Involuntarily he looked downward and saw a trap-door in the middle of the room.
"Now some new discovery of human misery," thought the detective as he advanced and pushed the sliding door backward.
A dark and narrow stairway was disclosed. He descended it quickly and entered the empty room beyond.
A feeling of disappointment struck him as he entered the deserted, cobwebbed dungeon, but guided by the sound of faint, low moans he advanced across the floor and opened the opposite door to the one by which he had entered.
Here he paused and swept his hand across his brow, as though to dispel a mist that had risen before his shrinking vision.
There before his eyes, extended on her low cot bed, with the horrible strap and chain about her waist fastened to the iron staple in the floor, with her hungry black eyes glaring on him from her skeleton face, lay poor Fanny Colville in all her abject wretchedness.
"My God!" exclaimed Mr. Shelton, "horrors upon horrors accumulate!"
[CHAPTER XXVI.]
"Who are you?" asked the poor, wasted creature, looking up into the strange face of the new-comer.