Then he seized the arm of his companion, and hurried her around the nearest corner and on through the gloom; on till the river was full in sight. * * * * * Meanwhile Van Vernet, having been brought out from his closet-prison, lay upon the floor of the inner room at the lately-deserted Francoise abode, still bound, and gagged almost to suffocation, while, to make his isolation yet more impressive, Mamma had tied a dirty rag tightly about his eyes. Left in doubt as to the fate that awaited him--unable to move, to see, or to use his voice,--Van Vernet lay as helplessly ensnared as if he were the veriest dullard and bungler, instead of the shrewdest and most daring member of the force. They had transferred him from the closet to his present position in profound silence. He knew that they were moving about stealthily--he could guess, from the fact that but one door had been opened, and from the short distance they had borne him, that he was in the inner instead of the outer room--he had heard them moving about in the next room, and had caught the murmur of their voices as they engaged in what seemed a sharp dispute, carried on in guarded tones--then slower movements, sharp whispers, and finally retreating footsteps, and the careful opening and closing of a door. After this, only silence. Surrounded by the silence and darkness, Van Vernet could only think. What were their intentions? Where had they gone? Would they come back? Bound and helpless as he was, and menaced by what form of danger he knew not, his heart still beat regularly, his head was cool, his brain clear. "They dare not kill me," he thought, "for they can't bury me handily, and are too far from the river. They'd have to leave my body here and decamp, and they're too shrewd thus to fasten the crime upon themselves. I wish I knew their plans." By and by, as the silence continued, he began to struggle; not with his bonds, for he knew that to be useless, but in an effort to propel himself about the room. Slowly, with cautious feeling of his way, by bringing his head or feet first into contact with the new space to be explored, he made the circuit of the room; rolling from side to side across the dusty floor, bringing himself up sharply against the walls on either side, in the hope of finding anything--a hook, a nail, a projecting bit of wood--against which he might rub his head, hoping thus to remove the bandage from his eyes, perhaps the gag from his mouth. But his efforts were without reward. The room was bare. Not a box, not a bit of wood, not a projecting hook or nail; only a few scattering rags which, as he rolled among them, baptized him with a cloud of dust and reminded him, by their offensive odor, of the foul cellar in Papa Francoise's deserted K--street abode.