Except for the gurgling of the flowing acid and the scampering of the rats all was silent.
Locke tried to move. But the sharp barbs of the wire cut into his flesh, a torture to test the fortitude of a stoic.
Moreover, Locke had barely recovered from the shock of his fall into the cellar. Thus for a few seconds that seemed to him to be ages he lay there watching the fiery death creep closer. Then the will to live surged through him and he struggled furiously to escape from the deadly path of the acid. Gone now was his flinching and shrinking as the sharp barbs lacerated his tender flesh. Gone was the calmness that denoted surrender and the acceptance of his fate.
With bunching muscles he writhed inch by inch to one side, out of the path of the flow of the acid. He was just in time, for, at his last mighty effort, the consuming fluid flowed past, not an inch from his face.
To extricate himself from the coils of the wire was a slow and painful task. Wounded with a hundred wounds, with each movement of his body adding a further injury, many times Locke was forced to desist in his efforts to free himself. However, he persisted, though, strong man that he was, the tears of agony burned his eyes and beads of cold sweat stood on his brow even before the first coil was loosened.
He could not, even to save his own life, have persisted in this self-inflicted torture had it not been for the thought of Eva hurrying to this dreadful den. That thought almost drove him mad and spurred him to furious effort.
It was well that it did. For at this very moment the beastly emissary in the café above was closing in on her.
Locke gave a final heave and tugged at the last strands of the wire that held him prisoner. His clothes ripped to tatters and his flesh torn and lacerated, he at last stood free.
Without an instant's pause he collected packing-cases and even barrels. He stacked them one upon the other, pyramiding them under the trap-door through which he had fallen into the cellar. Then he climbed upon them, leaped, and tried to grasp the edge of the floor above him, but fell short and came tumbling down amid the boxes and barrels, only to start stacking them up all over again.
Finally he managed to grasp the edge of the floor with one hand and draw himself up. For a few moments he lay panting on the floor, then groped for the panel through which he had entered not half an hour before. It was locked, but a shrewd kick above the lock opened it to him and he rushed through the storeroom and out into the now brilliantly lighted café.