Some slight change had been made in the room since he was there last. Poltavo's nerves were in such a condition that he was sensitive to this variation. He saw now what the change was. The table had been drawn back leaving the chair where it was fixed.
Yes, it was a fixed chair, he remembered that and wondered why it had been screwed to the wood block floor. Dr. Fall and the engineer grasped him roughly and hurried him across the room, thrusting him into the chair.
"What are you going to do?" asked Poltavo, white as death.
"That you shall see."
Deftly they strapped him to the chair; his wrists and elbows were securely fastened to the arms, and his ankles to the legs of the massive piece of furniture.
From where he sat Poltavo confronted Farrington, but the big man's mask-like face did not move, nor his eyes waver as he surveyed his treacherous prisoner. Then Fall knelt down and did something, and Poltavo heard the ripping and tearing of cloth.
They were slitting up each trouser leg, and he could not understand why.
"Is this a joke?" he asked with a desperate attempt at airiness.
No reply was made. Poltavo watched his captors curiously. What was the object of it all? The two men busy at the chair lifted a number of curious-looking objects from the floor; they clamped one on each wrist, and he felt the cold surface of some instrument pressing against each calf. Still he did not realize the danger, or the grim determination of these men whose secret he would have betrayed.
"Mr. Farrington," he appealed to the big man, "let us have an understanding. I have played my game and lost."