“All right. I can see—What the—?”
He broke off, turning to rush back. But it was too late. With the soft but quick closing of the door above and behind him, Helston Varne realised that he had made a fool of himself—as Nashby had not done; but this he did not know, for Nashby had not told him quite everything. Now he stood in dense, impenetrable pitchy blackness—and feeling very damp and chill at that.
“Well I’m damned?” he ejaculated to himself. “Well I am damned.” And sitting down on a cold stone step he began to think the matter out.
His gaoler the while, saying nothing, calmly withdrew the key from the lock and put it in his pocket. Then he went leisurely to the front door and looked out. There was no sign of anybody moving on the strip of lonely road above. He stood apparently unconcerned on the sluice, but in reality, listening intently. There were twitterings of small birds and the sweet singing of an early thrush, but of human footsteps or voices, or of wheels, there was no sound. Then he descended, equally leisurely. On one of the earth steps he paused; then, drawing out his handkerchief, blew his nose. The handkerchief dropped, by accident. He stooped to pick it up; was equally leisurely over the process too. Finally, when he did pick it up, he stood for a moment, stamping as though in the most natural way in the world to warm his feet—or one foot—upon a stone. Then he returned to the house, but he had forgotten to return his handkerchief to his pocket. He was carrying it—in a somewhat absent minded manner—in his hand. Incidentally, he was thinking that it was not an unmixed evil that old Judy should be suffering from a return of her “roomatics” that day, and should have remained “to whoäm.” There was no one at Heath Hover but himself—and his prisoner.
The latter, meanwhile, was beginning to experience what the expression “outer darkness” meant, for assuredly he was now in it. No glimmer of light—not the very faintest, was there to relieve it. Black as impenetrable pitch. He waited till his eyesight should have been accustomed to the change to see if any stray dim thread came in from anywhere; a grating, a ventilator, what not? But none came. The door itself might have been cemented into the wall for any thread of light that came from it. But Varne felt no alarm. He was unarmed, but on that account felt no misgiving; “What was the game?” was the thought that held possession of his mind.
He struck a wax vesta and looked around. He was about halfway down the flight of stone steps. The walls of the vault glistened with slime and damp in the flickering light. Nashby had described the place exactly. He struck another. Yes. It was all solid, massive masonry—hard, unyielding. But here he was—at about twelve midday—entombed in a dungeon of blackest night. He began to feel interested. But, meanwhile, it was cold—devilish cold.
Then, being there, he thought he might as well take a look round this—cellar, Mervyn had called it—on his own, and to this end he cautiously descended to the bottom of the stone stairs. But of wax vestas he had only a limited supply, and it behoved him to be careful with them. Still he managed to obtain a good reconnaissance of the floor and walls, enough to bear out Nashby’s description of the place.
He returned up the steps. The door, he noticed, was quite smooth on this side, with no handle, and—no key hole; so that any one shut in, as he was, might shout or call till the crack of doom. It fitted its aperture like a slab.
For the first time Varne began to feel a little uneasy. He was also feeling more than a little cold. The place had almost the temperature of an ice-vault. What if Mervyn had purposely shut him in and proposed to leave him here until cold and starvation had done their work? After all, he could pretend he had done the thing for a practical joke, and it would be difficult to prove the contrary. And the worst of it was he—Varne—had given nobody the slightest idea as to where he intended going. Even Nashby would not have occasion to miss him—not for some days at any rate. But it certainly was getting most confoundedly cold.