By slow, imperceptible degrees the candle burned lower. The flame was
long and steady. Nearer and nearer it approached that thin green cord
which alone separated me from death.
Again the serpent hissed and darted forth, angry at being so near its
prey, and yet prevented from striking--angry that its tail was knotted
to the cord.
I saw it writhing and twisting upon the table, and noted its peculiar
markings of black and yellow. Its eyes were bright and searching. I
had read of the fascination which a snake's gaze exercises over its
prey, and now I experienced it--a fatal fascination. I could not keep
my eyes off the deadly reptile. It watched me intently, as though it
knew full well that ere long it must be victorious.
Victorious! What did that mean? A sharp, stinging pain, and then an
agonizing, painful death, my head swollen hideously to twice its
size, my body held there in that mechanical vice, suffering all the
tortures of the damned!
The mere contemplation of that awful fate held me transfixed by
horror.
Suddenly I heard Sylvia's shriek repeated. I shouted, but no words
came back to me in return. Was she suffering the same fearful agony of
mind as myself? Had those brutes carried out their threat? They knew
she had betrayed them, it seemed, and they had, therefore, taken their
bitter and cowardly revenge.
Where was Pennington, that he did not rescue her?
I cursed myself for being such an idiot. Yet I had no idea that such a
cunningly-devised trap could be prepared. I had never dreamed, when I
went forth to pull Jack out of a hole, that I was deliberately placing
my head in such a noose.
What did it all mean? Why had these men formed this plot against me?
What had I done to merit such deadly vengeance as this?--a torture of
the Middle Ages!
Vainly I tried to think. As far as I knew, I had never met either
Forbes or Reckitt before in all my life. They were complete strangers
to me. I remembered there had been something about the man-servant who
admitted me that seemed familiar, but what it was, I could not decide.
Perhaps I had seen him before somewhere in the course of my
wanderings, but where, I knew not.
I recollected that soon after I had entered there I had heard the
sound of a motor-car receding. My waiting taxi had evidently been
paid, and dismissed.
How would they dispose of my body, I lay wondering? There were many
ways of doing so, I reflected. They might burn it, or bury it, or pack
it in a trunk and consign it to some distant address. When one
remembers how many persons are every year reported to the London
police as missing, one can only believe that the difficulties in
getting rid of the corpse of a victim are not so great as is popularly
imagined.
Speak with any detective officer of the Metropolitan Police, and, if
he is frank, he will tell you that a good many people meet with foul
play each year in every quarter of London--they disappear and are
never again heard of. Sometimes their disappearance is reported in the
newspapers--a brief paragraph--but in the case of people of the middle
class only their immediate relatives know that they are missing.
Many a London house with deep basement and a flight of steps leading
to its front door could, if its walls had lips, tell a tragic and
terrible story.
For one assassination discovered, ten remain unknown or merely vaguely
suspected.
How many thousands of pounds had these men, Forbes and Reckitt,
secured, I wondered? And how many poor helpless victims had felt the
serpent's fang and breathed their last in that fatal chair I now
occupied?
A dog howled dismally somewhere at the back. The men had told me that
no sound could be heard beyond those walls, yet had I not heard
Sylvia's shrieks? If I had heard them, then she could also hear me!
I shouted her name--shouted as loud as I could. But my voice in that
small room somehow seemed dulled and drowned.
"Sylvia," I shouted, "I am here! I--Owen Biddulph! Where are you?"
But there was no response. That horrible snake rose erect, looking at
me with its never-wavering gaze. I saw the pointed tongue darting from
its mouth. There--before me--soon to be released, was Death in reptile
form--Death the most revolting and most terrible.
That silence appalled me. Sylvia had not replied! Was she already
dead--stricken down by the fatal fang?