Suddenly, however, he became conscious of a strange sensation—he felt a peculiar influence creeping over him; it almost seemed as if there was another presence in the room—a power stronger than himself controlling him.
This impression grew upon him so rapidly that he began to look searchingly about the apartment, while his pulses throbbed less heavily, his mind grew more composed, his blood began to cool, and he ceased his excited passings up and down the floor.
All at once, in the wall opposite to him, he espied a hole about the size of a teacup, and through this aperture he caught the gleam of a pair of human eyes, which seemed to be looking him through and through.
Once meeting that gaze, he could not seem to turn away from it, and he began to feel very strangely—to experience a sense of weariness, amounting almost to exhaustion, then a feeling of drowsiness began to steal over him—all antagonism, indignation, and rebellion against the cruel fate that had so suddenly overtaken him appeared to be gradually fading from his mind, and he could only think of how tired he was.
"What can it mean?" he asked himself, and made a violent effort to break away from the unnatural influence.
He believed that those eyes belonged to the man whom he had met in the other room—that having hopelessly ensnared his victim he was now availing himself of a panel in the wall to watch and see how he would bear his imprisonment.
"Who and what are you, sir, and what is the meaning of this barbarous treatment?" he demanded; but somehow the tones of his own voice did not sound quite natural to him. "You are aiding and abetting a foul wrong," he went on, "even if you are not directly concerned in it, and I command you to release me at once."
There came no word of reply, however, to this demand; but those strange, magnetic eyes remained fixed upon him with the same intense, masterful expression.
He tried to meet them defiantly, to resist their influence with all the strength of his own will; but that feeling of excessive weariness only seemed to increase, and, heaving a long sigh, he involuntarily began to retreat step by step before those eyes until he reached the lounge, when he sank upon it, and his head dropped heavily upon the pillow.
The next moment his eyelids began to close, as if pressed down by invisible weights, though he was still vaguely conscious of the gaze of those wonderful orbs gleaming at him through the hole in the wall.