Chapter XXX: A Narrow Escape

It has been said that Red Mike was a coward at heart. He proved it now.

With the muzzle of the automatic aiming at his heart he was no match for the sick man on the floor, who had now raised himself to one elbow and was smiling, well pleased by the turn that events had taken.

He raised his hands above his head as he had been commanded to do--and we need not repeat the language he used as he did so.

While he was swearing, Lynne slowly raised himself to his feet, all the time holding the gun in that threatening position.

Then he backed across the room toward a push button in the wall near the door, and with his disengaged hand, pressed upon it, and kept on pressing.

After a wait which seemed very long, which, in reality, was quite short, considering the hour, and during which Red Mike continued to swear and threaten, there was a sharp rap on the door, and, in obedience to Lynne’s summons, a manservant entered the room.

He came to a halt and stared when he saw the situation; but Lynne’s voice addressed him calmly.

“Lift that engraving from its place against the wall, Thomas,” he said. “I want you to use the wire cord to bind this fellow. Wind it two or three times around his wrists with his hands behind him; then ask him to sit down while you do up his ankles in the same manner.”

Lynne watched the proceeding while his orders were being carried out, all the time with that inscrutable smile on his face.

When it was done, he said:

“Now go to the telephone for me. You remember Mr. Carter’s number, do you?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Call him up. Ask him if he will be good enough to come here at once. Tell him that it is important; otherwise I would not make the request.”

“Yes, sir.”

“If he should ask you what is the matter, explain to him that--well, just explain the situation just as you see it and understand it. That will be sufficient till he gets here.”

“But I do not understand it, sir.”

“Neither will he--till he gets here. Go now. Remember, Mr. Carter in person, if he is at home. If he is not, then either one of his assistants.”

“Yes, sir.”

Lynne crossed the room and managed to turn the chair upon which Mike was seated, so that it faced the bed; then, still holding the gun in his hand, he got into the bed again and propped the pillows behind him.

Red Mike was still swearing and calling names, and threatening what he would do when the opportunity offered, even if such opportunity happened a thousand years hence; but he came to a stop and stared in amazement when Lynne returned to the bed.

“You’re a cool one!” he ejaculated for the second time since he had entered that room.

“Precisely; and you’re a hot one--just now,” was the reply.

“Well, you’ve got me--what are you going to do with me, Lynne?”

“I shall let Nick Carter determine that, Mike.”

“Then I see my finish.”

“Possibly.”

“I haven’t stolen anything.”

“No, but you have broken and entered; that constitutes burglary whether you steal anything or not.”

“Well, what are you going to do about it?”

“As I said before, we will let the detective decide about that, Mike. You’re in bad, if anybody should ask you. Who is the woman, Mike?”

“What woman?”

“The one we have already spoken about; the one who sent you here to-night. Who is she?”

“There isn’t any woman.”

“More lies.”

“Take it or leave it; it doesn’t make any difference to me.”

“No?”

“Not the slightest.”

“How long have you known Madge Babbington?”

“Aw, go chase yourself.”

Lynne was really very tired from the exertions he had undergone, and so he half closed his eyes and settled himself back among the pillows to rest until Nick Carter should arrive.

He had an idea, born of the experiences of the last hour, which he now decided to propose to the detective when they were together, and--well, something might come of it for the general betterment of conditions.

Thinking deeply upon it, he dozed, tired out as he was.

He forgot, for the time being, the propinquity of that other man whom he had captured so dexterously.

He forgot that the lynx-eyed gentleman from the Klondike was watching him narrowly, taking note of every breath he drew, and calculating the length of them in order to be made aware of the moment when Lynne should sleep.

Now and then while he watched, Lynne opened his eyes lazily, and then closed them again.

He had directed Thomas to wait at the door for the arrival of the detective, and he began, drowsily, to think that it was taking Nick Carter an unconscionably long time to get there.

Red Mike thought that the time was going all too swiftly for his purposes.

He was a dexterous fellow, was Red Mike.

His long experience as a gambler had softened his hands, and made them unusually pliable; they were small hands, too, for such a large man--for such a muscular individual as he was; and he possessed that peculiar utility of the joints which is described by the compound word double-jointed.

