If he had been quite clear in his head, Napier declared afterward, he would have prudently retraced his steps.
As it was, a sense of blind compulsion was on him. For in that dazzling instant he'd had a glimpse of McClintock. Poor old McClintock, whom Napier had inveigled into this trap; McClintock, his heavy shoulder, his sou'wester, and a bristle of beard stamped for an instant on that blinding, impossible light. Streaks of it still leaked through the blackness. Napier's outstretched hand came almost at once against something soft, yielding. A double-felted curtain. He grasped it and stared through, to find himself standing at the top of a carpeted incline, looking down into a luxurious room, flooded with high-power, electric light. In the glare McClintock, with a knife in his hand, stood not ten feet from a man in shirt-sleeves seated at a table. The back of the seated figure was turned partly away from the entrance; his head bent; a green shade over his eyes. He was taking down a message. A metal band over his crown, ear-caps set close to his head, held him oblivious to all sound save that which the mysterious forces of nature were ticking into his ears.
Not McClintock's wary approach, but Napier's less cautious movement of the felted curtain, or some cooler air current penetrating the overheated chamber, was responsible for that slight turn of the harnessed head. It was Carl Pforzheim! His cry died on his lips as he tore off the shade. But he couldn't in that lightning instant wrench himself free of the apparatus, for the cord had become wound round his neck. He presented a sickening impression of one struggling in a man-trap, showing, as a wild animal might, a flash of bared teeth as he strained out across the table and seized a revolver. The shot went wild. For he had turned to face the descent of McClintock's knife. Pforzheim fell sidewise against the pink wall of petrol tins, still hung up by his _apparat_, and dribbling scarlet over the pink.
There were two good beds, but only one was slept in. McClintock mounted guard. In the morning he went out and found the body of Sir William's chauffeur. He buried him with Pforzheim.
The den was stocked with supplies, wine, cigars, food, books, cards. There were very few papers, but they were worth coming for.