Alf Wilson had come out of the chest as noiselessly as he had originally entered it and good fortune favored him to the extent of placing Phelan with his back to him while his troubled mind was steeped in a mixture of love and despair.
As the thief pounced upon the ill-fated Officer 666 he uttered, “Pst! Pst! Watkins!”
That sinuous individual writhed out of the fireplace and came to his assistance.
“Get his elbows and put your knee in his back,” instructed the thief, “while I reach for my ether-gun. Thank God! Here it is in my pocket.”
Phelan struggled in a fruitless effort to tear himself free, but Wilson’s grip was the grip of unyielding withes of steel and the slim and wiry Watkins was just as muscular for his weight.
It was the task of a moment for the picture expert to bring round the little silver device he called his ether-gun. Phelan was gasping for breath through his nostrils, and Wilson had only to press the bulb once or twice before the policeman’s muscles relaxed and he fell limply into Watkins’s arms.
“That’ll hold him for ten minutes at least,” breathed Wilson. “That’s right, Watkins, prop him up while I get his belt and coat off––then into the chest.”
Phelan was completely insensible, but his weight and the squareness of his bulk made it a strenuous task to support him and at the same time remove his coat. Only a man of Wilson’s size and prodigious strength could have accomplished the feat in anything like the time required, and both he and Watkins were purple and breathless when they lowered the again unfrocked Officer 666 into the chest and piled portières and a small Persian rug on top of him.