Again that penetrating agony. Again I raved and screamed. Again I swore I'd tell the truth.
"Speak!" cried Sir Charles.
"They are in Sir William Dagmar's library, where I said before, behind——"
"Once more, Jussieu!" interrupted the surgeon.
I lost sight of the agonizing periods. I fainted more than once and was restored to life by pain. Sometimes I lied, more often still I shrieked aloud the truth, and was not credited. But at last growing wise under the torture, I perceived what my inquisitor wished me most to say, and I vowed time after time that Marion possessed the jewels, and Marion alone. At last Sir Charles decided to believe me, and my mangled hand was grudgingly released. I was by then well-nigh incapable of feeling, and they might have murdered me without exciting in my breast one added solitary pang.
I fell into a heavy sleep before they left the room, and when I awoke I was benumbed and very listless. I became, however, gradually aware that much had been done during my unconsciousness which must have lasted hours. The table remained in the room, and a lamp thereon cast a yellow glitter round the plastered walls. To the left of my chair there yawned a deep hole in the floor, something coffin shaped, with bricks and earth and stones heaped against the wall behind. Two spades were sticking in the rubble, and a pick. Very patently it was a grave, my grave! I gazed at it with a sort of solemn wonder, but I thought it might prove a friend, if it would only save me from such horrors as I shuddered to remember I had lately undergone. After a time I realized that I was listening to a faint bubbling sound that seemed to issue from my grave. Then I noted in the shadowy depths a whitish froth, and understood! My grave promised me, as well as death, obliteration, nay, absolute annihilation. It was partly filled with seething quicklime!
Beudant came and made me eat and drink. I was very faint and only asked him for the time. He told me it was two o'clock upon the fourth day of my imprisonment.
While wondering at the news, I fell asleep. Beudant awoke me with more food and drink. Again I fell asleep, and again I awoke to find myself being softly carried from the cellar of my grave, into an adjoining room that was also situated underground, for it, too, was plastered walled and windowless. It contained, however, a long rack furnished with some dozens of champagne, neck downwards, and most carefully bestowed.
"A good vintage! I should say," I said to Beudant. Satan himself could not have made me to speak to Jussieu, except with sneers.
"You shall judge, monsieur!" replied the negro, and when he set me down, he took a bottle from the rack and proceeded to unfold the cork.