"Anarchist?" gasped Osborne. "My Rosalind—imprisoned in a wine-cellar?"
"It is a tangled skein," purred Furneaux with a self-satisfied smirk; "I am afraid we haven't time now to go into it."
The cab crossed Oxford Circus—two minutes more and they were in Soho.
Winter at that moment was on the lookout for Furneaux at the corner of a shabby street which traverses Poland Street. As for Clarke, he had vanished from the nook in Compton Street where he was loitering in the belief that Janoc would soon pass. In order to understand exactly the amazing events that were now reaching their crisis it is necessary to go back half an hour and see how matters had fared with Clarke....
During his long vigil, he, in turn, had been watched most intently by the Italian, Antonio, who, quickly becoming suspicious, hastened to a barber's shop, kept by a compatriot, where Janoc was in hiding. Into this shop he pitched to pant a frenzied warning.
"Sauriac says that Inspector Clarke has been up your stairs—may have entered your rooms—and I myself have just seen him prowling round Old Compton Street!"
Agitation mastered Janoc; he, who so despised those bunglers, the police, now began to fear them. Out he pelted, careless of consequences, and Antonio after him.
He made straight for his third-floor back, and, losing a few seconds in his eagerness to unlock the door, rushed to the trunk in which he had left the two daggers, meaning to do away with them once and for all.
And now he knew how he had blundered in keeping them. He looked in the trunk and saw, not the daggers, but the gallows!
For the first time in his life he nearly fainted. Political desperadoes of his type are often neurotic—weak as women when the hour of trial is at hand, but strong as women when the spirit has subdued the flesh. During some moments of sheer despair he knelt there, broken, swaying, with clasped hands and livid face. Then he stood up slowly, with some degree of calmness, with no little dignity.