It reminded me forcibly of Episode III in “The Perils of Pamela.” How often had I not sat in the sixpenny seats, eating a twopenny bar of milk chocolate, and yearning for similar things to happen to me. Well, they had happened with a vengeance. And somehow it was not nearly so amusing as I had imagined. It’s all very well on the screen—you have the comfortable knowledge that there’s bound to be an Episode IV. But in real life there was absolutely no guarantee that Anna the Adventuress might not terminate abruptly at the end of any Episode.
Yes, I was in a tight place. All the things that Rayburn had said that morning came back to me with unpleasant distinctness. Tell the truth, he had said. Well, I could always do that, but was it going to help me? To begin with, would my story be believed? Would they consider it likely or possible that I had started off on this mad escapade simply on the strength of a scrap of paper smelling of moth balls? It sounded to me a wildly incredible tale. In that moment of cold sanity I cursed myself for a melodramatic idiot, and yearned for the peaceful boredom of Little Hampsly.
All this passed through my mind in less time than it takes to tell. My first instinctive movement was to step backwards and feel for the handle of the door. My captor merely grinned.
“Here you are and here you stay,” he remarked facetiously.
I did my best to put a bold face upon the matter.
“I was invited to come here by the curator of the Cape Town Museum. If I have made a mistake——”
“A mistake? Oh, yes, a big mistake!”
He laughed coarsely.
“What right have you to detain me? I shall inform the police——”
“Yap, yap, yap—like a little toy dog.” He laughed.