allowed a couple of dozen years to pass without being so much as aware whether each other still lived, and that—that we should come together like this."
Laurence saw that he was thinking aloud. He waited silently to hear what the old gentleman would say further. But though the young man could see his companion's lips moving, he was disappointed, in that the "doctor" concluded his thoughts on the subject beneath his breath.
"What happened?" Laurence asked at length. "It was 'it' that attacked me, was it not?"