Let him sit up, Toussac, for there is no possibility of his escaping.' Some irresistible force at the back of my neck dragged me instantly into a sitting position, and so for the first time I was able to look round me in a dazed fashion, and to see these men into whose hands I had fallen.

That they were murderers in the past and had murderous plans for the future I already gathered from what I had heard and seen.
I understood also that in the heart of that lonely marsh I was absolutely in their power.

None the less, I remembered the name that I bore, and I concealed as far as I could the sickening terror which lay at my heart.
There were three of them in the room, my former acquaintance and two new comers.

Lesage stood by the table, with his fat brown book in his hand, looking at me with a composed face, but with that humorous questioning twinkle in his eyes which a master chess-player might assume when he had left his opponent without a move.

On the top of the box beside him sat a very ascetic-faced, yellow, hollow-eyed man of fifty, with prim lips and a shrunken skin, which hung loosely over the long jerking tendons under his prominent chin.