"Yes," answered Picard. "What heady stuff this English beer is. I wish
we had some good French bock; this makes me drowsy."

Lamoine did not answer; he was nodding in his chair. Picard threw
himself down on his mattress in one corner of the room; Lamoine, when
he slipped from his chair, muttered an oath, and lay where he fell.

Twenty minutes later the door stealthily opened, and Adolph's head
cautiously reconnoitred the situation, coming into the silent apartment
inch by inch, his crafty eyes rapidly searching the room and filling
with malicious glee when he saw that everything was as he had planned.
He entered quietly and closed the door softly behind him. He had a
great coil of thin strong cord in his hand. Approaching the sleeping
men on tiptoe, he looked down on them for a moment, wondering whether
the drug had done its work sufficiently well for him to proceed. The
question was settled for him with a suddenness that nearly unnerved
him. An appalling clang of the bell, a startling sound that seemed loud
enough to wake the dead, made him spring nearly to the ceiling. He
dropped his rope and clung to the door in a panic of dread, his
palpitating heart nearly suffocating him with its wild beating, staring
with affrighted eyes at the machine which had given such an unexpected
alarm. Slowly recovering command over himself, he turned his gaze on
the sleepers: neither had moved; both were breathing as heavily as
ever.

Pulling himself together, he turned his attention first to Picard, as
the more dangerous man of the two, should an awakening come before he
was ready for it. He bound Picard's wrists tightly together; then his
ankles, his knees, and his elbows. He next did the same for Lamoine.
With great effort he got Picard in a seated position on his chair,