At the further end of the apartment in which he had been lying yawned a deep shaft like that of a disused mine. Air floated up this; clearly, therefore, it gave egress. But the means of descent? He looked around and above. No apparatus rewarded his view—not even a single rope. He explored the further chamber, which, like the first, was lighted by a curious eye-shaped lamp fixed in a hole in the rock-partition wall. Here too were several smaller oubliette-like shafts. But no means of exit.
The while, his host—or gaoler—had been standing immovable, as though these investigations and their results had not the faintest interest for him. John Ames, utterly baffled, gave up the search, and the terrible conviction forced itself upon him that he was shut up in the very heart of the earth with a malevolent lunatic. Yet there was that about the other’s whole personality which was not compatible with the lunatic theory; a strong, mesmeric, compelling force, as far removed from insanity in any known phase as it could possibly be. Power was proclaimed large in every look, in every utterance.
“Was I right?” he said. “But patience, John Ames; you must be pitifully wrapped up in this—‘friend’ of yours, to lose your head in that unwonted fashion. Unwonted—yes. I know you, you see, better than you do me. Well, I won’t try your patience any longer. Had you not interrupted me it would have been better for you; I was going on to say that while I saw danger I saw, also, succour—rescue—safety.”
“Safety? Rescue?” echoed John Ames, in almost an awed tone, but one that was full of a great thankfulness and relief. “Ah, well, my awful anxiety was deserved. Forgive me the interruption.”
Even then it did not occur to him, the level-headed, the thinking, the judicious, that here was a man—a strange one certainly—who had just told him a cock-and-bull story about events he could not possibly know, with the result of driving him perfectly frantic with anxiety and a sense of his own helplessness. Why not? Because the narrative had been unfolded with a knowledge stamped upon the narrator’s countenance that was as undeniable as the presence of the narrator himself. Strange to say, not for a moment did it occur to him to question it.
He looked at the seer; a steadfast, penetrating, earnest glance. The face was a refined one; handsome, clear-cut, furrowing somewhat with age and hardness; but it was the face of one who had renounced all—hence its power; of one who, for some reason or other, was a bitter hater of his species, yet which as surely bore traces of a great overwhelming sorrow, capabilities of a vast and selfless love. Who was this strange being? What his tragic past? John Ames, thus striving to penetrate it, felt all his repulsion for the other melt away into a warm, indefinable sense of sympathy. Then he replied—
“In using the expression ‘wrapped up in,’ you have used the right one. If harm were to befall her I should feel that life had no more value.”
“Then how will you face the—parting of the ways?”
The question chilled upon its hearer. Was it a prophecy?
“The parting of the ways?” he echoed slowly, comprehending the other’s meaning. “Why should there be any parting?”