I crouched as still as a statue behind it, listening and holding my breath again. Then I heard other rustling with a curiously regular beat or infinitesimal throbbing. For a long time this puzzled me; until at length I discovered that the throbbing was that of my own heart and the rustling due to the movement of my coat lapel against the stiff edge of my collar. I crept on then to the stairs and descended, still using the same caution. I reached the bottom. I was now in the hall. The feel of the marble under my foot told me this. I remembered the direction of the front door and turned toward it. But I had not taken two steps in its direction before I was seized, a hand was pressed on my mouth before I could utter a sound, and my hands were wrenched back violently and pinioned behind me. CHAPTER XXXI A NIGHT OF TORMENT My first thought when I was seized so suddenly in the darkness was that a fresh trap had been laid for me and that I had blundered into it; and that all the fierce wrangling between Inez and Barosa in my presence had been mere pretence, to lead up to her saying what she had about my leaving the house with Miralda. But why all that trouble had been taken when I was already in their power and, above and beyond all, why she should have given me a loaded revolver, was utterly baffling. I had not more than a minute or two to worry over that, however, for my captors dragged me in silence to a room close by, which, like the rest of the house, was in darkness. “Don’t speak above a whisper,” said one of them fiercely, putting his lips close to my ear. An electric lamp was flashed in my face and the sudden light set me blinking and winking like an owl. “Do you know him?” asked a voice out of the darkness. A murmur of dissent from the rest followed. “Where are the rest of you?” was the first question asked of me. “I don’t know what you mean,” I replied after a pause. “Answer my question at once.” I was at my wits’ end to know what line to take. I had had such dramatic proof of Barosa’s methods of testing my good faith, that the suspicion flashed across me that this was just another of them. He and Inez might have patched up their quarrel--if it had been one in reality--and he might have devised this means of seeing whether I meant to keep my promise of silence, before he allowed Miralda to leave the house with me. My hesitation appeared to provoke the man who had put the question. “Answer at once, you dog,” he said. But whether his anger was real or assumed, I could not tell. “There is some mistake----” I began. “You’ll find that out if you don’t answer at once,” he broke in. “I am an Englishman, Ralph Donnington, and have been kept a prisoner in this house since this morning.” “Answer me instantly,” he repeated with an oath. “I have given you the only answer I can.”