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XVIII

Bane flung back the door. The force and abruptness of it declared him before we saw him.

"Here you are!" he greeted me. "Had your little talk, have you?"

"We've had a little talk," I admitted, manifestly.

"I was sending you," he mocked me by exaggerated deference in his manner, "up to your room to rest. You've been through a bit: and you've rather more before you. You want rest; you'd better go to your room."

I stepped into the hallway with him. He was the stronger; the mechanic was there; also my hands were cuffed together with steel. The moment, however, probably offered my best chance of escape and I tried to take it with the result that I was flung down, allowed to rise and thereupon led to a little room in one of the rounded towers which presided over the lake.