IN DURANCE VILE.
It was daylight when Burgo next opened his eyes, and asked himself
what had happened to him and where he was. He tried to satisfy himself
on the latter point first, because not to have done so would have
involved an effort of memory such as just then he scarcely felt equal
to. So without attempting to move hand or foot, he proceeded to stare
about him, his eyes wandering from side to side, and taking in one
detail after another of the unfamiliar quarters in which he now found
himself.
Imprimis, he was stretched at full length on a couch which he
afterwards found to be made of mahogany, with old-fashioned cushions
and a pillow of horsehair considerably the worse for wear. The only
other furniture comprised a small octagonal table, and a couple of
straight-backed chairs of unpolished oak, apparently of some
antiquity. Stay, though; in one corner was placed a common washstand
and toilet service, such as in middle-class households are reserved
for servants' cubicles. The room itself was neither very large nor
very lofty, but it was undeniably bare-looking, walls and ceiling
being alike washed a dull creamy white. The room was lighted by one
long, narrow window, with leaded lozenge-shaped panes of thick
greenish glass, but placed so high up in the wall that a man had need
to be full six feet high for his eyes to be on a level with its lowest
panes. As the room had but one window, so it had but one door, which,
like the table and the chairs, seemed to be of substantial oak.
But although he had satisfied himself as to the kind of place in which
he was, that did not help him to solve the question of where he was.
His ears were filled with a long, low, murmurous wash, which now
struck his consciousness for the first time. He at once recognised it
for what it was. "It is the noise of the incoming tide," he said to
himself. "And this place? Is it--can it be that I have been brought to
the Wizard's Tower?"
Everything was clear to him now, without any mental groping backward,
up to the moment when he was struck down as he stood by the edge of
the plantation. He had been the object of a foul and cowardly attack,
and it was not difficult to guess to whose instigation he owed it.
More than ever did he realise at that moment with how resolute and
unscrupulous an antagonist he had to deal.
But why was he lying there? At once he sprang to his feet, but as he
did so an involuntary "Ah!" escaped him, and the same instant he
clapped both his hands to the back of his head. He had not known till
then that he was wounded. But with the change in his position the pain
made itself sharply felt, and presently his fingers informed him that
the hair round the wound had been cut away, and the place itself
covered with strips of sticking-plaster. To such an extent had he been
tended and cared for. Just then, however, his wound was a matter of
quite secondary importance. Having, as he believed, rightly guessed to
what place he had been conveyed while unconscious, the all-important
question at once put itself to him: "Am I a prisoner?"
His heart foreboded the answer but too surely. He crossed to the door
and turned the handle. It was enough.
While he stood staring at the door like a man half dazed, he noticed
that in the upper half of it there was a panel, about a couple of feet
square, which looked as if it were movable, and on trying it with his
hand he found that it slid back in a groove, leaving an aperture of
its own size, of which Burgo at once proceeded to avail himself as a
peep-hole. But what he could discern through it scarcely repaid him
for his trouble--merely another space of whitewashed wall, as it might
be that of a landing, with the two topmost steps of a flight of stone
stairs leading to unknown regions below. Then it struck Burgo that the
aperture might perchance be available for another purpose. Putting one
arm through it up to the shoulder he proceeded to search for the bolt
or key which held him prisoner, but neither one nor the other could he
find. Whoever had locked him in had been careful to remove the key.
Well, he had hardly expected anything else.
He now bethought himself to look at his watch. It was close on seven
o'clock. It had been somewhere about ten o'clock when he was struck
down, so that his unconsciousness had lasted for nearly nine hours. No
wonder that his head smarted as it did.
It was not till later, when he had ample leisure for thinking things
over, that there seemed to come over him a sort of dim consciousness
that in the course of the night something had been given him to
swallow, and that in his ears there had been a faint, confused murmur
of voices, as of people talking a long way off; but it had all been so
vague and unreal that he could never feel sure it was aught but a
dream.
Having pushed the sliding panel back into its place, he crossed to the
window, and found that, after stretching himself to his fullest
height, his eyes were just on a level with the lowermost panes. It was
evident that by standing on a chair his range of vision would be
considerably enlarged, and that was what he at once proceeded to do.
As he had quite expected it would, the window looked directly on the
sea, and on nothing else. Whichever way he turned his eyes not a strip
of land was visible. He could no longer doubt that he was shut up in
the Wizard's Tower. Now that he had, as it were, explored his tiny
domain, he sat down to think, but as yet his brain was so crowded with
impressions, all more or less vivid, which involved the putting of so
many more or less unanswerable questions, that to attempt to evolve
therefrom any definite and consistent line of thought was for the
present an impossibility.
