There was a horrible smile on his thin lips, and Poltavo, with a
premonition of what awaited him beyond the tunnel, forgot the menacing
knife at his throat and screamed.

Hands gripped him and strangled the cry as it escaped him. Something
heavy struck him behind the ear and he lost consciousness. He awoke to
find himself travelling smoothly along the rock gallery. He was half
lying, half reclining on Fall's knees. He did not attempt to move; he
knew now that he was in mortal peril of his life. No word was spoken
when he was dragged roughly from the car, placed in another elevator and
whirled upwards, emerging into a little chamber at the end of the
underground corridor which ran beneath the Secret House.

A door was opened and he was thrust in without a word. He heard the
clang of the steel door behind him, and the lights came on to show him
that once again he was in the underground room where he had been
confined before.

There was the table, there was the heavy chair, there in the far corner
of the room was the barred entrance to the other elevator. Anyway he was
free from the police; that was something. He was safe just so long as it
suited the book of Farrington and his friend to keep him safe. What
would they do? What excuse could he offer? They had overheard the
conversation between himself and T. B., he knew that, and cursed his
folly. He ought to have kept away from Moor Cottage. He knew there was
something sinister about the place, but T. B. should have known that
even better than he. Why had T. B. left him?

These and a thousand other thoughts shot through his mind as he paced
the vaulted apartment. They were in no hurry to feed him. He had almost
forgotten what time it was; whether it was day or night in that
underground vault into which no ray of sunlight ever penetrated. They
had left him with the handcuffs on his wrists; they would come and
relieve him of these encumbrances. What were their plans with him? He
felt his pockets carefully. T. B. had taken away the only weapon he had
had, and for the first time for many years Count Poltavo was unarmed.

His heart was beating with painful rapidity and his breath came
laboriously. He was terror-stricken. He turned to find the door through
which he had come, and to his surprise he could not see it. So far as he
could detect, the stone wall ran without a break from one end of the
apartment to the other. Escape could not lie that way; of that he was
satisfi