While he watched the now sleeping man, he was busily engaged with his wrist and fingers behind his back, and although the feat would have been impossible to a large percentage of men, he did succeed in twisting them so that he was enabled to reach the ends of the wire cord with which Thomas had bound him.

It was slow work at first, but he persisted, and--well, the moment came when the wire fell away from his wrists and his hands were free.

He did not attempt, just then, to free his ankles, too. There would be time enough for that, afterward; and besides, the risk of arousing the sleeper was too great.

But he got upon his feet, bound together side by side though they were; he succeeded in poising himself for an instant, and then with one mighty leap he propelled himself forward, his arms outstretched, his hands opened to seize upon the throat of the sleeping and exhausted man.

His fingers clutched Lynne’s throat, and tightened upon it.

Lynne struggled feebly, but with no avail against the great strength of Red Mike.

Then, just at the instant when the desperado would have finished the job so thoroughly begun, he heard the sound of voices from the lower hall of the house, for his ears had been acutely strained to catch such sounds, all the time.

With a last added squeeze of his fingers upon that white throat, Red Mike sprang away from the bed, toward another door than the one by which Thomas had entered the room--toward the one, in fact, by which he had made his own entrance, for he had left a way open for retreat in case of necessity.

As he darted away from the bed his glance fell upon the automatic pistol, and he seized it and had reached the door before he remembered to be sorry that he had not stopped long enough to use it on Lynne.

Then another thought occurred to him, and he smiled grimly while he stood there at the door and waited.

He knew that the other door would be thrown open in a moment, and he expected that the person who would appear when that should happen, would be Nick Carter.

It was an opportunity not to be lost; one which, from his standpoint, was well worth waiting for.

And then the opportunity came.

The door he was watching did swing open, and a figure did appear in the aperture; and instantly the crang! crang! of the weapon crashed through the room.

The man in the doorway, his hand still upon the doorknob, fell backward, dragging the door shut after him, and with a laugh Red Mike turned the weapon upon the man on the bed and let drive two more bullets in that direction.

The four reports sounded more rapidly than one would care to count, and with the last one Mike disappeared beyond the door he had been holding open with his left hand while he fired the shots.

Even as that door closed behind him--and he locked it on the opposite side, for he had provided for that also before he entered the room at all--the other door was thrown violently open again, and Nick Carter leaped into the room; leaped across the figure of a man who was almost on the threshold, and who was trying even then to regain his feet.

The pungent, half-suffocating odor of smokeless powder was in the room, but there was no way of telling which way the would-be assassin had escaped from it, and Nick, perceiving that Carleton Lynne had raised himself upon the bed, and that there was blood upon one of his shoulders, showing that he had been wounded, sprang to him instead of giving immediate chase after the man who had fired the shots.

But Lynne was wearing that habitual smile of his by the time the detective got to him.

“It’s only a scratch,” he said. “Just a mere touch on the shoulder. Where----”

He paused. Thomas had entered the room holding one hand against his head, and it was stained like his own shoulder.

“Why, Thomas,” he said, “did he get you?”

“No, sir, but it was a close call, for all that. A mighty close call. Took the top off’n my left ear, sir, and the other bullet took some of the bark off’n me just above the ear. But I’m none the worse for it, sir.”

Nick, who had in the meantime been examining the wounded shoulder which proved to have received no more than a flesh wound, and who was now binding the slight abrasion of the skin, asked:

“What was it all about, Lynne? Just a burglar, who----”

“More than that, Carter,” was the reply, before the detective could complete the question. “It was one of my old Klondike acquaintances; one who followed Carroll here, and who came here to-night to ask me for two million dollars. Gee, but I’m sorry he got away!”

“Who was he?--and what?”

“Red Mike, by name. He used to be called the Bad Man of Nome, once upon a time.”

“He came here to ask you for what?”

“Two millions, no less; and he as good as admitted that he was spurred to the effort by an old acquaintance of yours.”

“Do you mean--who do you mean, Lynne?”

“I refer to Mrs. Madge Hurd-Babbington,” was the smiling reply.