Mr. Sabin shrugged his shoulders. “By all means,” he murmured. “Personally I have no interest in them; but if you would talk like a reasonable man and tell me where your difficulty lies I might be able to help you.”
The man who had called himself Watson raised his head slowly. His expression remained altogether hopeless. He had the appearance of a man given wholly over to despair.
“Have you ever heard of the Doomschen?” he asked slowly.
Mr. Sabin shuddered. He became suddenly very grave. “You are not one of them?” he exclaimed.
The man bowed his head.
“I am one of those devils,” he admitted.
Mr. Sabin rose to his feet and walked up and down the little room.
“Of course,” he remarked, “that complicates matters, but there ought to be a way out of it. Let me think for a moment.”
The man on the lounge sat still with unchanging face. In his heart he knew that there was no way out of it. The chains which bound him were such as the hand of man had no power to destroy. The arm of his master was long. It had reached him here—it would reach him to the farthermost corner of the world. Nor could Mr. Sabin for the moment see any light. The man was under perpetual sentence of death. There was no country in the world which would not give him up, if called upon to do so.
“What you have told me,” Mr. Sabin said, “explains, of course to a certain extent, your present indifference to my offers. But when I first approached you in this way you certainly led me to think——”