That sudden failure of the light caused me anxious reflections.
A moment later I heard the front door bang. That decided me. It was as I had feared. The pair of scoundrels had departed and left me to my fate.
The small marble clock upon the mantelshelf opposite struck three. I counted the strokes. I had been in that room nearly an hour and a half.
How did they know of Jack Marlowe and his penchant for cards? Surely the trap had been well baited, and devised with marvellous cunning. That cheque of mine would be cashed at my bank in the morning without question. I should be dead—and they would be free.
For myself, I did not care so very much. My chief thought was of Sylvia, and of the awful fate which had overtaken her because she had dared to warn me—that fate of which she had spoken so strangely on the night when we had talked on the hotel terrace at Gardone.
That moonlit scene—the whole of it—passed through my fevered, unbalanced brain. I lived those moments of ecstasy over again. I felt her soft hand in mine. I looked again into those wonderful, fathomless eyes; I heard that sweet, musical voice; I listened to those solemn words of warning. I believed myself to be once more beside the mysterious girl who had come into my life so strangely—who had held me in fascination for life or death.
The candle-flame, still straight and unflickering, seemed like a pillar of fire, while beyond, lay a cavernous blackness. I thought I heard a slight noise, as though my enemies were lurking there in the shadow. Yet it was a mere chimera of my overwrought brain.
I recollected the strange bracelet of Sylvia’s—the serpent with its tail in its mouth—the ancient symbol of Eternity. And I soon would be launched into Eternity by the poisonous fang of that flat-headed little reptile.
Thoughts of Sylvia—that strange, sweet-faced girl of my dreams—filled my senses. Those shrieks resounded in my ears. She had cried for help, and yet I was powerless to rescue her from the hands of that pair of hell-fiends.