The duke knew perfectly well that he had fallen into the hands of as rascally and evil a gang of ruffians as London could produce. He made no answer to the words of the man who had addressed him.

"You will be better off if you listen to Sidney reasonable, dearie," said the horrible old woman. The words dropped from her lips like gouts of oil. "You will be all the better for listening to Sidney! I'm sure nobody wants to do anything unpleasant to you, but folks must live, and you've reely walked in most convenient, as you might sye."

"What do you want?" the duke said at last.

"Well, sir," the man addressed as "Sidney" replied, "we have got you fair. Nobody saw us take you away. You've disappeared from the accident without leaving a trace like." As he spoke, the man's servile, wolfish face was a sheer wedge of greed and cunning. His tongue moistened his lips as if in anticipation of something. "You see, nobody can't possibly know where you've come. They will think you were smashed up, or got up and went away, out of your mind, after the shock. People'll hunt all over London for you, no doubt, but they won't never think of us. Now, we've got your very 'ansom ticker and a few quids, and the gold purse that 'eld them, and there was a matter of forty or fifty pound in notes in the pocket-book when we opened it. It was that, by the wye, as told us who you was. Now, our contention is that them as 'as as much money as you must contribute to them as 'asn't."

He grinned as if pleased with his own wit, and a horrid little uncertain chuckle went round the room, a chuckle with something not quite human in it.

"Now, wot I says," the man continued, "is this. We will return you the ticker because it won't be of much use to us, except the gold case. We'll keep the chain and the quid box and the quids, and we'll also keep the fi-pun notes. Then, my lord, you'll sit down and write a little note to your bankers and enclose a cheque. I see you have got the cheque-book with you, or I've got it at least. Now, the question is what the amount of this 'ere cheque shall be. You, being a rich man, we cannot put it low, and we hold all the cards. Let's say three thousand pounds. In addition to that you'll give us your word of honour as a gentleman to take no proceedings about this 'ere little matter and say nothing about it to nobody. When that's done, by to-morrow morning, mid-day, say, you can go, and I am sure," he concluded, "with an 'earty hand-shake from yours truly, being a gentleman, as I am sure you will prove, and a lord, too."

The duke considered.

Three thousand pounds is a large sum of money, though to him it meant little or nothing. At the same time his whole manhood rose up within him—the stubbornness of his race steeled him against granting these miscreants their demand. A flood of anger mounted to his brain. His upper lip stiffened and his eyes glinted ominously.

At last he answered the man.

"I'll see you d——d," he said, "before I give you a single halfpenny! And let me tell you this, that, as sure as you stand here now, you are bringing upon yourselves a sure and speedy punishment. You think, because I am wealthy and you know who I am, you have got a big haul. If you were just a little cleverer than you are you would understand that the Duke of Paddington cannot disappear, even for a few hours, without urgent inquiry being made for him. You will infallibly be discovered, and you know what the result of that will be."

"Not quite so fast," said the man called Sidney, in a smooth, quiet voice. "It is all very well to talk like this 'ere, but you don't know what you are a-saying of. You don't know in whose hands you are. People like us don't stick at nothing. As sure as eggs is eggs, unless you do as we are asking, you will never be seen or heard of any more. You think we run a risk? Well, I'll tell you this—I've had a good deal of professional experience—this is one of the easiest jobs to keep out of sight that I've ever 'ad. Now, supposing there 'ad been a little high-class job in the West End—matter of a jeweller's shop, say—or a house in Park Lyne. In that case we should be pretty certain to have some 'tecs nosing round this quarter, finding out where I or some other of my pals had been the night before. We should be watched, and the fences would be watched, until they could prove something against us. But in this case the police won't have a single idea wot will connect us with your disappearance."

"I am not going to argue with you, my man," the duke answered calmly. "I am not accustomed to bandy words with anybody, much less a filthy criminal ruffian like you! You can go to blazes, the whole lot of you! I won't give any of you a farthing!"

Even now the man who was the spokesman of that furtive, evil crew did not lose his temper. He smiled and nodded to himself, as if marking what the duke had said and weighing it over in his mind.

"All right," he answered at length. "That is what you say now. You will say different soon. I am not going to make any bones about it, but I'll tell you the programme, and that is this: To-night we are going to tie you up and take you down into a cellar. There's another one below this, and it ain't got no light nor fire, neither. It is simply a hole in the foundations of the house, that is wot it is. And the rats are all-alive-oh down there, I can tell you! Nice, warm, little furry rats with pink 'ands. You will stay down there to-night, and to-morrow morning I'll come and ask you this question again. I should like to get the business settled and over by mid-day. No use wasting time when there's work to be done. I am a business man, I am. Then, if your blooming lordship is fool enough not to agree to our little proposals by that time—well, then, I can only say that—much as I should regret 'aving to do it—we should 'ave to try what a little physical persuasion means—some 'ot sealing-wax upon the bare stomach, or a splinter or two of wood 'ammered between the nail and the finger, or even a good deal worse than that. Well, it'll all depend on you."

There was something so repulsively insolent in the man's voice that the duke's sense of outrage and anger was even greater than his fear.

He could not, did not, believe that these men would do anything of what they had threatened. His whole upbringing and training had made it almost impossible for him to believe that such a thing could happen to him. It was incredible—perfectly astounding and incredible—that he had even met with this misfortune, that he was where he was. But that the results of his capture would be pushed so far as the man said he was absolutely sceptical. His fierce and lambent sense of anger mastered everything.

"Don't try and frighten me, you scoundrel!" he said. "I won't give you a penny!"

Still in the same even voice the ruffian concluded his address. The circle of the others had come closer and surrounded the duke on every side, while the old woman in the background peered over the shoulders of two men, looking at the bound victim with a curious, detached interest, as a naturalist might watch a cat playing with a mouse.

