“What do you want to know?” I inquired, quickly on the alert against the pair of desperate ruffians.
“Answer me, Mr. Ewart,” said the elder of the two, a man with a grey beard and a foreign accent. “You were driving an automobile near Alconbury on a certain evening, and a woman stopped you. She had a boy with her, and she gave you something—a packet of papers, to keep in safety for her. Where are they? We want them.”
“I know nothing of what you are saying,” I declared, recollecting Clotilde’s injunction. “I think you must be mistaken.”
The men smiled grimly, and the elder made a signal, as though to someone behind me, and next instant I felt a silken cord slipped over my head and pulled tight by an unseen hand. A third man had stepped noiselessly from the long cupboard beside the fireplace, to which my back had been turned.
I felt the cord cutting into my throat, and tried to struggle and shout, but a cloth was clapped upon my mouth, and my hands secured by a second cord.
“Now,” said the elder man, “tell us the truth, or, if not, you die. You understand? Where is that packet?”
“I know nothing of any packet,” I gasped with great difficulty.
“It’s a lie! She gave it to you! Where did you take her to?”
I was silent. I had given my promise of secrecy, and yet I was entirely helpless in their unscrupulous hands. Again and again they demanded the papers, which they said she had given me to keep for her, and my denial only brought upon me the increased torture of the cord, until I was almost black in the face, and my veins stood out knotted and hard.
I realised, to my horror, that they intended to murder me, just as they had assassinated Latour and his wife. I fought for life, but my struggles only tightened the cord, and thus increased my agony.