He might expect little mercy at Kendale's hands, when two fortunes and a beautiful young girl hung in the balance.
For hours he lay there, turning the matter over in his mind.

He knew he was terribly weak from the awful fall which he had received, and which had hurt his head the second time in almost the same place; but escape he must from the clutches of the conspirators, even though he were dying.
Suddenly the key turned in the lock, the door swung open and Kendale entered, bearing a lighted candle in his hand.
"Ah, you have come to, have you ?" he remarked, seeing the other's eyes turn toward him; and before Lester Armstrong could answer he went on quickly: "You are the only one who knows the combination which opens the safe of the late Marsh & Co., and as I intend to open it to-morrow morning at the usual hour in place of your punctual self, it will be most necessary for you to give me the required information." For one moment Lester Armstrong gazed steadily into the face of the fiend incarnate before him--a look before which the other quailed despite his apparent bravado.
"I am in your power and at your mercy," he said, "but though you torture me on the rack I shall never tell you what you want to know.

That safe contains valuable papers which belong to others; they are secure in my keeping.

You can kill me, but the secret of the safe combination will die with me." Kendale laughed a little short, hard laugh.
"You are mad to thus defy me," he cried, harshly, "when you stop to consider that I can open it in any event.

I can simply say the combination has slipped from my mind.