mb. And after a time, taking the risk of being heard from outside the
laboratory, he beat heavily upon the door with his fist. No response
came: the silence all around him was more oppressive, if possible, than
before.

The expenditure of more matches enabled Neale to examine further into
the conditions of what seemed likely to be his own prison for some
hours. He was not sorry to see that in one corner stood an old settee,
furnished with rugs and cushions--if he was obliged to remain locked up
all night, he would, at any rate, be able to get some rest. But beyond
this, the furnace, a tall three-fold screen, evidently used to assist in
the manipulation of draughts, and the lathe, table, and apparatus which
he had already seen, there was nothing in the place. There was no way of
getting at the windows in the top of the high walls: even if he could
have got at them they were too small for a man to squeeze through. And
he was about to sit down on the settee and wait the probably slow and
tedious course of events, when he caught sight of an object at the end
of the table which startled him, and made him wonder more than anything
he had seen up to that moment.

That object was a big loaf of bread. He struck yet another match and
looked at it more narrowly. It was one of those large loaves which
bakers make for the use of families. Close by it lay a knife: a nearer
inspection showed Neale that a slice had recently been cut from the
loaf: he knew that by the fact that the crumb was still soft and fresh
on the surface, in spite of the great heat of the place. It was scarcely
likely that Joseph Chestermarke would eat unbuttered bread during his
experiments and labours--why, then, was the loaf there? Could it be that
this bread was--that the slice which had just been cut was--the ration
given to somebody behind that door?

This idea filled Neale with the first spice of fear which he had felt
since entering the laboratory. The idea of a man being fastened up in a
sound-proof chamber and fed on dry bread suggested possibilities which
he did not and could not contemplate without a certain horror. And if
there really was such a prisoner in that room, or cell, or whatever the
place was, who could it be but John Horbury? And if it was John Horbury,
how, under what circumstances, had he been brought there, why was he
being kept there?

Neale sat down at last on the settee, and in the silence and darkness
gave himself up to thoughts