"You are Jack Barnes, the assistant of Dudley & Bliss. You are ambitious to become a detective. Therefore, when you read my name on my card this morning, you thought it a good opportunity to track a murderer, did you not? Answer me, and tell me no lies!"
"Yes," said Barnes, surprised to find that a curious sensation in his throat, as though he were parching, precluded his saying more.
"Well, you have tracked the murderer to his den. What do you think of the place. Safe enough from the police, eh!" The Doctor laughed in a soft congratulatory way, which grated upon his hearer's ear. He continued, as though to himself: "And Dudley & Bliss warned me that I could not escape from the police. I, Emanuel Medjora! I could not escape!" Then he burst out into a prolonged ringing peal of laughter which made Barnes tremble affrighted, as a hundred echoes for the moment made his imagination picture myriads of demons chiming in with the merriment of their master.
"Come here," cried the Doctor, checking his laugh. Barnes hesitated and then retreated. "Come here, you coward!" said the Doctor, in a sterner voice. The taunt made the blood course more swiftly through the young man's veins, and the laugh of the demon echo having died away, he threw his head up and approached the stone, stopping within a few feet of Dr. Medjora, and looking him in the eye.
"Ah! As I thought. A strong will, for a youngster. I must use strategy." This so softly that Barnes did not comprehend the sense of the words. Then the Doctor spoke in his most alluring manner:
"You are plucky, Mr. Barnes. This is a gruesome place, and I have brought you here under such peculiar circumstances that you might well be alarmed. But I see that you are not, and I admire you for your courage. It is his courage that has made man the master of all the animal world. By that he controls beasts, who could rend him to a thousand bits, with ease: only they dare not. So, for your courage, I forgive your impudence, and I might say imprudence, in following me this morning."
Barnes was mystified by this alteration of manner, and was not such a fool that he did not suspect that it boded him no special favor. He did not reply, not knowing what to say. The Doctor jumped up from his seat, saying pleasantly:
"I am forgetting my politeness. You are my guest, and I am occupying the only available seat. Pardon me, and be seated." Barnes hesitated, and the Doctor said, "Oblige me!" in a tone which made Barnes think it wise to comply. He therefore seated himself on the stone, and the Doctor muttered low to himself:
"How innocently he goes to the sacrifice," words which Barnes did not hear and would not have understood had he done so. Then the Doctor laughed with a muffled, gurgling sound, which, answered by the echoes, again made Barnes feel uncomfortable.
"Now then, Mr. Barnes," began Dr. Medjora, "I have no doubt that your curiosity has been aroused, and that you would like to know what sort of place this is, and how it came here. It is a very curious story altogether, and as we shall find time hang heavily on our hands whilst the fire is burning upstairs, I cannot entertain you better, perhaps, than with the tale. You know, of course, or you have heard, that I am a physician. But no one knows how thoroughly entitled I am to the name. I am a lineal descendant of the great Æsculapius himself." Barnes stared, wondering whether the man were mad. Having begun his recital, Dr. Medjora apparently took no more notice of Barnes than though he had not been present. But whilst he spoke, with his hands clasped behind his back, he began to pace around the room, thus walking in a circle about Barnes, as he sat upon the stone in the centre.