And, startled, we found ourselves looking down the muzzle of a loaded carbine.
A huge sentry stood with his back to the secret exit, his dark eyes shining beneath his peaked cap, as he held his weapon to his shoulder within six feet of us.
The big, bearded fellow demanded fiercely who I was.
My heart sank within me. I had acted recklessly, and had fallen into the hands of his Excellency, the Baron Xavier Oberg, the unscrupulous Governor-General—fallen into a trap which, it seemed, had been very cleverly prepared for me.
I was a prisoner in the terrible fortress whence no single person save the guards had ever been known to emerge—the Bastille of "The Strangler of Finland!"
I saw I was lost.
The muzzle of the sentry's carbine was within two feet of my chest.
"Speak!" cried the fellow. "Who are you?"
At a glance I took in the peril of the situation, and without a second's hesitation made a dive for the man beneath his weapon. He lowered it, but it was too late, for I gripped him around the waist, rendering his gun useless. It was the work of an instant, for I knew that to close with him was my only chance.
Yet if the boat was not in waiting below that closed door? If my Finn driver was not there in readiness, then I was lost. The unfortunate girl whom I was there to rescue drew back in fright against the wall for a single second, then, seeing that I had closed with the hulking fellow, she sprang forward, and with both hands seized the gun and attempted to wrest it from him. His fingers had lost the trigger, and he was trying to regain it to fire and so raise the alarm. I saw this, and with an old trick learned at Uppingham I tripped him, so that he staggered and nearly fell.