“Here’s your revolver, Hook, now try to be sensible. We may as well go now. The old man and his wife will do as they were told. They are on their way to a city that we needn’t mention by name in front of our friend here, to wait for us and their share of the bonds. Needless to say, they will wait a long while — they are out of it now. But between ourselves there must be no more treachery. If we’re to get clear, we must help each other.”
According to the best dramatic rules, these folks should have made sarcastic speeches to me before they left, but they didn’t. They passed me without even a farewell look, and went out of sight into the darkness of the hall.
Suddenly the Chinese was in the room again, running tiptoe — an open knife in one hand, a gun in the other. This was the man I had been thanking for saving my life!
He bent over me.
The knife moved on my right side, and the rope that held that arm slackened its grip. I breathed again, and my heart went back to beating.
“Hook will be back,” Tai whispered, and was gone.
On the carpet, three feet in front of me, lay a revolver.
The street door closed, and I was alone in the house for a while.
You may believe that I spent that while struggling with the red plush ropes that bound me. Tai had cut one length, loosening my right arm somewhat and giving my body more play, but I was far from free. And his whispered “Hook will be back” was all the spur I needed to throw my strength against my bonds.
I understood now why the Chinese had insisted so strongly upon my life being spared. I was the weapon with which Hook was to be removed. The Chinese figured that Hook would make some excuse as soon as they reached the street, slip back into the house, knock me off, and rejoin his confederates. If he didn’t do it on his own initiative, I suppose the Chinese would suggest it.
So he had put a gun within reach — in case I could get loose — and had loosened my ropes as much as he could, not to have me free before he himself got away.
This thinking was a side-issue. I didn’t let it slow up my efforts to get loose. The why wasn’t important to me just now — the important thing was to have that revolver in my hand when the ugly man came into this room again.
Just as the front door opened, I got my right arm completely free, and plucked the strangling cushion from my mouth. The rest of my body was still held by the ropes — held loosely — but held. There was no time for more.
I threw myself, chair and all, forward, breaking the fall with my free arm. The carpet was thick. I went down on my face, with the heavy chair atop me, all doubled up any which way; but my right arm was free of the tangle, and my right hand grasped the gun.
My left side — the wrong side — was toward the hall door. I twisted and squirmed and wrestled under the bulky piece of furniture that sat on my back.
An inch — two inches — six inches, I twisted. Another inch. Feet were at the hall door. Another inch.
The dim light hit upon a man hurrying into the room — a glint of metal in his hand.
I fired.
He caught both hands to his belly, bent double, and slid out across the carpet.
That was over. But that was far from being all. I wrenched at the plush ropes that held me, while my mind tried to sketch what lay ahead.
The girl had switched the bonds, hiding them under the couch — there was no question of that. She had intended coming back for them before I had time to get free. But Hook had come back first, and she would have to change her plan. What more likely than that she would now tell the Chinese that Hook had made the switch? What then? There was only one answer: Tai would come back for the bonds — both of them would come. Tai knew that I was armed now, but they had said that the bonds represented a hundred thousand dollars. That would be enough to bring them back!
I kicked the last rope loose and scrambled to the couch. The bonds were beneath it: four thick bundles of Liberty Bonds, done up with heavy rubber bands. I tucked them under one arm, and went over to the man who was dying near the door. His gun was under one of his legs, I pulled it out, stepped over him, and went into the dark hall.
Then I stopped to consider.
The girl and the Chinese would split to tackle me. One would come in the front door and the other in the rear. That would be the safest way for them to handle me. My play, obviously, was to wait just inside one of those doors for them. It would be foolish for me to leave the house. That’s exactly what they would be expecting at first — and they would be lying in ambush.
Decidedly, my play was to lie low within sight of this front door and wait until one of them came through it — as one of them surely would, when they had tired of waiting for me to come out.
Toward the street door, the hall was lighted with the glow that filtered through the glass from the street lights. The stairway leading to the second-story threw a triangular shadow across part of the hall — a shadow that was black enough for any purpose. I crouched low in this three-cornered slice of night, and waited.
I had two guns: the one the Chinese had given me, and the one I had taken from Hook. I had fired one shot; that would leave me eleven still to use — unless one of the weapons had been used since it was loaded. I broke the gun Tai had given me, and in the dark ran my fingers across the back of the cylinder. My fingers touched one shell — under the hammer. Tai had taken no chances; he had given me one bullet — the bullet with which I had dropped Hook.
I put that gun down on the floor, and examined the one I had taken from Hook. It was empty. The Chinese had taken no chances at all! He had emptied Hook’s gun before returning it to him after their quarrel.
I was in a hole! Alone, unarmed, in a strange house that would presently hold two who were hunting me — and that one of them was a woman didn’t soothe me any — she was none the less deadly on that account.
For a moment I was tempted to make a dash for it; the thought of being out in the street again was pleasant; but I put the idea away. That would be foolishness, and plenty of it. Then I remembered the bonds under my arm. They would have to be my weapon; and if they were to serve me, they would have to be concealed.
I slipped out of my triangular shadow and went up the stairs. Thanks to the street lights, the upstairs rooms were not too dark for me to move around. Around and around I went through the rooms, hunting for a place to hide the Liberty Bonds.
But when suddenly a window rattled, as if from the draught created by the opening of an outside door somewhere, I still had the loot in my hands.
There was nothing to do now but to chuck them out of a window and trust to luck. I grabbed a pillow from a bed, stripped off the white case, and dumped the bonds into it. Then I leaned out of an already open window and looked down into the night, searching for a desirable dumping place: I didn’t want the bonds to land on an ash-can or a pile of bottles, or anything that would make a racket.
And, looking out of the window, I found a better hiding-place. The window opened into a narrow court, on the other side of which was a house of the same sort as the one I was in. That house was of the same height as this one, with a flat tin roof that sloped down the other way. The roof wasn’t far from me — not too far to chuck the pillow-case. I chucked it. It disappeared over the edge of the roof and crackled softly on the tin.
If I had been a movie actor or something of the sort, I suppose I’d have followed the bonds; I suppose I’d have jumped from the sill, caught the edge of the roof with my fingers, swung a while, and then pulled myself up and away. But dangling in space doesn’t appeal to me; I preferred to face the Chinese and the red-head.