CHAPTER SEVEN
THE FLAME OF THE CANDLE
I shuddered at the horrible fate to which those scoundrels hadabandoned me.
Again the cruel flat head of the snake darted forth viciously towithin a single inch of my left cheek. I tried to draw back, but tomove was impossible, held as I was by that leathern collar, madeexpressly for securing the head immovable.
My eyes were fixed upon the steady candle-flame. It was burning lowerand lower each moment. I watched it in fascination. Each second I grewnearer that terrible, revolting end.
What had happened to Sylvia? I strained my ears to catch any furthersound. 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 inthat fatal chair and awaited death as I was waiting, I wondered? Thewhole plot betrayed a devilish ingenuity and cunning. Its verycharacter showed that the conspirators were no ordinarycriminals--they were past-masters in crime.
The incidents of the night in London are too often incredible. A mancan meet with adventures in the metropolis as strange, as exciting andas 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 thoughtsbecame muddled. I regretted deeply that I had not signed the chequeand saved Sylvia. Yet were they not absolute blackguards? Would theyhave kept faith with me?
I was breathless in apprehension. What had happened to Sylvia?
By slow, imperceptible degrees the candle burned lower. The flame waslong and steady. Nearer and nearer it approached that thin green cordwhich alone separated me from death.
Again the serpent hissed and darted forth, angry at being so near itsprey, and yet prevented from striking--angry that its tail was knottedto the cord.
I saw it writhing and twisting upon the table, and noted its peculiarmarkings of black and yellow. Its eyes were bright and searching. Ihad read of the fascination which a snake's gaze exercises over itsprey, and now I experienced it--a fatal fascination. I could not keepmy eyes off the deadly reptile. It watched me intently, as though itknew full well that ere long it must be victorious.
Victorious! What did that mean? A sharp, stinging pain, and then anagonizing, painful death, my head swollen hideously to twice itssize, my body held there in that mechanical vice, suffering all thetortures of the damned!
The mere contemplation of that awful fate held me transfixed byhorror.
Suddenly I heard Sylvia's shriek repeated. I shouted, but no wordscame back to me in return. Was she suffering the same fearful agony ofmind as myself? Had those brutes carried out their threat? They knewshe had betrayed them, it seemed, and they had, therefore, taken theirbitter 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 acunningly-devised trap could be prepared. I had never dreamed, when Iwent forth to pull Jack out of a hole, that I was deliberately placingmy 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 ofthe Middle Ages!
Vainly I tried to think. As far as I knew, I had never met eitherForbes or Reckitt before in all my life. They were complete strangersto me. I remembered there had been something about the man-servant whoadmitted me that seemed familiar, but what it was, I could not decide.Perhaps I had seen him before somewhere in the course of mywanderings, but where, I knew not.
I recollected that soon after I had entered there I had heard thesound of a motor-car receding. My waiting taxi had evidently beenpaid, and dismissed.
How would they dispose of my body, I lay wondering? There were manyways of doing so, I reflected. They might burn it, or bury it, or packit in a trunk and consign it to some distant address. When oneremembers how many persons are every year reported to the Londonpolice as missing, one can only believe that the difficulties ingetting rid of the corpse of a victim are not so great as is popularlyimagined.
Speak with any detective officer of the Metropolitan Police, and, ifhe is frank, he will tell you that a good many people meet with foulplay each year in every quarter of London--they disappear and arenever again heard of. Sometimes their disappearance is reported in thenewspapers--a brief paragraph--but in the case of people of the middleclass only their immediate relatives know that they are missing.
Many a London house with deep basement and a flight of steps leadingto its front door could, if its walls had lips, tell a tragic andterrible story.
For one assassination discovered, ten remain unknown or merely vaguelysuspected.
How many thousands of pounds had these men, Forbes and Reckitt,secured, I wondered? And how many poor helpless victims had felt theserpent's fang and breathed their last in that fatal chair I nowoccupied?
A dog howled dismally somewhere at the back. The men had told me thatno sound could be heard beyond those walls, yet had I not heardSylvia's shrieks? If I had heard them, then she could also hear me!
I shouted her name--shouted as loud as I could. But my voice in thatsmall room somehow seemed dulled and drowned.
"Sylvia," I shouted, "I am here! I--Owen Biddulph! Where are you?"
But there was no response. That horrible snake rose erect, looking atme with its never-wavering gaze. I saw the pointed tongue darting fromits mouth. There--before me--soon to be released, was Death in reptileform--Death the most revolting and most terrible.
That silence appalled me. Sylvia had not replied! Was she alreadydead--stricken down by the fatal fang?
I called again: "Sylvia! Sylvia!"
But there came no answer. I set my teeth, and struggled to free myselfuntil the veins in my forehead were knotted and my bonds cut into theflesh. But, alas! I was held as in the tentacles of an octopus. Everylimb 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 indarkness, save for the zone of light shed by the unflickering flame ofthe 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 asI had feared. The pair of scoundrels had departed and left me to myfate.
The small marble clock upon the mantelshelf opposite struck three. Icounted the strokes. I had been in that room nearly an hour and ahalf.
How did they know of Jack Marlowe and his penchant for cards? Surelythe trap had been well baited, and devised with marvellous cunning.That cheque of mine would be cashed at my bank in the morning withoutquestion. I should be dead--and they would be free.
For myself, I did not care so very much. My chief thought was ofSylvia, and of the awful fate which had overtaken her because she haddared to warn me--that fate of which she had spoken so strangely onthe 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 felther soft hand in mine. I looked again into those wonderful, fathomlesseyes; I heard that sweet, musical voice; I listened to those solemnwords of warning. I believed myself to be once more beside themysterious girl who had come into my life so strangely--who had heldme in fascination for life or death.
The candle-flame, still straight and unflickering, seemed like apillar of fire, while beyond, lay a cavernous blackness. I thought Iheard a slight noise, as though my enemies were lurking there in theshadow. Yet it was a mere chimera of my overwrought brain.
I recollected the strange bracelet of Sylvia's--
the serpent with itstail in its mouth--the ancient symbol of Eternity. And I soon would belaunched into Eternity by the poisonous fang of that flat-headedlittle reptile.
Thoughts of Sylvia--that strange, sweet-faced girl of mydreams--filled my senses. Those shrieks resounded in my ears. She hadcried for help, and yet I was powerless to rescue her from the handsof that pair of hell-fiends.
I struggled, and succeeded in moving slightly.
But the snake, maddened by its bond, struck again at me viciously, hisdarting tongue almost touching my shrinking flesh.
A blood-red mist rose suddenly before my eyes. My head swam. Myoverwrought brain, paralyzed by horror, became unbalanced. I felt atightness in the throat. In my ears once again I heard the hiss of theloathsome reptile, a venomous, threatening hiss, as its dark shadowdarted before me, struggling to strike my cheek.
Through the red mist I saw that the candle burned so low that the edgeof the wax was on a level with the green silk cord, that slenderthread which withheld Death from me.
I looked again. A groan of agony escaped me.
Again the angry hiss of the serpent sounded. Again its dark form shotbetween my eyes and the unflickering flame of the candle.
That flame was slowly but surely consuming the cord!
I shrieked for help in my abject despair.
The mist grew more red, more impenetrable. A lump arose in my throat,preventing me from breathing.
And then I lapsed into the blackness of unconsciousness.