The Great Temptation (Thriller Novel). Richard Marsh

      CHAPTER III

      CRASH! CAME THE KNOCKER

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      I do not know how long it was before I realised, even in the faintest degree, what had happened; they had thrust me through the door with such unnecessary violence that, stumbling over some unseen obstacle, I had fallen flat on my face. The fall shook me. It was some moments before I was sufficiently recovered to endeavour to raise myself from where I had fallen. Then, gagged and pinioned as I was, I got on to my feet. Let a person unaccustomed to such exercises lie flat on his stomach and raise himself without the use of his hands; it will quickly be found that the thing is not to be done in an instant. I first of all rolled over on my back doing that with difficulty; then, after a series of jerks, I raised myself to a sitting posture; then, with a lop-sided, crab-like motion, on to my knees: finally, somehow, I gained my feet.

      When I had done that I was no better off. My turnings and twistings had taught me not only that the ground was uneven, but also that there were objects on it of all sorts and shapes and sizes, which, in the darkness, it was not easy to avoid. For instance, I sat upon what I believed to be a broken bottle; possibly only the thickness of the skin coat I was wearing prevented its doing me an injury. I had no wish to stumble over something which I could not see, and possibly fall on something worse than a broken bottle.

      My sensations during the first few minutes which I passed in that gloomy place I am not able to describe. I think what I felt chiefly was anger; I was half beside myself with rage. My inclination was to seek for something anything which would explain what had occurred. Who were the people who occupied the house? What had I done, or what did they imagine I had done, which had caused them to subject me to such treatment? That they were afraid of something was obvious but what? I realised before I had been in that filthy room a couple of minutes that they were all in what struck me as a state of almost panic terror. Their nerves were all on end: they were suffering from what, when I was a youngster, we used to call the "jumps." They were afraid of everything.

      Who did they suppose had knocked at the door? They were afraid of him, whoever it was; but they feared still more when they saw it was not the person they expected. In their terror they would have murdered me. The English-speaking ruffian's inquiry as to whether I was connected with the police suggested a possible explanation. Probably the occupants of the house were criminals, hiding from justice, in continual alarm that vengeance was upon them. Of what crime had they been guilty? They were not Englishmen. Since I was wearing the costume of the St. Petersburg equivalent to our cab-drivers, possibly they were Russian.

      I had no personal knowledge of Russia or the Russians, but I had read things which caused me to feel that in that part of the world people were constantly guilty of all sorts of crimes of violence. Those men had been guilty of some dreadful deed in their own country; to avoid the consequences they had fled for their lives; so conscious were they that the pursuit was probably still hot-foot after them that every trivial event put them in a tremor of fear that the avenger of blood was upon them.

      Lately ill-luck seemed to have dogged my footsteps. That morning, at a moment's notice, I had lost a situation which I had held for nearly four years, I vow and protest for no fault of my own. Messrs. Hunter & Barnett, of Commercial Buildings, Southwark, had presented me with the key of the street for no other reason than that the junior partner had probably had a row with his wife I believe he was always having them and wanted to get even with someone. So he fired me. Hunter was away; possibly when he returned he would ask Barnett a question or two. But he would not return for two or three weeks, and meanwhile what redress had I? There had been talk of my marrying Catherine in three or four months. It looked like it! situations are easier to lose than find. On the top of that trouble had come this! I had been robbed of my clothes, put into filthy garments which had once adorned a cab-driver; and now, gagged and pinioned, I was locked up in some sort of cellar in which the darkness was Egyptian. Heaven only knew how long I should be kept there. And it had all come upon me because I had had the ill-luck to be passing along the pavement in an unknown street at a moment when someone had chanced to be dropping something from a window which had fallen upon my hat and broken it, and I had knocked at the door of the house to return the something to its proper owner.

      In other words, I had done nothing to deserve the plight which I was in. Had I had the dimmest suspicion what the occupants of the house were like I would have walked miles and miles to avoid the street which it was in. What made me so mad was the consciousness that all those things had come upon me because, with the best intentions in the world, I had raised a knocker.

      But while I raged I knew that anger would not mend the situation. What I wanted was a cool head and a clear one; presence of mind; to make the best use of such wits as I had. Frenzy was no use I was not going to get through the door that way.

      When I had realised that much I began to grow calmer. After what seemed to me to be a long interval of waiting I moved gingerly in the direction in which I believed the door was to be brought up suddenly by a wall; whether it was of brick or stone I could not tell. When I fell I lost all sense of direction before I gained my feet; I groped my way along that wall for quite a distance before I came upon the door. It was not at all where I had supposed it to be.

      When I had satisfied myself that it was the door I stood still and listened. I could hear nothing; possibly sounds from above did not penetrate to that underground pit. Although I strained my ears to listen not a sound came to me.

      What was I do? Every sense I had revolted at the idea that I should do nothing; that I should just stay there, helpless as a trussed fowl, waiting for someone to come and let me out. No one might ever come; at least until too late for their coming to be of use to me. At that moment the house might be empty; those guilty wretches might have fled for their lives. The bearded man had brought them agitating news of some sort. Conceivably he had come to tell them that the officers of the law were on their track; in which case, unless I misjudged them, they certainly would not stand upon the order of their going. With all possible haste they might have rushed from the place, never to return. In that case what would become of me? With that disgusting rag in my mouth, which felt each second as if it would choke me, I could not utter a sound. Suppose someone did come to the house the police, for instance; I could not hear them. Possibly they might not discover the presence of a cellar at the foot of those mean, rotten stairs. What could I do?

      I suppose I stayed in that condition of helpless inaction for five or six hours, wandering, to the best of my ability, all over the cellar. I could not be sure that I did not traverse the same piece of ground twice, but I did my best to learn with my feet what kind of place it was. I walked from wall to wall, counting my steps as I went by which I judged it to be about sixteen feet across in one direction and fifteen in the other. What it had been used for I could not make out possibly as some sort of lumber room. There seemed to be all sorts of queer things upon the floor whose nature I could not ascertain. I should have liked to be able to strike a match, and see what some of them were.

      As time went on I became both hungry and tired. I had been a little late that morning; there had only been time for me to scamp my breakfast. I had had no dinner, which I always had at the Borough Restaurant as near as possible to one o'clock, and which was to me the meal of the day. I began to feel the want of it. It is odd how hungry one can get if one knows it is impossible to get anything to eat and thirsty.

      I do not know how long I had been there when it first began to dawn upon me that my hands were not so tightly tied as they had been. I had become weary of standing, and found that leaning against the wall afforded a little rest. I was unwilling to sit down; one experience of the difficulty of rising from a sitting posture with my hands tied behind was enough. My hands and arms and wrists were growing more and more painful; they were in an unnatural position. If I could only loosen my wrists a little I might be eased. With this idea I gave my wrists a little tug, and found that they were