But there came no answer. I set my teeth, and struggled to free myself
until the veins in my forehead were knotted and my bonds cut into the
flesh. But, alas! I was held as in the tentacles of an octopus. Every
limb was gripped, so that already a numbness had overspread them,
while my senses were frozen with horror.
Suddenly the lamp failed and died out, and the room was plunged in
darkness, save for the zone of light shed by the unflickering flame of
the candle. And there lay the weird and horrible reptile coiled,
awaiting its release.
It seemed to watch the lessening candle, just as I myself watched it.
That sudden failure of the light caused me anxious reflections.
A moment later I heard the front door bang. That decided me. It was as
I had feared. The pair of scoundrels had departed and left me to my
fate.
The small marble clock upon the mantelshelf opposite struck three. I
counted the strokes. I had been in that room nearly an hour and a
half.
How did they know of Jack Marlowe and his penchant for cards? Surely
the trap had been well baited, and devised with marvellous cunning.
That cheque of mine would be cashed at my bank in the morning without
question. I should be dead--and they would be free.
For myself, I did not care so very much. My chief thought was of
Sylvia, and of the awful fate which had overtaken her because she had
dared to warn me--that fate of which she had spoken so strangely on
the night when we had talked on the hotel terrace at Gardone.
That moonlit scene--the whole of it--passed through my fevered,
unbalanced brain. I lived those moments of ecstasy over again. I felt
her soft hand in mine. I looked again into those wonderful, fathomless
eyes; I heard that sweet, musical voice; I listened to those solemn
words of warning. I believed myself to be once more beside the
mysterious girl who had come into my life so strangely--who had held
me in fascination for life or death.
The candle-flame, still straight and unflickering, seemed like a
pillar of fire, while beyond, lay a cavernous blackness. I thought I
heard a slight noise, as though my enemies were lurking there in the
shadow. Yet it was a mere chimera of my overwrought brain.
I recollected the strange bracelet of Sylvia's--the serpent with its
tail in its mouth--the ancient symbol of Eternity. And I soon would be
launched into Eternity by the poisonous fang of that flat-headed
little reptile.
Thoughts of Sylvia--that strange, sweet-faced girl of my
dreams--filled my senses. Those shrieks resounded in my ears. She had
cried for help, and yet I was powerless to rescue her from the hands
of that pair of hell-fiends.