I halted, startled. The voice was so very like Eric’s that I could have sworn it was his.
A sharp cry of pain—a man’s cry—rang out from behind a closed door on the landing I was approaching. Then there followed a long-drawn-out groan, ending almost in a sigh.
A tragedy was being enacted there!
I clapped my hand upon the revolver I always carried in my hip-pocket, and went forward quickly, eager and puzzled, but just as I placed my feet upon the last steps to gain the landing where the man’s chambers were, four or five of the stairs suddenly gave way beneath me, and I fell feet foremost into the great yawning opening there revealed. I was the victim of a dastardly treachery!
I know that I clutched wildly at air when I felt myself falling down, down to what seemed an unfathomable depth. I held my breath, for at that instant a man’s wild shriek rang in my ears. Then next second I felt my skull crushed, and with it all consciousness became blotted out.
I was entrapped—helpless in the hands of quondam friends who were really my bitterest and most unscrupulous enemies.