He rose from his chair brusquely.  “I shall not apologise to you for what has happened.  I doubt very much if you are in a frame of mind to accept anything of the sort.  I imagine, rather, that you are promising yourself that we shall pay, and pay dearly, for this—­that, among other things, we shall answer for the murder of that man in the other room.  All this will be quite within your province, Mr. Dale—­and quite fruitless.  To-morrow morning the story that you are preparing to tell now would sound incredible even in your own ears; furthermore, as we shall take pains to see that you leave this place with as little knowledge of its location as you obtained when you arrived, your story, even if believed, would do little service to you and less harm to us.  I think of nothing more, Mr. Dale, except—­” There was a whimsical smile on the lips now.  “Ah, yes, the matter of your clothes.  We can, and shall be glad to make reparation to you to the slight extent of offering you a new suit before you go.”

Jimmie Dale scowled.  Sick, shaken, and weak as he was, the cool, imperturbable impudence of the man was fast growing unbearable.

The man laughed.  “I am sure you will not refuse, Mr. Dale—­since we insist.  The condition of the clothes you have on at present might—­I say ’might’—­in a measure support your story with some degree of tangible evidence.  It is not at all likely, of course; but we prefer to discount even so remote a possibility.  When you have changed, you will be motored back to your home.  I bid you good-night, Mr. Dale.”

Jimmie Dale rubbed his eyes.  The man was gone—­through a door at the rear of the desk, a door that he had not noticed before, that was not even in evidence now, that was simply a movable section of the wall panelling—­and for an instant Jimmie Dale experienced a sense of sickening impotence.  It was as though he stood defenceless, unarmed, and utterly at the mercy of some venomous power that could crush what it would remorselessly and at will in its might.

The place was a veritable maze, a lair of hellish cleverness.  He had no illusions now, he laboured under no false estimate of either the ingenuity or the resources of this inhuman nest of vultures to whom murder was no more than a matter of detail.  And it was against these men that henceforth he was to match his wits!  There could be no truce, no armistice.  It was their lives, or hers, or his!  Well, he was alive now, the first round was over, and so far he had won.  His brows furrowed suddenly.  Had he?  He was not so sure, after all.  He was conscious of a disquieting, premonitory intuition that, in some way which he could not explain, the honours were not entirely his.

He was apparently—­the “apparently” was a mental reservation—­quite alone in the room.  He got up from the couch and walked shakily across the floor to the desk.  A revolver lay invitingly upon the blotting pad.  It was his own, the one they had taken from him after the accident.  Jimmie Dale picked it up, examined it—­and smiled a little sarcastically at himself for his trouble.  It was unloaded, of course.  He was twirling it in his hand, as a man, masked as every one in the house was masked, and carrying a neatly folded suit over his arm, entered from the corridor.