fully, still
with a lingering suggestion of the panic. If he had been a hero of
romance, he reasoned, with a dawning grin, that box would have held
exactly one match; and he would have had to light that one very slowly
and carefully. Then, at the last instant, the feeble flicker would have
gone out, leaving it up to him to invent some method of manufacturing
light.

As it was, however, his fat match-box was comfortably filled, and his
cigarette-case, which he eagerly opened and examined by touch, held
three, no, four cigarettes. That was luck! His spirits rose, singing.
Now for a light!

He lit a match, held it up, looked around him, and felt himself grow
suddenly limp with surprise. He had expected, of course, to find himself
in Shaw's room. Instead, he was in a cellar, which resembled that room
only in the interesting detail that it appeared to have no exit. With
this discovery, his match went out. He lit another, and examined his new
environment as carefully as he could in the brief interval of
illumination it afforded.

The cellar was a perfectly good one, as cellars go. It was a small,
square, hollow cube in the earth, not damp, not especially cold, and not
evil-smelling. Its walls were brick. So was its floor, which was covered
with clean straw, a discovery that made its present occupant suddenly
cautious in handling his matches. He had no wish to be burned alive in
this underground trap. The place was apparently used as a sort of
store-room. There was an old trunk in it, and some broken-down pieces of
furniture. The second match burned out.

Affluent though he was in matches, it was no part of the young man's
plan to burn his entire supply at one sitting, as it were. For half an
hour he crouched in the darkness, pondering. Then, as an answer to
certain persistent questions that came up in his mind, he lit a third
match. He greatly desired to know where lay the outlet to that cellar,
and in this third illumination he decided that he had found it. There
must be some sort of a trap-door at the top, through which he had been
dropped or lowered. Those wide seams in the whitewashed ceiling must
mean the cracks due to a set-in door. Undoubtedly that door had been
bolted. Also, even assuming that it was not fastened, the ceiling was
fully eight feet above him. There was no ladder, there were no stairs.
His third match burned out.

In the instant of its last flicker he saw something white lying on the
straw beside