eed it in this chamber I am
providing.... But it may be," he said thoughtfully, "that your
breath will last your need. Thirst may be the more impatient for her
victim; they tell me thirst is an obtrusive visitor. As you were,
this evening.... Still, why do you not cry out a little? It will
amuse my black."

Yes, this was real, Ryder reminded himself. And these things could
happen--had happened. He remembered suddenly the hideous scene,
outside the dungeons, in "Francesca da Rimini," when that bestial
brother goes in to the helpless prisoners. He remembered the sick
horror of those groans....

He remembered also various excursions of his in the Tower of London
and the Seigniory of Florence, and the sight of old rings and stakes
and racks and the feeling of their total unrelatedness to every
actuality.

And yet they had happened. And this thing, for all its fantastic
medieval horror, was happening. Brick by brick the imprisoning wall
was rising. Brick by brick it intervened between him and sane,
sensible, happy, normal life.

Eye for eye he gave the general back his look. He had always
wondered about the poor devils in underground torture chambers. Had
wondered how they had the stuff to hold out, against such odds, for
some belief, some information.... Now he knew the stiffening stuff
of a personal hate, upholding to the very grave....

That sardonic, devil's face.... That face which was going back
upstairs to Aimee.... But he must not think of that or he should
give way and begin to babble, to plead.... He must simply stand and
meet that glance....

And there came the incredible, insane moment when Ryder looked out
on that face through one last breathing space, and then saw the
fitted brick, settled into place, blot the world to darkness before
his eyes.

CHAPTER XV

UNDERGROUND

Alone in the gloom of that strange room, Aimee sat rigid. Listening.
Not a sound, beyond the closed door, from the long drawing room. Not
a sound, beyond the other door, from the room where the slave,
Fatima, waited to assist in her disrobing.

Silence everywhere--save for a low lapping of water against the
masonry beneath her windows.

The palace was on the river, then, or on some old backwater. She
remembered glimpses of dark canals on her drive that morning--had it
only been that morning? The sound of that soft, hidden water added
to her feeling of isolation and remoteness from everything that had
been her life befor