“Go!” he whispered. His voice was weak and racked with pain. “Some one has betrayed us. They know everything!”
Roddy exclaimed furiously, and, for an instant, his mind was torn with doubts.
“And you!” he demanded. “Why are you here?”
Vicenti, reading the suspicion in his eyes, raised his hands; the pantomime was sufficiently eloquent. In deep circles around his wrists were new, raw wounds.
“They tried to make me tell,” he whispered. “They think you’re coming in the launch. You, with the others. When I wouldn’t answer, they put me here. It was their jest. You were to find me instead of the other. They are waiting now on the ramparts above us, waiting for you to come in the launch. They know nothing of the tunnel.”
Roddy’s eyes were fixed in horror on the bleeding wrists.
“They tortured you!” he cried.
“I fainted. When I came to,” whispered the doctor, “I found myself locked in here. For God’s sake,” he pleaded, “save yourself!”
“And Rojas?” demanded Roddy.
“That is impossible!” returned Vicenti, answering Roddy’s thought. “He is in another cell, far removed, the last one, in this corridor.”