Part 14 (1/2)

She shrieked again, in an agony of terror.

I lay there breathless, petrified by horror.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE FLAME OF THE CANDLE

I shuddered at the horrible fate to which those scoundrels had abandoned me.

Again the cruel flat head of the snake darted forth viciously to within a single inch of my left cheek. I tried to draw back, but to move was impossible, held as I was by that leathern collar, made expressly for securing the head immovable.

My eyes were fixed upon the steady candle-flame. It was burning lower and lower each moment. I watched it in fascination. Each second I grew nearer that terrible, revolting end.

What had happened to Sylvia? I strained my ears to catch any further sound. But there was none. The house was now silent as the grave.

That pair of scoundrels had stolen my cheque, and in the morning, after my death, would cash it and escape with the proceeds!

I glanced around that weird room. How many previous victims had sat in that fatal chair and awaited death as I was waiting, I wondered? The whole plot betrayed a devilish ingenuity and cunning. Its very character showed that the conspirators were no ordinary criminals--they were past-masters in crime.

The incidents of the night in London are too often incredible. A man can meet with adventures in the metropolis as strange, as exciting and as perilous as any in unknown lands. Here, surely, was one in point.

I remember experiencing a strange dizziness, a curious nausea, due, perhaps, to the fact that my head lay lower than my body. My thoughts became muddled. I regretted deeply that I had not signed the cheque and saved Sylvia. Yet were they not absolute blackguards? Would they have kept faith with me?

I was breathless in apprehension. What had happened to Sylvia?

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 d.a.m.ned!

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.