an automobile drawn up, all ready for being driven out and away.

Feeling quietly for the corner of the gateway, I looked round,
cautiously, lest a headlight on the car should betray my presence. But
there was no headlight, and there was no sound beyond the steady throb of
the steam and the ceaseless pouring of the rain behind me. And then, as I
looked, came a third flash of lightning, and the entire scene was lighted
up for me--the deep-set gateway with its groined and arched roof, the
grim walls at each side, the dark massive masonry beyond it, and there,
within the shelter, a small, brand-new car, evidently of fine and
powerful make, which even my inexperienced eyes knew to be ready for
departure from that place at any moment. And I saw something more during
that flash--a half-open door in the wall to the left of the car, and the
first steps of a winding stair.

As the darkness fell again, blacker than ever, and the thunder crashed
out above the old tower, I stole along the wall to that door, intending
to listen if aught were stirring within, or on the stairs, or in the
rooms above. And I had just got my fingers on the rounded pillar of the
doorway, and the thunder was just dying to a grumble, when a hand seized
the back of my neck as in a vice, and something hard, and round, and cold
pressed itself insistingly into my right temple. It was all done in the
half of a second; but I knew, just as clearly as if I could see it, that
a man of no ordinary strength had gripped me by the neck with one hand,
and was holding a revolver to my head with the other.

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE BARGAIN

It may be that when one is placed in such a predicament as that in which
I then found myself, one's wits are suddenly sharpened, and a new sense
is given to one. Whether that is so or not, I was as certain as if I
actually saw him that my assailant was the butler, Hollins. And I should
have been infinitely surprised if any other voice than his had spoken--as
he did speak when the last grumble of the thunder died out in a sulky,
reluctant murmur.

"In at that door, and straight up the stairs, Moneylaws!" he commanded.
"And quick, if you don't want your brains scattering. Lively, now!"

He trailed the muzzle of the revolver round from my temple to the back of
my head as he spoke, pressing it into my hair in its course in a fashion
that was anything but reassuring. I have often thought since of how I
expected the thing to go off a