"Lastly," said the man, "if you go on being silly, after you've enjoyed a day or two with the pleasant little gymes I've told you of, why, I shall just come down into that 'ere cellar one morning, hold up your chin, and cut your throat like a pig! We sha'n't want to have you about if you stick to what you say, and a little cement down in that 'ere forgotten cellar—which, in fact, nobody knows of at all, except me and my pals here—will soon hide you away, my lord! There won't be any stately funeral and ancestral vault for the Duke of Paddington!"

For the first time a chill came into the duke's blood. He felt also a tremendous weariness, and his head throbbed unbearably. Yet there was a toughness within him, a strength of purpose and will which was not easily to be vanquished or weakened.

In a flash he reviewed the chances of the situation. They were going to put him in a cellar till the morning. Well, he could bear that, no doubt. He might have time to think the whole matter over—to decide whether he should weaken or not, whether he should yield to these menacing demands. At the present his whole soul rose up in revolt against budging an inch from what he had said. His intense pride of birth and station, so deeply ingrained within him, turned with an almost physical nausea against allowing himself to be intimidated by such carrion as these. Should the dirty sweepings of the gaols of England frighten a man in whose veins ran the blood of centuries of rulers?

He ground his teeth together and looked the spokesman full in the face. He even smiled a little.

"I don't believe," he said in a quiet voice, "that you are fool enough to do any of these things with which you have threatened me, but I tell you that if you do you will find me exactly the same as you find me now. You might threaten some people and frighten them successfully. You might torture some people into doing what you say, but you will neither frighten me in the first instance, nor torture me into acquiescence in the second. You have got hold of the wrong person this time, my man, and what you think is going to be such a nice thing for you and your crew of scoundrels will in the end, if you carry out your threats, mean nothing else for all of you but the gallows. You may kill me if you like. I quite realise that at present I am in your power, though I do not think it at all likely I shall be so for very long. But even if you kill me you will get nothing out of me beyond the things you have stolen already. You have a very limited knowledge of life if you imagine that anybody of my rank and breed is going to let himself be altered from his purpose by such filth as you!"

There was a low and ominous murmur from the men as the duke concluded. The evil, snake-like faces grew more evil still.

They clustered together under the lamp, talking and whispering rapidly to each other, and the whimsical thought, even in that moment of extreme peril, came to the duke that there was a chamber of horrors resembling in an extraordinary degree that grisly underground room at the waxwork show in Baker Street, which, out of curiosity, he had once visited. There were the same cold, watchful eyes, the mobile and not unintelligent lips, the abnormally low foreheads, of the waxen monsters in the museum.

There was nothing human about any of them; they were ape-like and foul.

The man called "Sidney" turned round. From a bulging side-pocket of his coat he took out the duke's valuable repeater.

"Ah," he said, "I see that this 'ere little transaction 'as only occupied 'arf an hour from the time when we found you to the present. We came out, thinking we might pick up a ticker or two or a portmanteau among the wreck. We got something a good deal better. Never mind what you say, we will find means to convince you right enough, but there is no time now. We're going to put you down in that there cellar I spoke of among the rats, and you will wait there till to-morrow morning. Meanwhile me and my pals will all be seen in different parts of London, in a bar or talking innocent-like to each other, and we will take jolly good care we will be seen by some of the 'tecs as knows us. There won't be no connecting us with your lordship's disappearance. Now then, come on!"

His voice, which had been by no means so certain and confident as it was before, suddenly changed into a snarl of fury. The duke heard it without fear and with a sense of exultation. He knew that his serenity had gone home, that his contempt had stung even this wolf-pig man.

As if catching the infection of the note, the unseen ruffian behind the chair, who held his arms, gave them a sharp, painful wrench.

The men crowded round him. His legs were untied from the chair legs and then retied together. His arms were strongly secured behind him, and he was half pushed, half carried to a door at the back of the kitchen.

The leader of the gang went before, carrying a tallow candle in a battered tin holder.

Passing through the door, they came into a small back cellar-kitchen, in which there was a sink and a tap. A large tub, apparently used for washing, stood in one corner. Deft hands pulled this, half-full of greasy water as it was, away from where it originally stood.

A stone flag with an iron ring let into it was revealed.

A man pulled this up with an effort, revealing a square of yawning darkness, into which a short ladder descended. The leader went down first, and with some difficulty the helpless body of the duke was lowered down after him, though the depth could not have been more than eight feet or so.

When he had been pushed into this noisome hole the duke saw by the light of the candle which "Sidney" carried that he was in an underground chamber, perhaps some ten feet by ten. The walls were damp and oozing with saltpetre. The floor was of clay.

Looking up in the flickering light of the dip he could see where the ancient brick foundations of the house had been built into the ground. He was now, in fact, below the lowest cellar, in an unsuspected and forgotten chamber, left by the builders two hundred years ago.

"Now, this 'ere comfortable little detached residence, dook," said the man, "is where we generally puts our swag when it's convenient to keep it for a bit. Nobody knows of it. Nobody has ever learned of it. We discovered it quite by chance like. That man wot comes round and collects the rents ain't an idea of its existence. This 'ere is Rat Villa, this is. Now, good-night! 'Ope to see your lordship 'appy and 'ealthy in the morning! You will observe we have left you your right arm free to brush the vermin off."

The duke lay down upon his back, looking up at the sinister ruffian with the candle and the dark stone ceiling of his prison.

Then, with an impudent, derisive chuckle Sidney climbed the ladder, and immediately afterwards the stone slab fell into its place with a soft thud.

The duke was alone in the dark!