She shrieked again, in an agony of terror.

I lay there breathless, petrified by horror.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE FLAME OF THE CANDLE

I shuddered at the horrible fate to which those scoundrels had abandoned me.

Again the cruel flat head of the snake darted forth viciously to within a single inch of my left cheek. I tried to draw back, but to move was impossible, held as I was by that leathern collar, made expressly for securing the head immovable.

My eyes were fixed upon the steady candle-flame. It was burning lower and lower each moment. I watched it in fascination. Each second I grew nearer that terrible, revolting end.

What had happened to Sylvia? I strained my ears to catch any further sound. 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 in that fatal chair and awaited death as I was waiting, I wondered? The whole plot betrayed a devilish ingenuity and cunning. Its very character showed that the conspirators were no ordinary criminals--they were past-masters in crime.

The incidents of the night in London are too often incredible. A man can meet with adventures in the metropolis as strange, as exciting and as 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 thoughts became muddled. I regretted deeply that I had not signed the cheque and saved Sylvia. Yet were they not absolute blackguards? Would they have kept faith with me?

I was breathless in apprehension. What had happened to Sylvia?

By slow, imperceptible degrees the candle burned lower. The flame was long and steady. Nearer and nearer it approached that thin green cord which alone separated me from death.

Again the serpent hissed and darted forth, angry at being so near its prey, and yet prevented from striking--angry that its tail was knotted to the cord.

I saw it writhing and twisting upon the table, and noted its peculiar markings of black and yellow. Its eyes were bright and searching. I had read of the fascination which a snake's gaze exercises over its prey, and now I experienced it--a fatal fascination. I could not keep my eyes off the deadly reptile. It watched me intently, as though it knew full well that ere long it must be victorious.

Victorious! What did that mean? A sharp, stinging pain, and then an agonizing, painful death, my head swollen hideously to twice its size, my body held there in that mechanical vice, suffering all the tortures of the d.a.m.ned!

The mere contemplation of that awful fate held me transfixed by horror.

Suddenly I heard Sylvia's shriek repeated. I shouted, but no words came back to me in return. Was she suffering the same fearful agony of mind as myself? Had those brutes carried out their threat? They knew she had betrayed them, it seemed, and they had, therefore, taken their bitter 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 a cunningly-devised trap could be prepared. I had never dreamed, when I went forth to pull Jack out of a hole, that I was deliberately placing my 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 of the Middle Ages!

Vainly I tried to think. As far as I knew, I had never met either Forbes or Reckitt before in all my life. They were complete strangers to me. I remembered there had been something about the man-servant who admitted me that seemed familiar, but what it was, I could not decide.

Perhaps I had seen him before somewhere in the course of my wanderings, but where, I knew not.

I recollected that soon after I had entered there I had heard the sound of a motor-car receding. My waiting taxi had evidently been paid, and dismissed.

How would they dispose of my body, I lay wondering? There were many ways of doing so, I reflected. They might burn it, or bury it, or pack it in a trunk and consign it to some distant address. When one remembers how many persons are every year reported to the London police as missing, one can only believe that the difficulties in getting rid of the corpse of a victim are not so great as is popularly imagined.

Speak with any detective officer of the Metropolitan Police, and, if he is frank, he will tell you that a good many people meet with foul play each year in every quarter of London--they disappear and are never again heard of. Sometimes their disappearance is reported in the newspapers--a brief paragraph--but in the case of people of the middle cla.s.s only their immediate relatives know that they are missing.

Many a London house with deep bas.e.m.e.nt and a flight of steps leading to its front door could, if its walls had lips, tell a tragic and terrible story.

For one a.s.sa.s.sination discovered, ten remain unknown or merely vaguely suspected.

How many thousands of pounds had these men, Forbes and Reckitt, secured, I wondered? And how many poor helpless victims had felt the serpent's fang and breathed their last in that fatal chair I now occupied?

A dog howled dismally somewhere at the back. The men had told me that no sound could be heard beyond those walls, yet had I not heard Sylvia'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 that small 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 at me with its never-wavering gaze. I saw the pointed tongue darting from its mouth. There--before me--soon to be released, was Death in reptile form--Death the most revolting and most terrible.

That silence appalled me. Sylvia had not replied! Was she already dead--stricken down by the fatal fang?

I called again: "Sylvia! Sylvia!"

But there came no answer. I set my teeth, and struggled to free myself until the veins in my forehead were knotted and my bonds cut into the flesh. But, alas! I was held as in the tentacles of an octopus. Every limb 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 in darkness, save for the zone of light shed by the unflickering flame of the 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 as I had feared. The pair of scoundrels had departed and left me to my fate.

The small marble clock upon the mantelshelf opposite struck three. I counted the strokes. I had been in that room nearly an hour and a half.

How did they know of Jack Marlowe and his penchant for cards? Surely the trap had been well baited, and devised with marvellous cunning.

That cheque of mine would be cashed at my bank in the morning without question. I should be dead--and they would be free.

For myself, I did not care so very much. My chief thought was of Sylvia, and of the awful fate which had overtaken her because she had dared to warn me--that fate of which she had spoken so strangely on the night when we had talked on the hotel terrace at Gardone.

That moonlit scene--the whole of it--pa.s.sed through my fevered, unbalanced brain. I lived those moments of ecstasy over again. I felt her soft hand in mine. I looked again into those wonderful, fathomless eyes; I heard that sweet, musical voice; I listened to those solemn words of warning. I believed myself to be once more beside the mysterious girl who had come into my life so strangely--who had held me in fascination for life or death.

The candle-flame, still straight and unflickering, seemed like a pillar of fire, while beyond, lay a cavernous blackness. I thought I heard a slight noise, as though my enemies were lurking there in the shadow. Yet it was a mere chimera of my overwrought brain.

I recollected the strange bracelet of Sylvia's--the serpent with its tail in its mouth--the ancient symbol of Eternity. And I soon would be launched into Eternity by the poisonous fang of that flat-headed little reptile.