"Your instructions," I said. "Ay. Mine." "Then you----" "The cipher was my idea entirely. Ah! but you must not blame Miss Ottley. She signed the first letter without understanding. Later, however, she would not write. She knew. I was obliged to use the typewriter, and in order to convince you of the authenticity of the letter I threw at your feet last Thursday night--my emissary followed you home and pretended to wish to wrest it from you. You fell into the snare. And now you are here, and no one knows, eh? No one knows?" "You think so?" I asked. I was beginning to get back my wits. But he only laughed. "It does not matter. The great thing is, you are here and in my power. That was all I wanted. Now, Ottley! Now!" It was another signal. Something hard and heavy crashed against my skull. For a second I fought for breath against a horrible feeling of sickness and impotence, then came blank night and nothingness. I had been sandbagged. I recovered to find that my captors had strapped me hand and foot in a huge iron chair. I could not move an inch in any one direction, but otherwise my situation was tolerably comfortable. Belleville sat facing me some feet away. He was plucking thoughtfully at his big, black beard. There was no one else in the room. Perceiving I was awake, he arose and took from a table near him a glass of water, which he brought to me. "It is not poisoned," he remarked. "I have considerable need of you for some time yet." He placed the glass to my lips then, and I drank with confidence. I felt better afterwards, but my head ached bravely still. Belleville resumed his chair and again began to pluck at his beard. "No doubt your head aches," he observed. "I regret having been obliged to use you so discourteously, but we have had so much experience of your muscular vigour that to have risked a physical encounter would have been absurd. We might have been forced to kill you, and that would not have suited my plans." "Indeed," said I. It cost me a painful effort to speak at all. "I desire to be perfectly candid with you," said Belleville. "But before we get down to business it were as well to prove to you how completely at my mercy you are." He took, as he spoke, a revolver from his pocket and aimed carelessly at the opposite wall. "This apartment used to be a shooting gallery," he observed. "All the walls are padded." He then discharged the weapon six times in rapid succession. The bullets spattered on a plate of steel. The sound of the reports was simply deafening. A full minute passed before the echoes and reverberations ceased. All the while Belleville smiled at me. "No one heard but you and I," he said. "The futility, therefore, of wasting your breath in shouting for help will appeal to you."