Moving cautiously, so as to avoid attracting attention, the operative slipped his right hand toward his hip pocket, only to find that his automatic was missing. As he settled back with a half moan, he felt something cold slipped into the box beside him, and the girl's voice whispered:
"Your revolver. I secured it when they brought you in here. I thought you might need it later. But be very careful. They must not suspect that you have wakened."
"I will," promised Marks, "but who are you? Why should you take such an interest in me?"
"You tried to save me from something that is worse than death," replied the girl. "You failed, but it was not your fault. Could I do less than to help you?"
"But what was it you feared?"
"Marriage! Marriage to the man I loathe above all others—the man who is responsible for the opium that is drugging my people—the man who is known as Wah Lee, but who is really an American." Here she hesitated for a moment and then hissed:
"Sprague!"
"Sprague?" Marks echoed, sitting bolt upright. But the girl had gone, swallowed up somewhere in the impenetrable darkness which filled the room.
His brain cleared by the realization that he had blundered into the heart of the opium-runners' den, it took Ezra only a few seconds to formulate a plan of action. The first thing, of course, was to get away. But how could that be accomplished when he did not even know where he was or anything about the house? The girl had said something about the fact that "they were considering his fate." Who were "they" and where were they?
Obviously, the only way to find this out was to do a little scouting on his own account, so, slowly and carefully, he raised himself clear of the boxlike arrangement in which he had been placed and tried to figure out his surroundings. His hand, groping over the side, came into almost instant contact with the floor and he found it a simple matter to step out into what appeared to be a cleared space in the center of a comparatively large room. Then, curious as to the place where he had been concealed, he felt the box from one end to the other. The sides were about two feet high and slightly sloping, with an angle near the head. In fact, both ends of the affair were narrower than the portion which had been occupied by his shoulders. Piled up at either end of this box were others, of the same shape and size. What could their purpose be? Why the odd shape?