They obtained admittance, but to their surprise Professor Gunn clung to them.
“I’m going to stick by you, even if it costs me my life,” he said.
Barely were they inside when they were startled by a scream.
“The voice of Teresa!” exclaimed Dick. “She’s up there somewhere!”
They rushed up the stairs. The door of a room stood open. In that room Teresa Tortora was struggling in the arms of a man, and that man was Nicola Mullura.
“I have found you, my pretty bird!” cried Mullura, in satisfaction. “I traced you here. Now you are mine, and you cannot escape!”
A door at the opposite end of the room, and directly behind the back of the desperado, suddenly and silently opened. Through the doorway stepped a man whose face was pale as death, and whose eyes shone with a fearful light.
Dick and Brad were turned to stone, for the man was Reggio Tortora, whom they had thought dead!
Tortora did not see them. His eyes were fastened on his sister and Mullura. With swift and noiseless steps, he rushed upon the man, clutching him about the neck and twisting him backward over a bent leg.
Mullura, being thus flung backward and held helpless, could look straight up into the face of Tortora.