A minute passed with both straining their hearing to the utmost–Perk even laid his head against the closed door so as to better catch any suspicious sound from within.
“Huh! guess they ain’t nothin’ doin’, partner,” he hissed in a disappointed tone, “thought I did get a little ruslin’ sound, like paper bein’ crumpled up when you’re a’makin’ a fire, but don’t hear it no longer.”
“Paper, you say?” snapped Jack uneasily, “I don’t like that any too much.”
“Why not?” asked the other, evidently at a loss to understand why such a simple little thing like that could annoy any one–what if the man at bay figured on setting fire to the hidden little retreat he had arranged here close to the lonely lake where he could slip away whenever he felt like shunning those society people over at crowded Miami–he surely had no intention of cremating himself and they could nab him if he started to make off.
“Paper–don’t you know what he was doing when we peeped in–that book ought to be worth its weight in gold to us as evidence and that stack of papers that he was looking through–if he’s given enough time he may put a match to the bunch and destroy everything that could be used against him. We’ve got to keep him from doing that, brother.”
“Yeah–but how?” gasped the other, showing renewed signs of excitement as he visioned the holocaust with their fine plans going up in fire and smoke just when they seemed about to corral success.
Jack answered that question by striking the door with his foot, the result being a loud thump. Then he caught hold of his chum and dragged him to one side. None too soon was this done, for there came a series of staccato explosions from inside the shack and tiny gleams of light in various sections of the door told that bullets had passed through the wood in a number of places. Only for this prompt action on the part of the cautious one, either or both might have had leaden pellets lodged promiscuously about their persons with resultant painful sensations.
“Wow! that was what I’d call a close shave,” whispered the kneeling Perk as he surveyed those suspicious holes in the badly riddled door, all on a line with any crouching human figure without.
There could no longer be any doubt as to the warlike intentions of the man they had at bay, his fighting spirit, first fed during those bloody days and nights in the Argonne, had burst into flame again and he shed his free and easy character as the lord of that wonderful palace at Miami to assume the rough and ready type of an adventure-loving smuggler chief, quick to defy all authority while the red blood rioted in his veins.
“We’ve just got to keep him on the jump,” Jack was saying, “so’s to occupy his attention and keep him from putting a match to those papers and that priceless account book with its addresses. Here, find a way to get in a smash or two on the door, like we meant to break in–I’ll slip around and see what can be done at the window.”