Nevertheless, it was necessary to guard against the possibility of an ambuscade; and Tom held his pistols in a manner calculated to render them instantaneously available.
He determined to proceed by way of the laboratory; but, on trying the door, he found it locked.
Without an instant's hesitation he forced it open with one vigorously applied blow of his foot: but here again he encountered no resistance.
Passing through the laboratory, he tried the door by which he had seen Dr. Lascelles appear and disappear again so abruptly; and this time he was spared the necessity of violent exertion,—for the door was not locked.
He now entered a passage leading to a flight of stairs; down which he hastened, and reached a kind of hall, from whence the street-door opened.
But he did not immediately issue forth. He experienced an invincible curiosity to ascertain if Old Death had in reality been released from the state of bondage in which he had left him; and, forgetting the terrible dangers whence he had escaped with so much difficulty, he re-ascended the staircase.
The appearance of this part of the house was dirty and neglected. Indeed, it afforded no evidence that the tenement was inhabited at all; but conveyed quite the contrary impression. The fan-light above the front-door was boarded over; and thus the hall itself was nearly dark, the only light it enjoyed being admitted through the ill-closed joints of the boarding just mentioned. The paper was falling away from the walls of the staircase; and dust and dirt had accumulated wherever the hand touched or the eye could penetrate.
On regaining the landing on the first-floor, Tom Rain tried a door opposite to that by which he had issued from the laboratory; but it was locked. He forced it open, and found himself, as he suspected he should, in the very room where he had left Old Death; for that apartment had two doors.
And, to his ineffable surprise, Old Death was still there,—still sitting in the chair to which he had been fastened with a strong cord;—and that cord had not been removed.
The head of the fence was bent forward, and hung—or rather drooped, upon his breast.