How long I remained unconscious I could not say. When I did come to, during some seconds I was unable to realise my position. It was like waking out of an uncomfortably heavy sleep. Consciousness returned by degrees, and painfully; as it were, by a series of waves, which were like so many shocks. I was oppressed by nausea, my eyes were dim, my brain seemed reeling, as if it were making disconcerting efforts to retain its equilibrium. It was some time before I understood that I was still in my own room; yet, longer before I had some faint comprehension of the situation I was in, and of what was taking place about me.
It was probably some minutes before I completely understood that I was trussed like a fowl, and that the exquisite pain which I was enduring was because of the tightness and ingenuity of my bonds. I was on the floor with my back against the wall. Cords which were about my wrists were attached to my ankles, passed up my back, then round my throat, so that each movement I made I bade fair to choke myself. It was a diabolical contrivance. The cords were thin ones—red-hot wires they seemed to me to be, they cut my wrists like knives, and burned them as with fire. My legs were drawn under my body in an unnatural and uncomfortable position. They were torn by cramp, yet whenever I made the slightest attempt to ease them I dragged at the cord which was about my throat. One thing seemed plain, if the worst came to the worst I should experience no difficulty in committing suicide. Apparently I had only to let my head forward to be strangled.
By way of making the condition of affairs entirely satisfactory something sharp had been forced into my mouth, which not only acted as a gag, effectually preventing my uttering a sound, but which made it difficult for me to breathe. That it was cutting me was made plain by the blood which I was compelled to swallow.
As I have said, it was not at first that I had a clear perception of the personal plight that I was in. When it dawned on me at last I had a morbid satisfaction in learning that I was not alone in it. Someone so close on the left as to be almost touching me was in a similar plight. It was St. Luke. I had mistily imagined that that seafaring associate of the more and more mysterious Benjamin Batters had been in some way responsible for my misadventure. Not a bit of it. I had wronged the honest man. So far as I could perceive, his plight was an exact reproduction of my own. The same attention had been paid to his physical comfort; only apparently the gag had been so placed in his mouth as to leave him more freedom to gasp, and to grunt, and to groan.
Who, then, was responsible for this pretty performance? What man, or men, had I so wronged as to be deserving this return? The problem was a nice one. I looked for the solution.
I found it, and, in doing so, found also something else, which filled me with such a tumult of passion that I actually momentarily forgot the egregious position I was in.
Miss Purvis had been served as I had been.
She had either, wondering at my delay, or startled by the noise, peeped into the office, and so disturbed the ruffians at their work; or the miscreants, penetrating into the inner room, had found her there and dragged her out. However it had been, there she was, trussed and gagged against the wall upon my right. They had shown no respect for a woman, but had handled her precisely as they had done St. Luke and me. My brain felt as if it would have burst as I thought of the indignity with which they must have used her, and of the agony, mental and bodily, she must have endured, and be enduring still. Her face—her pretty face!—was white as the sheet of paper on which I write. Her eyes—her lovely eyes!—were closed. I hoped that she had fainted, and so was oblivious of suffering and shame. Yet, as I watched her utter stillness, I half feared she might be dead.
The gentlemen who were responsible for this pleasant piece of work were three. They were there before me in plain sight. It was with an odd sense that it was just what I had expected that I recognised the trio who had already paid me a visit in the silent watches of the night. There was the imposing, elderly, bald-headed gentleman, who represented length without breadth; there, also, were his two attendant satellites. How to account for their assiduous interest in my unpretending office was beyond my power. Nor did I understand why it should have been necessary to use quite such drastic measures against the lady, St. Luke, and myself. Still less—I admit it frankly—when I observed their conspicuous lack of avoirdupois, did I gather how they had managed to make of us so easy a prey. Under ordinary conditions I should have been quite willing to take the three on single-handed. The truth probably was that St. Luke and I had unwittingly played into their dexterous hands. Had we not been engaged in matching ourselves against each other we should have been more than a match for them. But when they came in, and found the sailor man upon the floor prisoning me close within his arms, all they had to do was to slip one cord round my throat, and another round his. We were at their mercy. No man can show much fight when he is being strangled; especially when the job is in the hands of a skilled practitioner. Never mind what the theory is, that is the teaching of experience.
What they wanted, with so much anxiety, in my office, I was unable to guess. They had already purloined the God of Fortune.