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Page 112
With a rush we got to the poisoned men and dragged
them out into the well-lit hall. Both of them were
blue-lipped and insensible, with swollen, congested
faces and protruding eyes. Indeed, so distorted were
their features that, save for his black beard and
stout figure, we might have failed to recognize in one
of them the Greek interpreter who had parted from us
only a few hours before at the Diogenes Club. His
hands and feet were securely strapped together, and he
bore over one eye the marks of a violent blow. The
other, who was secured in a similar fashion, was a
tall man in the last stage of emaciation, with several
strips of sticking-plaster arranged in a grotesque
pattern over his face. He had ceased to moan as we
laid him down, and a glance showed me that for him at
least our aid had come too late. Mr. Melas, however,
still lived, and in less than an hour, with the aid of
ammonia and brandy I had the satisfaction of seeing
him open his eyes, and of knowing that my hand had
drawn him back from that dark valley in which all
paths meet.
It was a simple story which he had to tell, and one
which did but confirm our own deductions. His
visitor, on entering his rooms, had drawn a
life-preserver from his sleeve, and had so impressed
him with the fear of instant and inevitable death that
he had kidnapped him for the second time. Indeed, it
was almost mesmeric, the effect which this giggling
ruffian had produced upon the unfortunate linguist,
for he could not speak of him save with trembling
hands and a blanched cheek. He had been taken swiftly
to Beckenham, and had acted as interpreter in a second
interview, even more dramatic than the first, in which
the two Englishmen had menaced their prisoner with
instant death if he did not comply with their demands.
Finally, finding him proof against every threat, they
had hurled him back into his prison, and after
reproaching Melas with his treachery, which appeared
from the newspaper advertisement, they had stunned him
with a blow from a stick, and he remembered nothing
more until he found us bending over him.
And this was the singular case of the Grecian
Interpreter, the explanation of which is still
involved in some mystery. We were able to find out,
by communicating with the gentleman who had answered
the advertisement, that the unfortunate young lady
came of a wealthy Grecian family, and that she had
been on a visit to some friends in England. While
there she had met a young man named Harold Latimer,
who had acquired an ascendancy over he and had
eventually persuaded her to fly with him. Her
friends, shocked at the event, had contented
themselves with informing her brother at Athens, and
had then washed their hands of the matter. The
brother, on his arrival in England, had imprudently
placed himself in the power of Latimer and of his
associate, whose name was Wilson Kemp--a man of the
foulest antecedents. These two, finding that through
his ignorance of the language he was helpless in their
hands, had kept him a prisoner, and had endeavored by
cruelty and starvation to make him sign away his own
and his sister's property. They had kept him in the
house without the girl's knowledge, and the plaster
over the face had been for the purpose of making
recognition difficult in case she should ever catch a
glimpse of him. Her feminine perception, however, had
instantly seen through the disguise when, on the
occasion of the interpreter's visit, she had seen him
for the first time. The poor girl, however, was
herself a prisoner, for there was no one about the
house except the man who acted as coachman, and his
wife, both of whom were tools of the conspirators.
Finding that their secret was out, and that their
prisoner was not to be coerced, the two villains with
the girl had fled away at a few hours' notice from the
furnished house which they had hired, having first, as
they thought, taken vengeance both upon the man who
had defied and the one who had betrayed them.
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