The Chestermarke Instinct by J.S. Fletcher

It needed no more than a moment's reflection to prove to Neale that he had made a serious mistake in obeying that first impulse. Joseph Chestermarke had gone away -- probably for the night. And there had been something in the metallic clang of that closing door, something in the sure and certain fashion in which it had closed into its frame, something in the utter silence which had followed the sudden extinction of the light, which made the captive feel that he might beat upon door or wall as hard and as long as he pleased without attracting any attention. This place into which he had come of his own free will was no ordinary place -- already he felt that he was in a trap out of which it was not going to be easy to escape.

He stood for a moment, heart thumping and pulses throbbing, to listen and to look. But he saw nothing -- beyond the faint indication of the waning moonlight outside the red-curtained, circular windows high above him, and a fainter speck of glowing cinder, left behind in the recently emptied furnace. He heard nothing, either, save a very faint crackling of the expiring ashes in that furnace. Presently even that minute sound died down, the one speck of light went out, and the silence and gloom were intense.