Part 25 (1/2)

”We'll find a way to make you talk to-morrow, my friend. Starving is not pleasant.”

”You would not starve me!” he cried.

”No. You will have the pleasure of starving yourself,” said a thin-eyed fellow whom he afterward knew as Peter Brutus.

He was thrown back into the little room. To his surprise and gratification, the bonds on his wrists were removed. Afterward he was to know that there was method in this action of his gaolers: his own utter impotency was to be made more galling to him by the maddening knowledge that he possessed hands and feet and lungs--and could not use them!

He found a match in his box and struck it. There was no article of furniture. The floor was bare, the walls green with age. He had a feeling that there would be rats; perhaps lizards. A search revealed the fact that his purse, his watch and his pocket-knife were missing.

Another precious match showed him that there were no windows. A chimney hole in the ceiling was, perhaps, the only means by which fresh air could reach this dreary place.

”Well, I guess I'm here to stay,” he said to himself. He sat down with his back to the wall, despair in his soul. A pitiful, weak smile came to him in the darkness, as he thought of the result of his endeavour to ”show off” for the benefit of the heartless girl in rajah silk. ”What an a.s.s I am,” he groaned. ”Now she will never know.”

Sleep was claiming his senses. He made a pillow of his coat, commended himself to the charity of rats and other horrors, and stretched his weary bones upon the relentless floor.

”No one will ever know,” he murmured, his last waking thought being of a dear one at home.

CHAPTER XI

UNDER THE GROUND

Day and night were the same to the occupant of the little room. They pa.s.sed with equal slowness and impartial darkness. Five days that he could account for crawled by before anything unusual happened to break the strain of his solitary, inexplicable confinement. He could tell when it was morning by the visit of a bewhiskered chambermaid with a deep ba.s.s voice, who carried a lighted candle and kicked him into wakefulness. The second day after his incarceration began, he was given food and drink. It was high time, for he was almost famished.

Thereafter, twice a day, he was led into the larger room and given a surprisingly hearty meal. Moreover, he was allowed to bathe his face and hands and indulge in half an hour's futile stretching of limbs. After the second day few questions were asked by the men who had originally set themselves up as inquisitors. At first they had treated him with a harshness that promised something worse, but an incident occurred on the evening of the second day that changed the whole course of their intentions.

Peter Brutus had just voiced the pleasure of the majority by urging the necessity for physical torture to wring the government's secrets from the prisoner. King, half famished, half crazed by thirst, had been listening to the fierce argument through the thin door that separated the rooms. He heard the sudden, eager movement toward the door of his cell, and squared himself against the opposite wall, ready to fight to the death. Then there came a voice that he recognised.

A woman was addressing the rabid conspirators in tones of deadly earnestness. His heart gave a bound. It was the first time since his incarceration that he had heard the voice of Olga Platanova, she who had warned him, she who still must be his friend. Once more he threw himself to the floor and glued his ear to the crack; her voice had not the strident qualities of the other women in this lovely company.

”You are not to do this thing,” she was saying. King knew that she stood between her companions and the door. ”You are not to touch him! Do you hear me, Peter Brutus? All of you?”

There followed the silence of stupefaction, broken at last by a voice which he recognised as that of old man Spantz.

”Olga! Stand aside!”

”No! You shall not torture him. I have said he is no spy. I still say it. He knows nothing of the police and their plans. He has not been spying upon us. I am sure of it.”

”How can you be sure of it?” cried a woman's voice, harsh and strident.

”He has played with you,” sneered another.

”I will not discuss the point. I know he is not what you say he is. You have no right to torture him. You have no right to hold him prisoner.”

”G.o.d, girl, we cannot turn him loose now. He must never go free again.

He must die.” This was from Spantz.

”We cannot release him, I grant you,” she said, and Truxton's heart sank. ”Not now, but afterward, yes. When it is all over he can do no harm. But, hear me now, all of you. If he is harmed in any way, if he is maltreated, or if you pursue this design to starve him, I shall not perform my part of the work on the 26th. This is final.”

For a full minute, it seemed to King, no one spoke.

”You cannot withdraw,” exclaimed Peter Brutus. ”You are pledged. You are sworn. It is ordained.”