“The question is, am I going on or not?”
The silence having failed to supply her with an answer, she said viciously, “You’re a worse rabbit than Renata,” shut her eyes, held her breath, and jerked the switch down.
Through her closed lids came a red flash. She clung to the switch and waited. A drop of boiling wax guttered down upon her left forefinger. She opened her eyes and saw the steel gate like a black tracery against a lighted space beyond. With a quickly drawn breath of relief she pushed the steel gate, took one step forward, and then stood rigid, listening to the muffled yet insistent whir of an alarm bell. After one horrified moment she pulled the door towards her again. The sound ceased. Jane considered.
As a result of her consideration she turned out the electric light, opened the gate, slipped through, and closed it again so quickly that the bell was hardly heard. She did not allow it to latch, and, stooping, set a piece of broken brick to hold it ajar. The candlelight seemed very inadequate, but she decided that she must make it do, and holding it well up in front of her, she came through a brick arch into a long chamber with walls of stone.
Jane looked about her with ignorant, widely opened eyes. She had never been in a laboratory, but she knew that this must be one. The printed page does not exist for nothing. The vague yellow light flickered on strange cylindrical shapes and was flung back by glass jars and odd twisted retorts. A great many appliances, for which she could find no name, emerged from dense shadow into the uncertain dusk.
“It’s like a mediæval torture chamber—only worse, colder—more calculating! It’s a sort of torture chamber. I hate it. It gives me the grues,” said Jane.
She moved slowly down the room. It was quite dry in here. There was no slime, and there were no slugs.
“I hate it a thousand times more than the passages,” she said.
Her feet moved slowly and unwillingly. In the far corner there were two more arches. She thought she would just see what lay beyond them and then return. She took the one on the right hand first. It ran along a little way and then terminated in a small round chamber which was full of packing-cases. She returned and went down the second passage. She was just inside it when with startling suddenness she found herself looking at her own shadow. It lay clear and black on the brick floor in front of her. Some one had turned on the electric light.
Jane’s candle tilted and the wax dropped. Her horrified eyes looked about wildly for a place of refuge. The light showed her one. Within a yard of the entrance there was an arched hollow. With a sort of gasp she blew her candle out and bolted for the shelter. The whir of the electric bell sounded as she gained it, sounded and then ceased. She heard Ember say, “Quite a good run, wasn’t it?” and a voice which she did not expect answer, “Well enough.” The voice puzzled her. It was a pleasant voice, deep and rich. It had something of a brogue and something of a twang.