But he was grasped by the neck with brutal force, and some one knelt on his back.
"Philip Anson," hissed a man's voice, "do you remember Jocky Mason?"
So he had fallen into a trap, cunningly prepared by what fiendish combination of fact and artifice he had yet to learn. Jocky Mason, the skulking criminal of Johnson's Mews. Was he in that man's power?
Under such conditions a man thinks quickly. Philip's first ordered thought was one of relief. He had fallen into the clutches of an English brigand. Money would settle this difficulty, if all other means failed.
"Yes, yes," he gurgled, half-strangled by the fierce pressure on his throat.
"You hit me once from behind. You can't complain if I do the same. You sent me to a living hell for ten years--not your fault that it wasn't forever. Lie still! Not all your money can save you now. I am judge and jury, and hell itself. You are dying--dying--dead!"
And with the final words drawled into his ears with bitter intensity, Philip felt a terrible blow descend on his head. There was no pain, no fear, no poignant emotion at leaving all the world held so dear to him. There was an awful shock. A thundercloud seemed to burst in his brain, and he sank into the void without a groan.
Now, in falling, the hard, felt hat he wore dropped in front of his face. The first wild movement of his head tilted it outward, but the savage jerk given by his assailant brought the rim slightly over his skull again.
In the almost complete darkness of the passage, Mason could not see the slight protection this afforded to his victim, and the sledge-hammer blow he delivered with a life-preserver--that murderous implement named so utterly at variance with its purpose--did not reveal the presence of an obstacle.
He struck with a force that would have stunned an ox; it must have killed any man, be he the hardest-skulled aborigine that ever breathed. But the stout rim of the hat, though crushed like an eggshell, took off some of the leaden instrument's tremendous impact. Philip, though quite insensible, was not dead. His sentient faculties were annihilated for the time, but his heart continued its life-giving functions, and he breathed with imperceptible flutterings.