He caught the whiff of danger as he stepped across the threshold and he tried to turn and run, but he was too late. He felt his body crumpling forward to crash toward the floor.
"Johnny!" he cried and the cry bubbled in his throat. "Johnny!"
Inside his brain a voice whispered back. "It's all right, Ash. We're locked."
Then darkness came.
IV
There was someone in the room and Sutton kept his eyelids down, kept his breathing slow.
Someone in the room, pacing quietly. Stopping now before the window to look out, moving over to the mantelpiece to stare at the painting of the forest brook. And in the stillness of the room, Sutton heard the laughing babble of the painted stream against the splashing of the fountain, heard the faint bird notes that came from the painted trees, imagined that even from the distance that he lay he could smell the forest mold and the cool, wet perfume of the moss that grew along the stream.
The person in the room crossed back again and sat down in a chair. He whistled a tune, almost inaudibly. A funny, little lilting tune that Sutton had not heard before.
Someone gave me a going over, Sutton told himself. Knocked me out fast, with gas or powder, then gave me an overhauling. I seem to remember some of it…hazy and far away. Lights that glowed and a probing at my brain. And I might have fought against it, but I knew it was no use. And, besides, they're welcome to anything they found. He hugged himself with a mental smugness. Yes, they're welcome to anything they pried out of my mind.
But they've found all they're going to find and they have gone away. They left someone to watch me and he still is in the room.