But there came no answer. I set my teeth, and struggled to free myself until the veins in my forehead were knotted and my bonds cut into the flesh. But, alas! I was held as in the tentacles of an octopus. Every limb was gripped, so that already a numbness had overspread them, while my senses were frozen with horror. Suddenly the lamp failed and died out, and the room was plunged in darkness, save for the zone of light shed by the unflickering flame of the candle. And there lay the weird and horrible reptile coiled, awaiting its release. It seemed to watch the lessening candle, just as I myself watched it. That sudden failure of the light caused me anxious reflections. A moment later I heard the front door bang. That decided me. It was as I had feared. The pair of scoundrels had departed and left me to my fate. The small marble clock upon the mantelshelf opposite struck three. I counted the strokes. I had been in that room nearly an hour and a half. How did they know of Jack Marlowe and his penchant for cards? Surely the trap had been well baited, and devised with marvellous cunning. That cheque of mine would be cashed at my bank in the morning without question. I should be dead--and they would be free. For myself, I did not care so very much. My chief thought was of Sylvia, and of the awful fate which had overtaken her because she had dared to warn me--that fate of which she had spoken so strangely on the night when we had talked on the hotel terrace at Gardone. That moonlit scene--the whole of it--passed through my fevered, unbalanced brain. I lived those moments of ecstasy over again. I felt her soft hand in mine. I looked again into those wonderful, fathomless eyes; I heard that sweet, musical voice; I listened to those solemn words of warning. I believed myself to be once more beside the mysterious girl who had come into my life so strangely--who had held me in fascination for life or death. The candle-flame, still straight and unflickering, seemed like a pillar of fire, while beyond, lay a cavernous blackness. I thought I heard a slight noise, as though my enemies were lurking there in the shadow. Yet it was a mere chimera of my overwrought brain. I recollected the strange bracelet of Sylvia's--the serpent with its tail in its mouth--the ancient symbol of Eternity. And I soon would be launched into Eternity by the poisonous fang of that flat-headed little reptile. Thoughts of Sylvia--that strange, sweet-faced girl of my dreams--filled my senses. Those shrieks resounded in my ears. She had cried for help, and yet I was powerless to rescue her from the hands of that pair of hell-fiends. I struggled, and succeeded in moving slightly. But the snake, maddened by its bond, struck again at me viciously, his darting tongue almost touching my shrinking flesh.