“Your refusal will cause disaster to yourself—and to her! You will share the same fate—a horrible one. She tried to warn you, and you refused to heed her. So you will both experience the same horror.”
“What horror? I have no fear of you,” I said.
“He refuses,” Reckitt said, with a harsh laugh, addressing his accomplice. “We will now let him see what is in store for him—how we punish those who remain defiant. Bring in the table.”
Forbes disappeared for a moment and then returned, bearing a small round table upon which stood a silver cigar-box and a lighted candle.
The table he placed at my side, close to my elbow. Then Forbes took something from a drawer, and ere I was aware of it he had slipped a leathern collar over my head and strapped it to the back of the chair so that in a few seconds I was unable to move my head from side to side.
“What are you doing, you blackguards?” I cried in fierce anger. “You shall pay for this, I warrant.”
But they only laughed in triumph, for, held as I was, I was utterly helpless in their unscrupulous hands and unable to lift a finger in self-defence, my defiance must have struck them as ridiculous.
“Now,” said Reckitt, standing near the small table, “you see this!” and, leaning forward, he touched the cigar-box, the lid of which opened with a spring.
Next second something shot quite close to my face, startling me.
I looked, and instantly became filled with an inexpressible horror, for there, upon the table, lay a small, black, venomous snake. To its tail was attached a fine green silken cord, and this was, in turn, fastened to the candle. The wooden candle-stick was, I saw, screwed down to the table. The cord entered the wax candle about two inches lower than the flame.