Not long had he sat before his attention was caught by a faint grating
noise, as it might be the turning of a rusty key, which was presently
followed by the sound of shuffling footsteps ascending the stone
stairs from below. Then the sliding panel was thrust back, and, framed
by the aperture, Burgo beheld the yellow, wrinkled visage of a very
old and very unprepossessing female, who stood for some seconds,
gazing at him with weak and watery eyes, before she spoke.
"If you please, sir, I've brought you your breakfus," she said at
length in a thin quavering treble, "so, m'appen you'll please to take
the things as I hands 'em to you."
Burgo crossed to the door, and from the tray the old lady had brought
with her, which she had placed on the floor before opening the slide,
she handed to him, one by one, the various concomitants of a fairly
good and substantial breakfast.
"And now, mother, if you will tell me what place this is, I shall be
much obliged to you," said Burgo, as, last of all, he took from her
hand a small coffee-pot.
The old woman favoured him with what to most people would have seemed
a cunning leer, but which she may have intended for an amiable grin.
"I can tell by the motion of your lips as you're a-talking to me," she
piped; "but I couldn't hear a word you say, no, not even if you
shouted ever so. I've been stone deaf for the last dozen years. I'll
fetch the breakfus things away when I brings your dinner." And, with a
parting nod, she shut the slide and shuffled her way downstairs. Then
came a muffled sound, as it might be the shutting of a heavy door,
followed by the same grating noise as before.
Burgo was hungry, and was glad to be able to stay his appetite. He had
a few cigarettes left in his case, and it may be that he enjoyed
smoking a couple of them after breakfast none the less because his
fortunes just then were at such a desperate pass. It was over his
second cigarette that he came to the sensible conclusion to no longer
badger his brains with a lot of vain surmises and questions which he
had no means of answering, but rather to await the course of events
quietly, and with such philosophy as he could summon to his aid. Any
other course would be both futile and unmanly. Lady Clinton had got
him into her power, and for the present he could but submit to that
which it was out of his power to help.
In pursuance of this more cheerful way of looking at things he
presently stretched himself on the sofa, and before long was fortunate
enough to forget all his anxieties in sleep.
It was noon when he awoke. After a stare round he rose and shook
himself. "I'm neither a Monte Cristo nor a Jack Sheppard," he said,
"but I may as well satisfy myself whether there is or is not the
remotest chance of my being able to escape from this confounded hole."
So he again turned his attention to the door. It was very heavy and
strong, and, judging from appearances, could not have been less than a
century old, while, although the lock was probably of a very simple
kind, it would obviously be impossible for him to pick it without
adequate tools. He had a pocket-knife with three blades, which
fortunately had not been taken from him. Would it be possible by its
means to cut away sufficient of the woodwork round the lock--it was of
tough old oak--to allow of his forcing the bolt? But even should he
prove so far successful, what then? At the foot of the stairs he would
find himself confronted by another door, most likely by two, for he
had not forgotten what Tyson had told him about the opening up of the
underground passage from the Keep. Nor had he forgotten what the door
which opened from the tower on to the cliff was like. It was twice as
massive, and would prove twice as formidable an obstacle to overcome
as the door of his chamber. Not much hope of escape could he perceive
that way. Still, the subject was one which might repay careful thought
by-and-by--for he had already concluded that the tower would have to
be his home for some time to come--when he should have become familiar
with the daily routine of his prison life, and knew for how many hours
he could depend upon being left unvisited by any one.
The window as a possible means of escape proved hopeless from the
first. It was narrow to begin with, and was rendered altogether
impassable for any one bigger than a child of six by a couple of
massive upright bars. In one corner of the room was an open fireplace
with a chimney, but when Burgo stared up the murky throat of the
latter, he felt that he would have to be reduced to very desperate
straits indeed before he ventured to explore it.
At half-past two the same old woman brought him his dinner, passing
the dishes to him one by one as before, and receiving in return the
breakfast things left from morning. "If you please, sir," she said, "I
was to tell you that if there's anything you specially want, would you
write it down on a piece of paper and give it to me." Thereupon she
handed him through the aperture pen, ink, and a couple of sheets of
paper.
Burgo gave vent to a low whistle of surprise. Then, after considering
for a few moments, he sat down and wrote as under:
"If it be your intention to detain me here for any length of time, you
may, if you please, add to the burden of my obligations by letting me
have my portmanteau and contents, which will be found at the inn of
the 'Golden Owl,' in Crag End. If, at the same time, you will settle
my little bill there, I will recoup you the amount.
"I enclose a note to the landlord authorising him to give up my
chattels to whomsoever you may send for them."
