[Illustration: THE PLACE WAS NOTHING MORE THAN A CONCEALED CUPBOARD] "Well?" he said, when he had moved the candle to and fro that I might see the better--his face the while wearing a smile that caught and held my gaze. "Well? what do you think of it, Mr. Taylor?" I did not understand him, and I said so, trembling. "It is a tolerable hiding-place?" said he. I nodded; to please him I would have said it was a palace. "And not a bad prison?" I nodded again; staring at him, fascinated. I began to understand. "And a grave?" I shuddered. "What do you mean?" I muttered. "Lay a man in there, bound hand and foot, and gagged; what would you find in a year's time, Mr. Price? Not much." I stared at him. "If they knew of that downstairs," he continued, stopping to snuff the candle with his fingers, then looking askance at me, "would they use it, I wonder? Would they use it? What do you think, Mr. Price?" Again I made no answer. "Shall I tell them?" said he easily. "What--what do you want?" I whispered hoarsely. "That is better," said he, nodding. "Well, to be candid, almost nothing. Two pledges. First, that you will give no evidence against anyone here. That of course." I muttered assent. I was ready to promise anything. "And secondly, that you will, when I call upon you, do me a little favour, Mr. Price. It is a small matter, a trifle I asked you at my lady's house three days back. Promise to do that for me, as and when I demand performance, and in ten minutes from this time you shall leave the house, safe, free, and unhurt." "I promise," I said eagerly. "I promise honestly!" But even while I spoke--this seemed to be the strangest of all the things that had happened to me that night, that this man should think it worth while to pledge me under such circumstances, or value at a groat a promise so given. For the pledge was a pledge to do ill, and as soon as he and the other conspirators were laid by the heels or had fled the country, what sanction remained to bind me? I saw that as I spoke, and promised--and promised. And would have promised fifty times--with the reservation that I did so under force _majeure_. Who would not have done the same, being in my place? But I suppose I answered too quickly to please him, and so he read my thoughts, or he had it in his mind from the first to read me a lesson, for the words were scarcely out of my mouth before he slid his hand into his breast with the ugliest smile I ever saw on a man's face; and he signed to me to get into the cupboard. "Get in," he said, between his closed teeth; and then when, terrified by the change in him and the order, I began to back from it, "Get in!" he said, in a voice that set me shaking; "or take the consequences. Do you hear me? I am no Ferguson to threaten and no more." I dared resist no longer, and I crawled in, trembling and praying him not to shut me in--not to shut me in. "Lie down!" he said, gloating on me with cruel eyes, and his hand still in his breast.