After the third trip, her fears began to mount. He had told her he wouldn’t be any longer than five or ten minutes. She forced herself to make two more trips, but still he was not there. Something was wrong!
She parked the car in the shade of a great oak tree about a half a block from Wisply’s house and continued toward the place on foot. She started up the pathway that led to the house. Suddenly she heard the gravel crunch just ahead of her, then the sound of voices.
She sprang back into a cluster of shrubbery. Too late she learned they were brambles. The thorns clawed her face, caught at the sheer threads in her silk hose. She tore herself away from them and turned on her spikeheeled shoes to run.
She saw a big, moving dark shape, a shape that seemed in no hurry at all, for it calmly moved toward her. The disturbance she had caused trying to escape from those thorny bushes must have attracted their attention.
For a fraction of a second she was paralyzed with fear. Then she mustered her courage, leaped to the side and tried to streak past the figure blocking her path. Just as she thought she was going to make it, a hand darted from the blackness and clutched her throat!
She went down onto the ground with fingers tightening in unhurried pressure on her slim white throat. For all their lack of frenzy, the fingers closed off her breath, gave her no chance to cry out for help. Her senses faded into a whirlpool of blackness.
To Doc Murdock’s befogged brain, it seemed that he was in a small cramped boat that was lurching crazily over a dark, rough sea. Then that illusion faded and he became aware of two concrete facts. His head ached as though the brain inside it had been pounded with a hammer. Secondly, he was not in a boat. He was bound hand and foot and stretched out on the floor of a moving car.
He had a painful few minutes trying to collect his senses and remember what had happened, but after putting those cards back into the cabinet in Wisply’s library, he had no recollection. It didn’t take a super-brain for him to figure out that he had been sapped expertly! Who had done it, though? Hirelings of Wisply? Or had Condor smelled a rat in the shack at Red Point and sent a few of his gorillas to follow him?
He tested the ropes tentatively. They were strong and well tied. His right arm was asleep under him. He attempted to turn over to work the circulation back into it and felt a limp bundle beside him.
Someone else was lying on the floor of the car with him. But the waves of pain shooting through his body from the base of his skull jumbled his thoughts out of all continuity. That last wallop had certainly been well planted.
He hadn’t the least idea where the car was heading. Street lamps, flashing by at regular intervals, told him that they were still in the city. That first thought of being in a boat came back to him. He knew now why he imagined that. It was the smell of salt water. They must be nearing the river.
There was another aroma he was aware of, too, something familiar and sweet. Perfume! In the short space between two street lamps, his heart stood still. He knew that perfume, but he tried to tell himself he was wrong. It couldn’t be!
Making a supreme effort, he turned his head and was able to see the indistinct white blur formed by the other prisoner’s face.
It was Dale!
In his groggy mind he could not begin to answer the question of how she had got there.
Out of the corner of his eyes, he looked up and saw two men sitting on the back seat. He could make out their faces in the red glow of their cigarettes each time they inhaled, but he had never seen either of them before. There were two other men on the front seat. Miles could not see their faces.
Jolting on the floor of the limousine, he wondered just what was behind all this. Where were they taking Dale and him? What were they going to do to them? WasWisply planning to dispose of them because Miles had uncovered his little get-rich-quick scheme, which might trace back to the murder of Mrs. Small, or was this some of Condor’s doings?
Doc reached over to see if Dale was conscious. She was motionless and he could not hear her breathing. A sudden shiver passed over him. Maybe she was dead. Perhaps they had killed her.
He wanted to call to her, but he fought off the impulse. He didn’t want these four men to know he was conscious. Feigning unconsciousness might be the one chance for escape.
While the car sped on and on, he worked at the stout ropes binding his arms and legs, trying to work them free.
With amazing suddenness the car careened to the right, rolled about thirty or forty feet and came to a skidding, jolting halt. It was dark and silent in this spot. Somewhere out on the water, a buoy was moaning its weird refrain. The waves rolled up and lashed against the piling of a pier.
The car doors opened, and the two thugs in the tonneau piled out, stepping on Murdock’s body as they did so. Murdock heard a faint gasp beside him, and he knew Dale was now conscious. The four men conferred briefly together at the front of the car, and then three of them made off in the darkness. There was only one man left to guard the two prisoners.
“Dale!” whispered Murdock sharply. “Can you hear me, Dale?”
“Yes, Doc. What are you doing?”
“I’m about to get — free,” he panted. “There! Now let me untie you. When I give the word, jump out of here and run like the devil. I’m going to tackle the man left to guard us.”
“Where are we?”
“Somewhere on the waterfront is all I know,” replied Murdock.
“Hey, what’s goin’ on here?” snarled the crook in the front seat, twisting around and peering down in the gloom.
At that instant Doc Murdock hit him. It sounded like the thock of a club against a sack of sand. The crook grunted once and spilled down on the front seat like that same sand running out of the sack. Instantly Doc was up and frisking his unconcious body for guns.
He found two, and he thrust one into Dale’s hand. “Pile out and run back from the rear of the car before the others return,” he ordered. “I know this place. It’s Foley’s Wharf — a dilapidated, deserted pier and warehouse close to the slums.”
Dale nodded, spilled out of the tonneau, and started running. Murdock followed. They started along the brick wall of the warehouse when somebody let out a strangled shout behind them. It was the crook Murdock had slugged. A shot sounded from down along the old pier. And then the chauffeur barged into Doc’s form.
To Murdock’s surprise, the fellow didn’t tackle him. He simply sagged drunkenly against the retreating surgeon. He had been accidentally shot by one of his companions. At once Murdock grabbed him around the waist and held him as a sort of shield while he began firing away at the crooks returning along the length of the wharf. All the while Murdock was backing toward the street, urging Dale on.
Slugs whistled dangerously close as the night echoed to gunfire. So anxious to get Dale out of this trap and out of range of flying bullets, Murdock retreated rapidly along the brick wall of the structure close to the old wharf. There was a lighted window just beyond a gloomy doorway, but he didn’t see it. And then, just as he reached a point even with the door, the barrier suddenly opened, letting out an oblong of light that framed the figure of a man with an automatic in his hand.
Dale Jordan jerked her head around, saw this new menace, and opened her mouth to scream a warning. But she was too late. Quick as a panther the man leaped forward and caught the girl’s gun wrist even as he brought his own gun barrel down across the back of Murdock’s neck in a chopping blow.
Everything exploded in a flash of orange light for Murdock. But he didn’t completely lose consciousness as he crumpled down, paralyzed, over the body of the wounded chauffeur. The faint hope of escape he had cherished was cruelly crushed as hands promptly seized him and began dragging him back along the pier.