The vision of the woman with the piercing eyes grew gradually fainter .... and it seemed to Dasso that he awoke suddenly.
The room was quite light now. It had been a bad dream. Dasso tried to rise--why, what was this?
His hands and legs were firmly bound and his jaws ached with the strain of the gag. The air of the room was heavy with the fumes of gas, and his chest pained him as though it would burst. In his ears were weird noises and he felt the sweat of fear wet upon his forehead.
Air--he must have air. The window near him seemed to mock him with its promise of life. With an effort he managed to turn on his side, and inch by laborious inch, he worked his way to the edge of the bed--then on to the floor.
He lay for a moment, breathing heavily, his heart beating in great blows against his ribs. He struggled on to his knees and began a series of grotesque hops towards the window.
But with each movement the effort grew more difficult and the strain on his heart grew tenser. Twice he fell forward on to his face, once he struggled again to his feet. The second time he remained lying where he had fallen, his head buried in the dusty fur rug beneath his goal.
Below, in the street, he heard the jangle of milk cans. Then a man cried cheerily to his horse and a cart rattled past the house. Some sparrows flew past the window chirping and quarrelling--they made a shadow on the blinds and were gone.
If only he could throw something and break a pane of glass. Air--air--not two feet away--and life----
With a superhuman effort Dasso was on his knees again--then, a look of despair and a great fear came into the white staring face, and with no sound he rolled over and lay still.
It may be a matter of some astonishment to the few people whom I number as my intimate friends that the records of my doings from the time when Mr. Kyser accosted me as I leant on the parapet of London Bridge, to the time I left the kingdom of San Pietro, have not been chronicled by myself in the first person.
To be candid, such was my original intention, and, indeed, I commenced the task only to find that it was beyond me. There were certain incidents in the record where my actions, however well they turned out, were perhaps not the actions of a strictly honest man. These (although I wish it to be clearly understood that I regret nothing) I felt that I could not write of without feeling a not unnatural bias.