It is I, M. Frecoult. Where are you?" But there was no response.
Hastily the man felt around the interior, groping blindly through
the darkness with outstretched hands. There was no one within!

Werper's astonishment surpassed words. He was on the point of
stepping without to question the sentry, when his eyes, becoming
accustomed to the dark, discovered a blotch of lesser blackness
near the base of the rear wall of the hut. Examination revealed
the fact that the blotch was an opening cut in the wall. It was
large enough to permit the passage of his body, and assured as he
was that Lady Greystoke had passed out through the aperture in an
attempt to escape the village, he lost no time in availing himself
of the same avenue; but neither did he lose time in a fruitless
search for Jane Clayton.

His own life depended upon the chance of his eluding, or outdistancing
Achmet Zek, when that worthy should have discovered that he had
escaped. His original plan had contemplated connivance in the
escape of Lady Greystoke for two very good and sufficient reasons.
The first was that by saving her he would win the gratitude of the
English, and thus lessen the chance of his extradition should his
identity and his crime against his superior officer be charged
against him.

The second reason was based upon the fact that only one direction
of escape was safely open to him. He could not travel to the west
because of the Belgian possessions which lay between him and the
Atlantic. The south was closed to him by the feared presence of
the savage ape-man he had robbed. To the north lay the friends and
allies of Achmet Zek. Only toward the east, through British East