"Then good bye," said Tom; and, taking up the candle, he quitted the room, heedless of the prisoner's intercession to be released from his captivity.
On gaining the bed-chamber situate above the spiral staircase leading to the subterranean passage, the highwayman remembered two circumstances which made him pause ere he raised the trap-door.
In the first place he recalled to mind the anxiety of Old Death to prevent him from securing the candle at the moment when they were about to emerge from the secret avenue; and it struck Rainford that the old man had intended to have extinguished the light as if by accident—but whether for motives of treachery, or merely to avoid the discovery of something that the fence wished to be concealed, Tom was at a loss to conjecture.
Secondly, Rainford remembered that Old Death had manifested considerable uneasiness when he had approached the first of the two doors opening from that bed-chamber; and he now thought it probable that the fence had been desirous of extinguishing the light in order to prevent Rainford from observing that there were two doors in that room.
"At all events," said Tom to himself, "let us see where this other door leads to."
It was unlocked—as he had expected to find it; because, had it been otherwise, Old Death would not have manifested so much anxiety when he had approached it on their entrance into the bed-chamber.
Proceeding with caution—so as not to incur the risk of having his light extinguished, and equally to avoid any sudden surprise in case the house might really have other occupants besides Old Death—Rainford entered a spacious room which seemed to be fitted up as a chemical laboratory. On a large oaken table were galvanic batteries, and an infinite variety of electrical apparatus as well as the articles on which experiments are usually made with the subtle fluid,—such as pieces of glass, amber, sulphur, wax, silk, cotton, loaf sugar, phials containing a variety of oils, metallic oxides, several common stones, metallic ores, the metals and semi-metals, &c. Leyden jars, batteries, electrophori, electrometers, discharging rods, &c., were also crowded together on the table. In a large earthen pan under the table were the flayed carcasses of several rabbits, frogs, and such vermin as rats and mice, all of which appeared to have been only very recently stripped of their skins—for they emitted no putrid smell, and the blood was still oozing from them.
On a shelf were plaster of Paris casts of upwards of fifty heads of men and monkeys. On the base of some of the heads there were inscriptions in black letters, stating the originals from which the casts were made; and, with a rapid glance, the highwayman read the principal ones, which were these:—
Arthur Thistlewood.
Executed for High Treason, 1820.