“Now you see,” I said in conclusion, “why I regard myself as being so much to blame.”
“Excuse me,” he answered, “but I cannot say that I see it in the same light at all.”
“I’m afraid I must be more explicit then. In the first place you must understand that, without a shadow of a doubt, Baxter was chosen for your tutor by Nikola, whose agent he undoubtedly is, for a specific purpose. Now what do you think that purpose was? You don’t know? To induce your father to let you travel, to be sure. You ask why they should want you to travel? We’ll come to that directly. Their plan is succeeding admirably, when I come upon the scene and, like the great blundering idiot I am, must needs set to work unconsciously to assist them in their nefarious designs. Your father eventually consents, and it is arranged that you shall set off for Australia at once. Then it is discovered that I am going to leave in the same boat. This does not suit Nikola’s plans at all, so he determines to prevent my sailing with you. By a happy chance he is unsuccessful, and I follow and join the boat in Naples. Good gracious! I see something else now.”
“What is that?”
“Simply this. I could not help thinking at the time that your bout of seasickness between Naples and this infernal place was extraordinary. Well, if I’m not very much mistaken, you were physicked, and it was Baxter’s doing.”
“But why?”
“Ah! That’s yet to be discovered. But you may bet your bottom dollar it was some part of their devilish conspiracy. I’m as certain of that as that we are here now. Now here’s another point. Do you remember my running out of the Casino last night? Well, that was because I saw Nikola standing in the roadway watching us.”
“Are you certain? How could he have got here? And what could his reasons be for watching us?”
“Why, can’t you see? To find out how his plot is succeeding, to be sure.”
“And that brings us back to our original question—what is that plot?”
“That’s rather more difficult to answer! But if you ask my candid opinion I should say nothing more nor less than to make you prisoner and blackmail your father for a ransom.”
For some few minutes neither of us spoke. The outlook seemed too hopeless for words, and the Marquis was still too weak to keep up an animated conversation for any length of time. He sat leaning his head on his hand. But presently he looked up again.
“My poor father!” he said. “What a state he will be in!”
“And what worries me more,” I answered, “is how he will regret ever having listened to my advice. What a dolt I was not to have told him of my suspicions.”
“You must not blame yourself for that. I am sure my father would hold you as innocent as I do. Now let us consider our position. In the first place, where are we, do you think? In the second, is there any possible chance of escape?”
“To the first my answer is, ‘don’t know;’ to the second, ‘can’t say.’ I have discovered one thing, however, and that is that the street does not lie outside that window, but runs along on the other side of this wall behind me. The window, I suspect, looks out on to some sort of a courtyard. But unfortunately that information is not much use to us, as we can neither of us move away from where we are placed.”
“Is there no other way?”
“Not one, as far as I can tell. Can you see anything on your side?”
“Nothing at all, unless we could get at the door. But what’s that sticking out of the wall near your feet?”
To get a better view of it I stooped as much as I was able.
“It looks like a pipe.”
The end of a pipe it certainly was, and sticking out into the room but where it led to, and why it had been cut off in this peculiar fashion, were two questions I could no more answer than I could fly.
“Does it run out into the street, do you think?” was Beckenham’s immediate query. “If so, you might manage to call through it to some passerby, and ask him to obtain assistance for us!”
“A splendid notion if I could get my mouth anywhere within a foot of it, but as this chain will not permit me to do that, it might as well be a hundred miles off. It’s as much as I can do to touch it with my fingers.”
“Do you think if you had a stick you could push a piece of paper through? We might write a message on it.”
“Possibly, but there’s another drawback to that. I haven’t the necessary piece of stick.”
“Here is a stiff piece of straw; try that.”
He harpooned a piece of straw, about eight inches long, across the room towards me, and, when I had received it, I thrust it carefully into the pipe. A disappointment, however, was in store for us.
“It’s no use,” I reported sorrowfully, as I threw the straw away. “It’s an elbow halfway down, and that would prevent any message from being pushed through.”
“Then we must try to discover some other plan. Don’t lose heart!”
“Hush! I hear somebody coming.”
True enough a heavy footfall was approaching down the passage. It stopped at the door of the room in which we were confined, and a key was inserted in the lock. Next moment the door swung open and a tall man entered the room. A ray of sunlight, penetrating between the boards that covered the window, fell upon him, and showed us that his hair
