ere is a
candle? I doubt if we could strike a match in that atmosphere. Hold the
light at the door and we shall get them out, Mycroft, now!"

With a rush we got to the poisoned men and dragged them out into the
well-lit hall. Both of them were blue-lipped and insensible, with
swollen, congested faces and protruding eyes. Indeed, so distorted were
their features that, save for his black beard and stout figure, we might
have failed to recognize in one of them the Greek interpreter who had
parted from us only a few hours before at the Diogenes Club. His hands
and feet were securely strapped together, and he bore over one eye
the marks of a violent blow. The other, who was secured in a similar
fashion, was a tall man in the last stage of emaciation, with several
strips of sticking-plaster arranged in a grotesque pattern over his
face. He had ceased to moan as we laid him down, and a glance showed
me that for him at least our aid had come too late. Mr. Melas, however,
still lived, and in less than an hour, with the aid of ammonia and
brandy I had the satisfaction of seeing him open his eyes, and of
knowing that my hand had drawn him back from that dark valley in which
all paths meet.

It was a simple story which he had to tell, and one which did but
confirm our own deductions. His visitor, on entering his rooms, had
drawn a life-preserver from his sleeve, and had so impressed him with
the fear of instant and inevitable death that he had kidnapped him for
the second time. Indeed, it was almost mesmeric, the effect which this
giggling ruffian had produced upon the unfortunate linguist, for he
could not speak of him save with trembling hands and a blanched cheek.
He had been taken swiftly to Beckenham, and had acted as interpreter in
a second interview, even more dramatic than the first, in which the two
Englishmen had menaced their prisoner with instant death if he did not
comply with their demands. Finally, finding him proof against every
threat, they had hurled him back into his prison, and after
reproaching Melas with his treachery, which appeared from the newspaper
advertisement, they had stunned him with a blow from a stick, and he
remembered nothing more until he found us bending over him.

And this was the singular case of the Grecian Interpreter, the
explanation of which is still involved in some mystery. We were able
to find out, by communicating with the gentleman who had answered the
advertisement, that the unfor