Penny Blood Serial Fiction — page 313: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

296 REYNOLDS’ WORKS looked into the inner room, they saw nothing suspicious, the outer door had been left wide open, and the merest cry would be heard down-stairs. Assuredly, then, Chiffiin was acting fairly, and there was no perfidy to apprehend. Deveril was the first to make a movement to follow the Cannibal, for he was resolved that if any traitorous intent should suddenly develop itself, he would be the foremost to bear its brunt, and to the extent of his power shield and protect his benefactor the Marquis of EKagledean. Chiffin, with the candle in one hand and his club in the other, ad- vanced across the room from the new doorway toward the table, which stood against the opposite wall. Deveril had just crossed the threshold, the marquis was close at hand, when all of a sudden the floor appeared to give way beneath Chiffin’s feet, the carpet sinking down at the same time. A horrible yell burst from his lips, the candle and the club fell from his hands, and in the twinkling of an eye he dis- appeared from the view. But where he had gone down, and the carpet with him, a square chasm remained open in the floor, black and yawning, as if it were the bottomless pit itsell. Wilham Deveril and the Marquis of Eagledean recoiled in dismay from the astounding spectacle. Horror seized upon them with paralyzing effect, rendering them speechless, and there they stood for a few moments, gazing in the stupor of consternation upon the open trap-door through which the Cannibal had disappeared, as if having sold his soul to Satan, his time had come and an abyss had yawned to swallow him up. Suddenly recovering their presence of mind, the marquis” and Deveril exchanged looks of unutterable horror, and then they turned to flee from a place where such hideous pitfalls appeared to have existence. Be it understood that the candle which remained burning upon the table in the inner room (that which Chiffin had carried being extinguished as it fell) not merely lighted the scene of horror in the immediate vicinage, but also threw its beams into the smaller room where Lord Eagledean and Deveril now were. But on turning toward the outer door, they perceived that it was shut. This had been done by old Solomon Pateh, who had stolen up-stairs just at the very time they were following Chifin into the inner room, and he had shut that outer door to pre- Eomiecbooks (ee)