The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-02-25

ment the lawyer surmised from damp, moldy odors that immediately assailed his nostrils. A lamp somewhere without sent a yellow gleam through a small grating poorly de- signed to admit light and air. By its feeble, rays he was enabled to gain slight knowledge of his environment. He soon concluded that his prison was an abandoned cellar. Barrels, boxes and a heterogeneous array of other rubbish were piled about him. The walls were festooned with cobwebs, as were rafters overhead.
 His helplessness sent host of startling fears through Bristow's mind. With determined effort he lashed his scattered faculties into activity, recalling events which had transpired before his mind became a blank. He remembered the fight with the Italians in the court, the blow upon his head and sense of falling through inter minable space. As his reasoning powers slowly returned he concluded that some confederate of the Italians must have opened the door to his rear and struck him down, after which he had been borne to his present place of captivity. This seemed reasonable enough when he remembered the re-enforcements brought the two ill-favored villains by his lusty shouts. Doubtless some inmate of the house behind him had been attracted to the scene by the same cause and had taken advantage of the opportunity to place him hors de combat But why was he here? Why had they permitted him to live?
 The purpose of his enemies in thus holdz ing him captive he could not surmise. That it was an evil one went without saying. The fertility of his imagination gave rise to the belief that he was in the clutches of the band he held responsible for the death of Dr. Selden and the disappearance of his daughter.
 Had he been 1ured into those desperate straits by the man in the gray ulster?
 But with all the reasoning and conjecture in which he indulged, the lawyer could form no accurate estimate of the reasons for his captivity or for his life having been spared.
 He wondered vaguely whether Nerissa was safe and if she were confined in a cheerless, comfortless place such as this. His heart sank as he pictured the delicate, sensitive girl bound and thrown into some out-of- the-way spot to await the pleasure of her captors, if, indeed, a worse fate had not befallen her. Impotently he cursed the help lessness that prevented him from continuing his search for her.
 The gravity of his own position had inn pressed itself so forcibly upon him that he he would die of cold. Perhaps that was the object of his captors! The thought was horrifying. Death under the most comfort able circumstances was terrible enough, but to die here, lingeringly, amid wretched sur roundings, bound and helpless, and to be- come after many months a part of the earth of this abandoned cellar, was too grisly a thought to be entertained.
 Furiously he struggled against his bonds. His efforts only served to tighten them the more, causing excruciating pains which made him faint and dizzy. He abandoned the task and sank into semi-stupor. How long he lay thus he never knew. It probably was not more than five minutes. He was aroused by footballs and voices from the sidewalks above. The beat of a policeman's night stick sounded out. Then the voices and steps passed and diminished in recessional
 With a groan Bristow again strained at his bonds, madly, fiercely, like maniac en- deavoring to break through restraining bars. For the nonce all reason was subordinated to primitive instincts.
 Failing once more, the lawyer relinquished his futile efforts and set about planning some way of escape, for escape he must. Every fiber of his being rebeled at the idea of perishing miserably in this wretched place.