It was another signal. Something hard and heavy crashed against my skull. For a second I fought for breath against a horrible feeling of sickness and impotence, then came blank night and nothingness. I had been sandbagged.
I recovered to find that my captors had strapped me hand and foot in a huge iron chair. I could not move an inch in any one direction, but otherwise my situation was tolerably comfortable. Belleville sat facing me some feet away. He was plucking thoughtfully at his big, black beard. There was no one else in the room. Perceiving I was awake, he arose and took from a table near him a glass of water, which he brought to me.
"It is not poisoned," he remarked. "I have considerable need of you for some time yet." He placed the glass to my lips then, and I drank with confidence. I felt better afterwards, but my head ached bravely still.
Belleville resumed his chair and again began to pluck at his beard. "No doubt your head aches," he observed. "I regret having been obliged to use you so discourteously, but we have had so much experience of your muscular vigour that to have risked a physical encounter would have been absurd. We might have been forced to kill you, and that would not have suited my plans."
"Indeed," said I. It cost me a painful effort to speak at all.
"I desire to be perfectly candid with you," said Belleville. "But before we get down to business it were as well to prove to you how completely at my mercy you are." He took, as he spoke, a revolver from his pocket and aimed carelessly at the opposite wall. "This apartment used to be a shooting gallery," he observed. "All the walls are padded." He then discharged the weapon six times in rapid succession. The bullets spattered on a plate of steel. The sound of the reports was simply deafening. A full minute passed before the echoes and reverberations ceased. All the while Belleville smiled at me. "No one heard but you and I," he said. "The futility, therefore, of wasting your breath in shouting for help will appeal to you."
I glanced about and found that all the walls I could see were windowless. The room was lighted by electricity. The door was thickly coated with padded cushioned leather. The floor was carpeted with one vast sheet of rubber. The place was fitted up as a chemical laboratory. I counted half a dozen glass tables littered with retorts and dynamos, testing tubes and other instruments. There were big glass cases filled with porcelain boxes and phials of drugs and large jars containing acids. And finally there was one object my eyes rested on with a little shock of recognition. This was the sarcophagus of Ptahmes. It was raised about three feet from the ground upon two steel trestles. The great sculptured lid was propped on end against a neighbouring wall. But although the coffin was open I could not see within it because the edge was almost on a level with my eyes.
"Are you satisfied?" asked Belleville presently. He had followed the direction of my glances with a sort of half-contemptuous, half-amused curiosity, reloading his revolver the while. The man evidently cherished an immense opinion of himself—but he was as cautious as a sage: witness the reloading of his weapon—despite the fact that I was as helpless as a trussed fowl.
"Yes. I am satisfied," I answered.