The boys and Mr. Temple fought valiantly, but numbers were against them. Moreover, the attackers threw over the head of each a sack that muffled their outcries and prevented the boys and Mr. Temple from directing their blows. Taken altogether by surprise, they were quickly overcome. Then their hands were tied and they were raised to their feet, and the sacks, which were almost suffocating them, were removed.
A revolver was shoved threateningly into each face.
“Won’t do you much good to scream,” said a voice in the darkness, “but if you do, you know what you’ll get.”
There was a grim earnestness about the tone which commanded belief.
“If it’s money you want——” gasped Mr. Temple, who was breathing heavily.
With two guards to each, the four prisoners were shoved along the broken cobbles of the dim courtyard until a door in a wall was reached. Through this they entered a corridor even blacker than the courtyard behind. There were no lights. One of the guards, however, threw the rays of a flashlight ahead.
An iron door barred the way. A little wicket was opened as the flashlight played over it, and a slanting almond eye stared out unwinkingly. The man with the flashlight advanced, uttered a word in a low voice that the boys could not overhear, and then the door was opened.
Down another pitch black corridor, several turns, and the party halted before a second door. The procedure was similar to that gone through with at the first door. Again they were admitted.
All this time, shuffling along in a silence broken only by an occasional stumble or muttered curse, on the part of one of the guards, they had been descending. It seemed to the boys as if they had stumbled down so many various flights of steps that they must be in the very bowels of the earth. At last a third door was opened, and Mr. Temple and the boys were shoved ahead accompanied only by the man who had been their guide and betrayer.
They stood in a dimly lighted room of Oriental magnificence.
Two men sat at a table. One was inscrutable. He was an old Chinaman. The other wore a sinister smile. He was the man of the train—“Black George.”
The heavy iron door closed behind them with a slight grating sound. Jack turned his head. The door could not be distinguished from the wall. Hangings of thick silken stuffs covered it.
