Why?
That was a problem which he tried to solve until, worried and angry, he once more sank upon the heap of old sacking and again fell asleep, quite exhausted in body and in mind.
Two days followed—days of long vigil, eager listening and a strangely dead silence. All he heard was the rustling of leaves and the glad song of the birds. By day he could hear the sparrow, the thrush and the robin, and at night the weird hooting of an owl and the scuttling of rats.
His mind was slowly regaining its normal balance. He could think without that bursting sensation in his skull, yet the great mystery which overwhelmed him was the motive why he had been entrapped into captivity as some strange and dangerous animal.
“No doubt I am dangerous,” he said aloud to himself on the second morning. “Dangerous to those into whose hands I have now fallen—that vampire woman who is actually the friend of Elma! Gad! I can’t fathom it. The whole affair is quite beyond my comprehension. Why did my own father warn me of the pair? If he knew them as crooks, why did he not himself openly expose them them—except—except—that—”
And he paused, gazing fixedly up at the little window.
“Except—that—that perhaps the dear old dad dare not tell the truth! He may have had some secret!”
He walked slowly and with difficulty around that small stone chamber. His father had died without revealing to him the truth about Gray and the woman Crisp. Why?
“I wonder if Elma will believe me?” he said aloud, in a strange whisper which echoed weirdly around those lime-washed walls. “Will she believe that letter I wrote her regarding the Wad Sus concession? I should have told her so with my own lips, only—only at Park Lane that night I was not wanted. Elma was not at home. Oh! when shall I learn the truth of all this—when shall I be able to explain it all to Elma? When shall I see Barclay?”
He was silent for some minutes. Then another mystery was the identity of the person who, being his janitor, supplied him with food. Two further days went by. When he slept, exhausted, his food was renewed—by whose hands?