ar ideas, except to tell the police, and to see if we
could get one of the fire brigade men to go down. I was in a dreadful
state about the affair. I felt as though some blame attached to me. By
the time we reached the bridge I felt like fainting. And Joseph
suggested we should go in through his garden door to his workshop--he
had some brandy there, he said--it would revive me. He took me in, up
the garden, and into the workshop: I dropped down on a couch he had
there, feeling very ill. He went to a side table, mixed something which
looked--and tasted--like brandy and soda, brought it to me, and bade me
drink it right off. I did so--and within I should say a minute, I knew
nothing more.

"The next I knew I awoke in pitch darkness, feeling very ill. It was
some little time before I could gather my wits together. Then I
remembered what had happened. I felt about--I was lying on what appeared
to be a couch or small bed, covered with rugs. But there was something
strange--apart from the darkness and the silence. Then I discovered that
I was chained!--chained round my waist, and that the chain had other
chains attached to it. I felt along one of them, then along the
other--they terminated in rings in a wall.

"I can't tell you what I felt until daylight came--I knew, however, that
I was at Joseph Chestermarke's--perhaps at Gabriel's--mercy. I had
discovered their secret--Hollis was out of the way--but what were they
going to do with me? Oddly enough, though I had always had a secret
dislike of Gabriel, and even some sort of fear of him, believing him to
be a cruel and implacable man, it was Joseph that I now feared. It was
he who had drugged and trapped me without a doubt. Why? Then I
remembered something else. I had told Joseph--but not Gabriel--about my
temporary custody of Lady Ellersdeane's jewels, and he knew where they
were safely deposited at the bank--in a certain small safe in the strong
room, of which he had a duplicate key.

"I found myself--when the light came--in a small room, or cell, in which
was a bed, a table, a chair, a dressing-table, evidently a retreat for
Joseph when he was working in his laboratory at night. But I soon saw
that it was also a strong room. I could hear nothing--the silence was
terrible. And--eventually--so was my hunger. I could rise--I could even
pace about a little--but there was no food there--and no water.

"I don't know how long it was, nor when it was, that Joseph Chestermarke