“What is he? Who is he? Are these the caves? I’ve heard about them. It smells horribly earthy, doesn’t it? Can you see anything?”
“I thought I saw a light just then,” said Michael, “but my eyes are playing tricks.” And then: “Where is Adele Leamington?”
“God knows,” said the other. He was shivering, and Michael heard the sound of his chattering teeth. “I never saw her again. I was afraid Bhag would go after her. But he wouldn’t hurt her—he is a queer devil. I wish he was here now.”
“I wish somebody was here,” said Michael sincerely.
He was trying to work his wrists loose of the handcuffs, though he knew that bare-handed he stood very little chance against the old man. He had lost his pistol, and although, in the inside of his waistcoat, there remained intact the long, razor-sharp knife that had cleared him out of many a Continental scrape, the one infallible weapon when firearms failed, he knew that he would have no opportunity for its employment.
Sitting down, he tried to perform a trick that he had seen on a stage in Berlin—the trick of bringing his legs through his manacled hands and so getting his hands in front of him, but he struggled without avail. There came the sound of a door opening, and Mr. Longvale’s voice.
“I won’t keep you a moment,” he said. He carried a lantern in his hand that swung as he walked, and seemed to intensify the gloom. “I don’t like my patients to catch cold.”
His laughter came echoing back from the vaulted roof of the cave, intensified hideously. Stopping, he struck a match and a brilliant light appeared. It was a vapour lamp fixed on a shelf of rock. Presently he lit another, and then a third and a fourth, and, in the white, unwinking light, every object in the cave stood out with startling distinctness. Michael saw the scarlet thing that stood in the cave’s centre, and, hardened as he was, and prepared for that fearsome sight, he shuddered.
It was a guillotine!