He thought he would try the effect of knocking, and to this end got out the hardest thing about him, a substantial pocket knife to wit. Surely the rat-tat-tat would carry through the door. He also called out several times. But—no answer.
He began to feel resentful—grim. Had he carried a pistol he would have felt himself justified in blowing the lock of the door away—if he could locate it, that is. But he had not. Really, this was past a joke. And—the cold!
A very unpleasant idea now struck Varne. What if this vault really were a secret refrigerating chamber, in which, for purposes of his own, his “host” now intended to reduce him to frozen meat? He had taken pretty accurate stock of Mervyn during their brief intercourse, and had formed the conclusion that he was a man who would be quite capable of such a thing, given an adequate motive. It was a rotten way of ending a startlingly successful, though not much blazoned career, decided Helston Varne, sitting there in the inky blackness, his teeth now chattering like the proverbial castanets. But he almost told himself that he deserved it for being such a poisonous fool as to allow himself to be entrapped in so transparently callow a fashion.
The shadowless ink of the atmosphere weighed him down more and more, and strong man as he was, he felt that it was affecting his nerve. And the cold! His theory of the refrigerating chamber had now become a fixed idea. Oh, for light—for warmth! He must have been hours in that dreadful vault.
He would make another trial. With the handle of the pocket knife he hammered again and again upon the door with all his might. Also he shouted, but his ordinarily strong voice sounded in his now appalled ears a mere quavering rumble. A moment’s pause to listen, and—the door opened.
Mervyn was standing looking at him with a faintly enquiring, half-amused expression on his face, Helston Varne almost staggered into the blessed light of day.