"Come, let's have one more drink of the old girl's wine. Pretty good taste, too, and then we'll put this johnny to sleep for good," went on the man in a calm, steady voice as though the task of putting people to sleep for good was an easy matter.
"Are you sure it's safe to leave 'im?" asked Aggie. "There might have been someone else on the watch."
"Not a soul, my dear. Come on!"
Still laughing, they passed into the inner room, leaving Cleek trussed up like a fowl upon the floor and utterly helpless to assist himself.
In his anxiety to find the girl whom he had driven all unconsciously into danger, Cleek had had no thought for himself, and he felt that any help that Dollops might bring would be too late to save him. The studded door swung back on its hinges, and all was as silent as the grave it would so soon become.
Two minutes passed, three—five—perhaps ten, and still the quiet was unbroken. Cleek, his eyes strained toward the window which he would have given worlds to be able to reach or drag himself to, waited like a mouse in a trap.
Suddenly an odd gleam of sunlight came through the dust-laden, begrimed window, and as it did so, it lit up two tiny shreds of substance which caused Cleek's heart to leap to his throat. With his unmistakable gift of memory, he knew from whence they came, he knew now many things.
He knew how Lady Margaret had escaped and also, if his memory served him rightly, the identity of the person who had assisted her, though for what ends it was impossible to know.
Suddenly on his reverie a sound broke at last and Cleek braced himself for the end. To die like this—like a rat in a trap with no chance to fight for one's self! Well, it was Fate, and he could not quarrel with it.