“Well, that you won’t do,” the other laughed. “You’ll never leave here alive. I’ll take good care of that.”
“Oh! We shall see,” replied Roddy, whose stout heart had not yet forsaken him. It was not the first time in his life that he had been in a tight corner, and after all he was ever optimistic. The only thing that troubled him was the wound in his head.
“You were useful once,” said the evil-faced old criminal. “But now you are of no further use. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, I do; and no, I don’t,” was Roddy’s defiant reply.
“Well, you’re only an encumbrance,” he said. “And you’re young to die like a rat in a hole?”
“That’s very interesting,” Roddy remarked grimly. “And who’s going to be my executioner, pray?”
“You’ll learn that in due course,” said his evil-faced janitor, who then opened the door after removing two strong bars.
Roddy instantly sprang at him, but he found himself so weak that he was as a child in Claribut’s hands.
The old man seized him, and dragging him out roughly thrust him down some spiral atone stairs and into a stone chamber below the one in which he had been confined. It was about the same size and smelt damp and mouldy. The window, strongly barred, was as high up as the one in the chamber above. When he had bundled the helpless man down the stairs, with one hand, he took the raincoat and flung it into the chamber after him.
All Roddy’s protests and struggles were useless. In his weak physical state, still more exhausted by loss of blood from his wound, he was helpless as a child, as Claribut flung him upon the damp shiny stones, saying with a laugh of triumph: