Again I made no answer.
"Shall I tell them?" said he easily.
"What--what do you want?" I whispered hoarsely.
"That is better," said he, nodding. "Well, to be candid, almost nothing. Two pledges. First, that you will give no evidence against anyone here. That of course."
I muttered assent. I was ready to promise anything.
"And secondly, that you will, when I call upon you, do me a little favour, Mr. Price. It is a small matter, a trifle I asked you at my lady's house three days back. Promise to do that for me, as and when I demand performance, and in ten minutes from this time you shall leave the house, safe, free, and unhurt."
"I promise," I said eagerly. "I promise honestly!"
But even while I spoke--this seemed to be the strangest of all the things that had happened to me that night, that this man should think it worth while to pledge me under such circumstances, or value at a groat a promise so given. For the pledge was a pledge to do ill, and as soon as he and the other conspirators were laid by the heels or had fled the country, what sanction remained to bind me? I saw that as I spoke, and promised--and promised. And would have promised fifty times--with the reservation that I did so under force majeure. Who would not have done the same, being in my place?
But I suppose I answered too quickly to please him, and so he read my thoughts, or he had it in his mind from the first to read me a lesson, for the words were scarcely out of my mouth before he slid his hand into his breast with the ugliest smile I ever saw on a man's face; and he signed to me to get into the cupboard. "Get in," he said, between his closed teeth; and then when, terrified by the change in him and the order, I began to back from it, "Get in!" he said, in a voice that set me shaking; "or take the consequences. Do you hear me? I am no Ferguson to threaten and no more."
I dared resist no longer, and I crawled in, trembling and praying him not to shut me in--not to shut me in.