With barely a glance at him the emissaries set to work to smash all the paraphernalia of the place, sparing nothing in order to make sure that the antidote would be destroyed. Glass tubes, retorts, bottles, even furniture were smashed to bits in their orgy of ruin—and there, in the midst of the debris, his life's work finished, lay the old chemist, dead.
Tiring of their own efforts, the murderers at last desisted. One of them went to the street door and peered out, but in a moment was back with the others.
"Quick—that fellow Locke is coming."
He was right. Locke had immediately quit Brent Rock and had come directly to the chemist's in the hope of forestalling any further attempt by Flint to inveigle Eva into dealing with him.
The door had been left ajar and, although he thought it strange, Locke was without suspicion and entered the hallway. He called to his old friend, but the dead lips could not answer and the emissaries would not.
Greatly alarmed now, Locke strode to the laboratory. For a moment he stood as though petrified as the horrid scene burst upon his vision. He ran to the chemist and knelt beside his battered body.
With a rush the emissaries darted from their hiding-place and were upon him.
Although taken unawares, Locke was, in a measure, ready for them. One he grabbed in a clever jiu-jitsu hold and sent him hurtling through the air to crash in a heap in a far corner of the room. Leaping to his feet, he beat another to the floor. The third villain was of tougher fiber. Up and down the laboratory they battled, stumbling over broken furniture, now falling to the floor, where they rolled over and over, first one, then the other gaining the mastery, while the broken glass with which the floor was littered cut their clothing to ribbons and bit into their flesh.
Locke was slowly gaining the upper hand when the thug whom he had thrown over his head recovered. The brute took the situation in at a glance, saw his pal in trouble, and, sneaking treacherously behind Locke, dealt him a terrific blow with the butt of a revolver. Locke dropped to the floor as if pole-axed and lay still.
One of the thugs kicked him as he lay defenseless, and then, spying a row of coat-hooks in an inner hallway, with fiendish ingenuity directed the others who had joined him. They strung Locke up by his thumbs so that he hung, half suspended, with his toes just off the floor.