“I entered and he remained by the door, while I passed quickly about the room, which was bare of every article of furniture save a solitary table and chair. There was not even a window in it, with the exception of one small light situated so high up in the corner made by the jutting-up staircase that I wondered at its use, and was only relieved of extreme apprehension at the prison-like appearance of the place by the gleam of light which came through this dusty pane, showing that I was not entirely removed from the presence of my foes if I was from that of my friends.
“‘Ah, you have spied the window,’ remarked my host, advancing toward me with a countenance he vainly endeavored to make reassuring and friendly. ‘That is your post of observation, sir,’ he whispered, with a great show of mystery. ‘By mounting on the table you can peer into the room where my young friends sit securely at play.’
“As it was not part of my scheme to show any special mistrust, I merely smiled a little grimly, and cast a glance at the table on which stood a bottle of brandy and one glass.
“‘Very good brandy,’ he whispered, ‘Not such stuff as we give those fellows down-stairs.’
“I shrugged my shoulders and he slowly backed towards the door.
“‘The young men you bid me watch are very quiet,’ I suggested, with a careless wave of my hand towards the room he had mentioned.
“‘Oh, there is no one there yet. They begin to straggle in about ten o’clock.’
“‘Ah,’ was my quiet rejoinder, ‘I am likely, then, to have use for your brandy.’
“He smiled again and made a swift motion towards the door.
“‘If you want anything,’ said he, ‘just step to the foot of the staircase and let me know. The whole establishment is at your service.’ And with one final grin that remains in my mind as the most threatening and diabolical I have ever witnessed, he laid his hand on the knob of the door and slid quickly out.
“It was done with such an air of final farewell, that I felt my apprehensions take a positive form. Rushing towards the door through which he had just vanished, I listened and heard, as I thought, his stealthy feet descend the stair. But when I sought to follow, I found myself for the second time overwhelmed by darkness. The gas jet, which had hitherto burned with great brightness in the small room, had been turned off from below, and beyond the faint glimmer which found its way through the small window of which I have spoken, not a ray of light now disturbed the heavy gloom of this gruesome apartment.