Part 47 (1/2)

As the rumble of the train came nearer, the door opened, almost without noise, and shut again; and softly, slowly, looking up and down the street, but not below him, almost within reach, a man came down the steps, paused an instant, and stood upon the pavement, to feel, before he could turn his head, a hard grip upon either arm, a cold pressure at the back of his neck, and simultaneously a low whisper:

'One sound and you are a dead man.'

It was all the work of an instant, and so quickly and quietly done that our friends in the alley were not aware of our capture until we had secured our prisoner and Lossing had gone to summon Dave.

Then, still in utter silence, we led our first capture across the alley, and Murphy flashed a dark-lantern in his face.

It was a pallid and cowardly countenance that the light revealed, and I was not surprised to recognise the man I had dubbed 'Smug' upon the day of my arrival at the World's Fair. He was trembling violently, and thoroughly cowed.

We had no difficulty in searching his pockets; he did not so much as remonstrate--perhaps because of the pistol I had now transferred to the hand of Lossing. By the light of the dark-lantern I selected from among a number of keys taken from his pocket a slender one, which, as it only needed the look upon his face to tell me, was the key to the street-door.

'Listen!' I said to him, holding the lantern high. 'It will be to your interest to help us, and you will find it so if you help to make what we are about to do as easy and quiet as possible. We know who are in that house, and if we can take them without noise and trouble, so much the better for them. The place is surrounded; they can't escape alive.

Is anyone in the front room, lower floor?'

He shook his head sullenly.

'You were put there on guard--is it not so?' He blinked under the lantern's rays, and I saw that I was right. 'And you thought it would be quite safe to slip out for an hour or two; and so it would have been last night or the one before. Now, is Delbras on the second-floor front? You had better tell me!' He nodded sullenly. 'And Bob?

Remember, your answers can't injure their case and will benefit yours.

My word is good. Is Greenback Bob there?' Again the sullen fellow bowed his head. 'And how many more, exclusive of your prisoner?' The rascal started, and seemed taken with a new panic. 'You had better be quite frank,' I admonished. 'How many?'

He held up three fingers as well as the handcuffs would permit, and a moment later we had left him at the mouth of the alley, guarded by two officers, while we arranged for our attack.

One man was left to guard the rear, with full instructions covering any and all possible emergencies, and one was told off to guard the front entrance, while the remaining six were paired: Lossing with myself, at his own request; Dave and one officer, and Jeffrys with another. Murphy we had left with Smug, and in charge of the party without.

'Masters,' Lossing said, 'I want to be with the man that attacks Delbras. I owe it to him.' When Jeffrys had heard him he declared Delbras his prey. But I also had my word to say. Jeffrys might serve his warrant and bear off the captive from the city, but he could only take him when I had failed; and so it was arranged.

When all was ready we waited, six of us, upon the steps of the gloomy house, until after what seemed an hour, and was in reality ten minutes, had pa.s.sed, and then a long freight train came rumbling cityward. As it came near I inserted the key in the lock carefully and turned it slowly, and without noise; and while the sound still covered our careful movements, we entered the hall, leaving the officer in charge of the door.

Then, when Dave and his companion had entered the front room and stood ready to move upon the watcher through the door behind the screen, trusting the other door to the watchful eye of the guard at the front, we crept upstairs, with that sidewise movement which insures one who has the patience to try it a silent if slow pa.s.sage, to the top, in single file.

At the top we separated, and while we--Lossing and myself--took our places at the door near the front, Jeffrys listened at the two rear doors, to make sure of the location of his prey, and at a signal which the guard below pa.s.sed on to Dave we moved, each armed with a dark-lantern, to the attack.

I could hear Lossing's breath close beside me as I carefully and slowly tried the k.n.o.b of the door and found that it yielded silently.

The house was an old one, and we saw as we slowly opened the door that the lock was only a fragmentary one; there was on the other side only a handle like that without. Holding our lanterns low we glided in, and were half-way across the room when I raised the lantern and turned its light carefully toward the bed, from whence long guttural breathing told of a sleeper unconscious of our nearness. With lantern in one hand and pistol in the other, I made a forward step as I saw by the ray thrown across the bed the form and face of Delbras; and then, suddenly, beneath my foot, something cracked and burst with a sharp explosion.

Only a parlour match, but it brought the sleeper to a sitting posture, and broad awake in a moment. He did not seem to so much as have seen me, but his eyes and Lossing's appeared to meet and challenge each other, and quicker than I can tell it he had bounded from his bed, s.n.a.t.c.hing something from under the pillow as he sprang--something that glittered in his hand as he hurled himself upon Lossing, and the two grappled and swayed, with the knife gleaming above their heads, held thus by the strong hand of the English athlete.

As I sprang to place my lantern upon the table at the bed's head, that it might help me to see and to aid Lossing, a shriek rang from the room at the rear, and the next moment I saw the knife sent flying from the hand of Delbras, and the two go down, still struggling. A moment I watched them struggling there, and then somehow the villain wrenched one hand free and gripped it with an awful clutch upon Lossing's throat; the next there arose from below a succession of screeches that might have issued from the throat of a bedlamite.

Once and again I had tried to interfere in Lossing's behalf, but the effort seemed useless, until, as the screams from below ceased suddenly, I sprang past the two, and, turning suddenly, struck at Delbras with my clubbed pistol. I had aimed at the arm clutching at my friend's throat, but a sudden movement brought the villain's head in sharp contact with the b.u.t.t of the pistol, and his hold suddenly relaxed, and he lay stunned and at our mercy.

When Lossing, not much the worse for his tussle but somewhat short of breath, had risen and shaken himself together, I said: 'He's only stunned and will soon come to. Shoot him if he stirs before I come back.' And I ran to the room in the rear.

What had happened there can be soon told.

When Jeffrys opened the door of the rear room, which did not boast a lock, he saw a lamp burning dimly upon a shelf in a corner; upon the bed opposite a woman and a man, both sleeping, and under the one window a coil of rope ladder, as if ready for use.