The note to Tyson which he enclosed was signed "Burgo Lumsden."
The old woman took the notes, favoured him with another leer, and
went.
As Burgo sat eating his dinner to the accompaniment of an excellent
bottle of claret, having agreed to thrust his cares aside for a while,
his thoughts went wandering hither and thither as they listed,
touching now on things serious and now on others which were just as
trivial. Among other matters which thus casually claimed his thoughts
he found himself wondering again what purpose the sliding panel in the
door had been originally intended to serve. But after a time a light
broke on him. "This must have been one of the rooms occupied by the
old fellow Tyson told me about, who used to shut himself up in the
tower for weeks at a time, and it was doubtless put to the same use by
him that it is put to now. His laboratory was sacred ground; no foot
save his own must cross its threshold; and his food was handed to him
through the aperture as mine is to-day." In the lack of all
possibility of getting at the facts of the case, it seemed as likely
an explanation as could have been arrived at.
Burgo got through the afternoon as he best could. He spent a
considerable portion of the time resting his elbows on the
window-sill, his head supported by his hands, gazing out at the
heaving expanse of water which bounded the whole visible line of his
horizon, watching with his eyes, while far away in thought, an
occasional moving pennon of smoke on the line where sky and water
seemed to meet, or the gleam of a white sail in the offing. In his
ears was the soft, murmurous thunder of the tide, for ever either
coming or going. A portion of the lower half of the window formed a
casement which was now flung wide open. The autumn airs blew soft and
sweet; in their caresses lingered a memory of departed summer.
As he stood thus he could not help telling himself that all which had
befallen him since he left the "Golden Owl" at nine o'clock the
previous night was more like a fragment of some distempered dream than
the grim reality it had proved itself to be. That he should have been
assaulted, kidnapped, and locked up in an old border tower was an
incident such as might well have happened even as lately as a hundred
years ago, but which seemed an anachronism, and altogether out of
keeping with the prosaic realities of the last quarter of the
nineteenth century. And yet, incredible as it might be deemed, it had
happened to him. He was there a prisoner, and when or in what way his
imprisonment would end, he could guess no more than the man in the
moon. It might be that the design was to keep him safe under lock and
key till his uncle's illness should have terminated in the only way it
was intended it should terminate, and that, he felt sure, would not be
till after the 12th of October. Or, again, it might be that even then
steps were being taken to remove his uncle still further away, perhaps
to some place abroad, where no helping hand would avail to reach him.
It seemed monstrous to imagine that such a hellish plot could be
carried out with impunity at this time of day, and all the safeguards
which the law has devised against wrong-doing quietly ignored and
treated as if they had no existence. Yes, it did indeed seem
monstrous; but, as most of us have learnt to our cost, facts are
stubborn things.
It was nearly dark before the old woman made her appearance for the
third time. Following the unlocking of the door, somewhere below
stairs came the sound of a dog's deep baying, mingled with a man's
voice addressing some one in imperative accents. Although it was not
yet seven o'clock the old lady had brought Burgo his supper. He had
not been used to such a primitive arrangement of his meals, but it
would have been folly to complain. When he had exchanged his empty
dishes for full ones, the woman said: "I've a lot o' things downstairs
for you--a lamp, and a couple o' blankits, and a piller, and your
porkmantle--which I'll now fetch up; but afore I open the door and
give 'em to you, you must pass me your sacred word of honour not to
try to leave the room. I can't hear a word, as you know, but if you're
ready and willing to swear not to try to escape, sinnify the same by
holding up your right hand."
A moment's thought convinced Burgo that no other course was open to
him, so up went his right hand.
The old woman leered and nodded; then, beckoning him to go nearer, she
said: "Besides, where would be the use of your trying to get away?
_He's_ down there"--with a jerk of her thumb over her shoulder--"on
the watch with one of his big dogs. Eh! but they're dangerous brutes,
and he's a dangerous man, and he would think nothing of letting the
beast loose to fly at your throat."
With the last word she was gone. But presently she reappeared,
dragging Burgo's portmanteau up the stairs, after which she fetched up
in turn a couple of blankets, a pillow, and a lamp. Then, not without
some difficulty she succeeded in unlocking the door, after which she
took in the things, Burgo meanwhile discussing his supper quietly at
the table.
"And now, sir, I'll wish you a very good-night and pleasant dreams,"
said the old girl presently, "for I shan't trouble you any more till I
bring your breakfus in the morning." Then in rapid whisper, and with
another jerk of her thumb: "He's a devil, that's what he is--a devil!"
Half a minute later the key was turned in the lock, the slide shut,
and Burgo was left alone for the night.