lamp of pottery, burning
wanly on a stone shelf jutting from the wall, showed the door, low,
metal-bound, of tough black oak. He could see nothing, but his ears
caught fragments of sound at intervals from within; a clank of chains, a
scraping as of a heavy object dragged across the floor. He leaned
against the wall of the passage, the lamplight on his face, his figure
tense with expectation, his hands quite unconsciously hard clenched.
Without warning there rose from inside a frantic gibbering, meaningless,
bestial, horribly shrill. Nicanor smiled with narrowed eyes.

"Well for me I drew thy sting, old man!" he muttered.

The gibbering broke suddenly into a scream that rang for an instant and
stopped short, leaving blank silence. Nicanor's face sharpened and grew
pinched with eagerness; under scowling brows his eyes took on a strange
glitter like the eyes of an animal in the dark. He crouched closer to
the door, his body rigid with the strain of listening. Once more the cry
of pain rose, this time sustained and savage with despair; it choked
and gurgled horribly into silence; and rose again, more agonized, more
bitter.

"Perhaps he wishes now he had not entered that garden!" said Nicanor,
and laughed low in triumph. Every nerve was thrilling to the savage lust
of blood, half-lost instinct of old days when men lived and died by
blood, when the battle was to the strongest, and life was a victim's
forfeit. He longed to look through the iron-bound door, to see for
himself Marcus paying the price for his temerity. Strangely, he could
not bring himself to believe that Marcus was unable to betray him; it
seemed to him as though the man's fearful straining after speech must
have result of some sort. Even though he knew this idea to be absurd, he
found himself on edge with suspense.

The cries became long-drawn, agonized, unceasing. There is but one sound
in the world as bad as the sound of a man's screaming, and that other is
the scream of a wounded horse. Nicanor set his teeth.

"Now they are twisting the cord about his head.... And yet, though they
kill him, the poor fool cannot speak. I have well taken care of that, it
appears.... They have him on the stone table, and his hands are bound. I
can see it--oh, ay, I can see it well enough. I can see that he writhes
in torment; and his face--what would his face be? Purple, perhaps; and
the cord about his temples hath bitten through the flesh. There is blood
upon his face, a