My self-restraint was exhausted. I sprang up. In another moment my hands would have been on his throat; the next, I suppose, I should have been a prisoner in the hands of his guard. But that was not his wish. He had shewn me too much now to be content with less than my life, and he was not to be turned from his scheme either by his own temper or by mine. He had moved towards the door while he had been speaking to me; as I sprang at him, a quick dexterous movement of his hand opened it, a rapid twist of his body removed him from my reach. He eluded me. The door was shut in my face. The Pasha’s low laugh reached me as I sank back again in my chair, still raging that I had not got him by the throat, but in an instant glad also that my rashness had been foiled. I heard the tramp of his party on their orderly march along the road from the house. Their steps died away, and all was very still. I looked round the hall; there was nobody but myself. I rose and looked into the kitchen; it was empty. Mouraki had kept his word: we were alone. In front there were sentries, behind there were sentries, but the house was mine. Hope rose again, strong and urgent, in my heart, as my eyes fell on the spot under the staircase, where lay the entrance to the secret passage. I looked at my watch; it was eleven o’clock. The wind blew softly, the night was fine, a crescent moon was just visible through the narrow windows. The time was come, the time left free by Mouraki’s strange oversight. It was then, and then only, that a sudden gleam of enlightenment, a sudden chilling suspicion, fell upon me, transforming my hope to fear, my triumph to doubt and misgiving. Was Mouraki Pasha the man to be guilty of an oversight, of so plain an oversight? When an enemy leaves open an obvious retreat, is it always by oversight? When he seems to indicate a way of safety, is the way safe? These disturbing thoughts crowded on me as I sat, and I looked now at the entrance to the secret passage with new eyes. The sentries were behind the house, the sentries were in front of the house; in neither direction was there any chance of escape. One way was open--the passage--and that one way only. And I asked the question of myself, framing the words in an inarticulate low whisper, ‘Is this way a trap?’ ‘You fool--you fool--you fool!’ I cried, beating my fist on the wooden table. For if that way were a trap, then there was no way of safety, and the last hope was gone. Had Mouraki indeed thought of the passage only as a mediæval curiosity? Well, were not _oubliettes_, down which a man went and was seen no more, also a mediæval curiosity? CHAPTER XVII IN THE JAWS OF THE TRAP