But how?
He raised his head and looked round the room. The curtains had
not been drawn and enough light came into the room from the
outside to enable him to distinguish the outlines of the
furniture. It was a bedroom, furnished in rather a massive style,
with some kind of thick, soft carpet into, which the feet sank.
Desmond tested his bonds. He was very skillfully tied up. He
fancied that with a little manipulation he might contrive to
loosen the rope round his right arm, for one of the knots had
caught in the folds of his coat. The thongs round his left arm
and two legs were, however, so tight that he thought he had but
little chance of ridding himself of them, even should he get his
right arm free; for the knots were tied at the back under the
seat of the chair in such a way that he could not reach them.
He, therefore, resigned himself to conducting operations in the
highly ridiculous posture in which he found himself, that is to
say, with a large arm-chair attached to him, rather like a snail
with its house on its back. After a certain amount of maneuvering
he discovered that, by means of a kind of slow, lumbering crawl,
he was able to move across the ground. It might have proved a
noisy business on a parquet floor; but Desmond moved only a foot
or two at a time and the pile carpet deadened the sound.
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