"Who the devil can this be at this hour of the night, I wonder," I muttered, as I responded to the summons.
If I sought the name I was not to be gratified, for the moment I opened the door I found two pistols levelled upon me, and two very determined eyes peering at me from behind the goggles.
"Not a word, or I shoot," said the intruder in a gruff voice, evidently assumed, before I could get a word from my already somewhat champagne-twisted tongue. "Lead me to the dining-room."
Well, there I was. Defenceless, taken by surprise, unarmed, not too wide awake, comfortably filled with champagne and in no particularly fighting mood. What could I do but yield? To call for help would have brought at least two bullets crashing into my brain, even if any one could have heard my cries. To assault a scoundrel so well-armed would have been the height of folly, and to tell the truth so imbued was I with the politer spirit of the gentle art of house-breaking that this sudden confrontation with the ruder, rough-house methods of the highwayman left me entirely unable to cope with the situation.
"Certainly," said I, turning and ushering him down the hall to the great dining-room where the marvellous plate of the Constant-Scrappes shone effulgently upon the sideboard—or at least such of it as there was no room for in the massive safe.
"Get me some rope," commanded the intruder. Still under the range of those dreadful pistols, I obeyed.
"Sit down in that chair, and, by the leaping Gladstone, if you move an inch I'll blow your face off feature by feature," growled the intruder.
"Who's moving?" I retorted, angrily.
"Well, see that whoever else is you are not," he retorted, winding the rope three times around my waist and fastening me securely to the back of the chair. "Now hold out your hands."
I obeyed, and he bound them as tightly as though they were fastened together with rods of iron. A moment later my feet and knees were similarly bound and I was as fast in the toils as Gulliver, when the Liliputians fell upon him in his sleep and bound him to the earth.