“I don’t know,” said the other, “I haven’t an idea!”
“Do you mean that you are kept prisoner here without knowing why?”
“Yes, without the faintest idea; absolutely!” came the breathless whisper from the keyhole. “Don’t talk too loud, or they will hear you, and then heaven knows what fearful things may happen to you! How long have you been here?”
“I only came tonight,” Roberts whispered. “And you?”
As he heard the reply it was all he could do to keep his balance; he clutched at the rough stone wall to sustain himself. The man’s voice was reduced almost to a moan as he answered:
“I have been here twenty years!”
IV
Every drop of blood seemed to leave Roberts’s face, and his head fairly swam.
“Twenty years!” he gasped to himself. “In heaven’s name, what can it mean?”
Those words seemed to him to cap the climax of the night’s experiences, and he stood as he was for fully a minute without speaking or asking another question of the inmate of the other room. When suddenly the silence was broken, it was by the other.