CHAPTER XII
THE TOMB-BOUND MAN
Mr. Guest had visited his victim and had gone.
Supper was over. Beef-tea and phosphorous! and Mr. Guest had said his mocking words of good-night.
"Sleep well, Mr. Rathbone! I shall not be compelled to ask you to wear that pretty metal cap until to-morrow, so I won't turn out the light. You have a book to read, you've had your supper, and I wish you a pleasant time alone. No doubt you will occupy your leisure in thinking of Miss Marjorie Poole. You'll recall that occasion in a certain room hung with pink, when you kissed her by the side of the piano in the white and gold case! I know you often recall that happy incident."
He had closed the heavy steel door with a last chuckle of malice and power, leaving the prisoner white and shaking with fear. How did this sinister and devilish gaoler know his intimate thoughts?
He groaned deeply, and then, as he had done a thousand times before, gazed round the place in which he was in terror-struck amazement. Where was he? What was this horrible prison with all its strange contrivances, its inexplicable mysteries?
He was in a large stone cell, brilliantly lit at this moment by two incandescent electric bulbs in the vaulted ceiling far above his head. A long time ago now, how long he could not have said, he was Gerald Rathbone, a man living in the world, seeing the sunlight and breathing the air of day. He had been Gerald Rathbone, moving honourably among his fellow men, seeing human faces, hearing the music of human voices, an accepted lover, and a happy man.
That was long ago, a dream, a vision which was fading away. It seemed years since he had heard any voice but that of the pink, hairless man who fed him and whose slave he had become.