y bet your bottom dollar it
was some part of their devilish conspiracy. I'm as certain of that as
that we are here now. Now here's another point. Do you remember my
running out of the Casino last night? Well, that was because I saw
Nikola standing in the roadway."

"Are you certain? How could he have got here? And what could his reasons
be for watching us?"

"Why, can't you see? To find out how his plot is succeeding, to be
sure."

"And that brings us back to our original question--what is that plot?"

"That's rather more difficult to answer! But if you ask my candid
opinion I should say nothing more nor less than to make you prisoner and
blackmail your father for a ransom."

For some few minutes neither of us spoke. The outlook seemed too
hopeless for words, and the Marquis was still too weak to keep up an
animated conversation for any length of time. He sat leaning his head on
his hand. But presently he looked up again. "My poor father!" he said.
"What a state he will be in!"

"And what worries me more," I answered, "is how he will regret ever
having listened to my advice. What a dolt I was not to have told him of
my suspicions."

"You must not blame yourself for that. I am sure my father would hold
you as innocent as I do. Now let us consider our position. In the first
place, where are we, do you think? In the second, is there any possible
chance of escape?"

"To the first my answer is, 'don't know'; to the second, 'can't say.' I
have discovered one thing, however, and that is that the street does not
lie outside that window, but runs along on the other side of this wall
behind me. The window, I suspect, looks out on to some sort of a
courtyard. But unfortunately that information is not much use to us, as
we can neither of us move away from where we are placed."

"Is there no other way?"

"Not one, as far as I can tell. Can you see anything on your side?"

"Nothing at all, unless we could get at the door. But what's that
sticking out of the wall near your feet?"

To get a better view of it I stooped as much as I was able. "It looks
like a pipe."

The end of a pipe it certainly was, and sticking out into the room, but
where it led to, and why it had been cut off in this peculiar fashion,
were two questions I could no more answer than I could fly.

"Does it run out into the street, do you think?" was Beckenham's
immediate query. "If so, you might manage to call through it to some
passer-by, and ask h