Suddenly a mocking voice came from the hall.
"Yes, it's Forbes, all right, and much good may it do you to have him!"
The door to the room, which opened outward, banged shut. The lock had been broken by us in forcing an entrance. There must have been two of them out in the hall, for we heard the noise and scraping of feet, as they piled up heavy furniture against the door, dragging it from the next room before we could do anything. Piece after piece was wedged in between our door and the opposite wall.
We could hear them taunt us as they worked, and I thought I recognised at once the voice of the stocky keeper of the garage, the Boss, whom I had heard so often before over our detectaphone. The other voice, which seemed to me to be disguised, I found somewhat familiar, yet I could not place it. It must have been, I thought, that of the man whom we had come to know and fear under the appellation of the Chief.
We could hear them laugh, now, as they cursed us and wished us luck with our capture. It was galling.
Evidently, too, they had not much use for Forbes, and, indeed, at such a crisis I do not think he would have been much more than an additional piece of animated impedimenta. Dissipation had not added anything to the physical prowess of Forbes.
With a parting volley of profanity, they stamped down the narrow stairs to the ground floor, and a few seconds afterward we could hear them back of the house, working over the machine which we had followed up from New York earlier in the day. Evidently there were several machines in the barn which served them as garage, but this was the handiest.
They had cranked it up, and were debating which way they should go.
"The shots came from the direction of the main road," the Boss said. "We had better go in the opposite direction. There may be more of them coming. Hurry up!"
At least, it seemed, there had been only three of them in this refuge which they had sought up in the hills and valleys of the Ramapos. Of that we could now be reasonably certain. One of them we had captured—and had ourselves been captured into the bargain.