The Club of Queer Trades
"When shall I get out?"
"What can all this be?" I said.
Rupert made no answer, but, lifting his walking-stick and pointing the ferrule like a fencing-sword at the glass, punched a hole in it, smaller and more accurate than I should have supposed possible. The moment he had done so the voice spouted out of the hole, so to speak, piercing and querulous and clear, making the same demand for liberty.
"Can't you get out, madam?" I said, drawing near the hole in some perturbation.
"Get out. Of course I can't," moaned the unknown female, bitterly. "They won't let me. I told them I would be let out. I told them I'd call the police. But it's no good. Nobody knows; nobody comes. They could keep me as long as they liked only—"
I was in the very act of breaking the window finally with my stick, incensed with this very sinister mystery, when Rupert held my arm hard, held it with a curious, still, and secret rigidity, as if he desired to stop me, but did not desire to be observed to do so. I paused a moment, and in the act swung
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