“Do you mean, sir, to fulfil your intention of this night visiting him?” enquired Cæsar, addressing his master in a low, faint, and tremulous tone, as if he were a prey to some vague terror.
The Blackamoor did not immediately answer the question; but, placing his hand upon his brow, appeared to reflect profoundly for almost the space of a minute.
Wilton—who seemed acquainted, as well as Cæsar, with all his master’s secrets—likewise surveyed the Black with mingled curiosity and apprehension.
“Yes!” at length exclaimed the mysterious personage; “I will now, for the first time since he has been my prisoner here, hold personal communication with Benjamin Bones!”
The party proceeded in silence to a cell near the extremity of the long subterranean passage; and on reaching it, the Black handed the lamp to Cæsar, at the same time making a sign to that youth and the other dependants to stand back so that no gleam of the light should penetrate into the dungeon when the door was opened. They obeyed in profound silence; and their master immediately entered the cell, closing the door behind him with that rapidity which is exercised by a brute-tamer when introducing himself into the cage of a wild beast.
The interior of the dungeon was as dark as pitch,—so dark, that there was not even that greyish appearance which obscurity frequently wears to eyes accustomed to it. It was a darkness that might be felt,—a darkness which seemed to touch and hang upon the visual organs like a dense black mist.
“Who is it?” demanded the sepulchral voice of Old Death, his tone marked with a subdued ferocity and a sort of savage growling which seemed to denote a rancorous hate and pent-up longings for bitter vengeance against the author or authors of his solitary imprisonment.
“I am the person who keeps you here,” answered the Black, studying to adopt a voice even more feigned and unlike his natural tones than when he was ere now addressing Tidmarsh and the Bunces.
Still that voice had in it some peculiarity which appeared to touch a chord that vibrated to the very core of Old Death’s heart; for he evidently made a starting movement, as he said hoarsely and thickly, “But who are you—a spectre or a living being? Tell me who you are!”
“I am a living being like yourself,” was the reply, delivered in a voice disguised in deeper modulations than before. “Are you afraid of being visited by spectres?”