"You'll come too, won't you?"
At first I excused myself, for I was anxious to find Eric, but presently
I allowed myself to be persuaded, for truth to tell, I, too, was very
fond of antiquities, and was therefore anxious to see this latest find.
We drove in a hansom along Regent Street, and then through several side
streets, until presently we alighted before the door of a dark,
respectable-looking house, into which Humphreys let us with his
latchkey.
"Go on up," he exclaimed, when we were in the hall. "You know your way,
Ellice--the old rooms, second floor."
And so while he held back in the hall looking at some cards that had
been left, I climbed the broad old-fashioned stairs with Winsloe.
At the first landing my companion held back for me to go on before,
laughing, and saying,--
"Go straight on--the room right before you," and compelling me to ascend
first, he followed.
Suddenly I heard men's voices raised in angry altercation, apparently
proceeding from another room, and what was more, I was struck by a
distinct belief that one voice was Eric's. Yet surely that could not be
possible.
"I defy you!" I heard the voice cry. "Say no more. You hear! You may
kill me, but I defy you!"
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.