It turned out to be a very different affair from anything I had anticipated, however, and taken on the whole it was perhaps one of the most thrilling experiences I have ever passed through. Whether I was really in danger of death at any time, or whether the whole business was merely intended to try and scare me, I don't know. But I believe that if I had shewn any signs of fear, they would have murdered me there and then. Certainly they had all the means at hand.
I met the man by the Cathedral, and muttering to me to follow him at twenty paces distance, he walked on and presently plunged into a labyrinth of streets, leading from the Cathedral down to the river in the lowest quarter of the town. The place was ill lit and worse drained, and the noisome atmosphere of some of the alleys which we passed and the mess through which we trudged, were horribly repulsive.
In the lowest and darkest and dirtiest of the streets the man stopped and with a sign to me not to speak, pointed to a dark tumbling doorway. As I entered it, I saw it was about the aptest scene for a murder that could have been chosen.
The place was almost pitch dark, and as we had stepped out of a very bright moonlight, I had to stand a moment to let my eyes accustom themselves to the change. Then I made out a broken, rambling stairway just ahead of us. Taking it for granted that I was to go up these, ignorant whether I was supposed to know the place, and quite unwilling even to appear to wish to hang back, I stumbled up the stairs as quickly as the gloom would let me. When I reached the top I found myself in a long, low shed that ran on some distance in front of me to a point there I thought I could discern a faint light.
I groped my way forward, the boards giving ominously under my feet, when suddenly a voice said in a loud whisper out of the gloom and as if at my very ear:—
"Stand, if you value your life."
I stopped readily enough, as may be imagined; and then the silence was broken by the swishing, rushing swirl of the swiftly flowing river, while currents of cold air caused by the moving water, were wafted up full in my face. I strained my ears to listen and my eyes to see and craning forward, I could make out a huge gap in the floor wider than a man could have leapt, which opened right to my very feet.
What happened I don't know; it was too dark to see. But after a time there was a sound of a heavily moving body close at my feet, the noise of the water grew faint, and I was told to go forward. I went on until I was again called to a halt; and after a minute the sound of the rushing water came again clear and distinct, this time from behind me. Then a flaring light was kindled all suddenly and thrown down into the wide gap until with a hiss it was extinguished in the river below.
I knew what that meant. It was a signal that all hope of retreat was cut off, and the signal was given in this dramatic fashion to frighten me if my nerves should be unsteady. As a matter of fact it had rather the opposite effect. I have generally found that when men are really dangerous they are least demonstrative. These things—the darkness, the silence, the rushing water, the means of secret murder—were all calculated to frighten weak nerves no doubt, but they did not frighten me.
At the same time I saw that if the men wished to murder me, they had ample means of doing it safely, and that the situation might easily become a very ugly one.