“Oh, you always were demented, Alan, but it is I, right enough. Pick up the light and tell me what kind of a cell you’ve got.”
“Horrible!” cried Drummond, surveying his situation. “Walls apparently of solid rock, and this uncanny stream running across the floor.”
“How are you furnished? Shelf of rock, stone bench?”
“No, there’s a table, cot bed, and a wooden chair.”
“Why, my dear man, what are you growling about? They have given you one of the best rooms in the hotel. You’re in the Star Chamber.”
“Where in the name of heaven are we?”
“Didn’t you recognize the rock from the deck of a steamer?”
“I never saw the deck of a steamer.”
“Then how did you come here?”
“I was writing a letter in my room when someone threw a sack over my head, and tied me up in a bundle, so that it was a close shave I wasn’t smothered. I was taken in what I suppose was a cab and flung into what I afterwards learned was the hold of a steamer. When the ship stopped, I was carried like a sack of meal on someone’s shoulder, and unhampered before a gaunt specter in uniform, in a room so dazzling with electric light that I could hardly see. That was a few minutes ago, Now I am here, and starving. Where is this prison?”