“No, sir,” said he, looking furtively at my men drawing near, between him and the doors.
“But I insist,” I said politely. Then I added in a lower tone meant for him alone: “Resist, you hound, and I'll have you carried up by your four legs.”
His face was working with fear and passion. He looked at the blocked way with the eye of a baited animal.
“I'll be damned first!” he cried. And seizing a chair he whirled around, dashed it through a window, and leaped through the jagged panes before I could spring forward to stop him.
“Round in front, men!” I cried, motioning my followers to sally through the door. “Bring him back!” And an instant later I leaped through the window after the flying enemy.
There was a fall of six feet, and as I landed on a pile of broken glass, a bit shaken, with the rain beating on my head, it was a few seconds before I recovered my wits. When I looked, no one was in sight. I heard the men running on the porch of the hotel, so the enemy was not to be sought that way. I set off full speed for the other corner, fifty yards away, half suspecting an ambush. But at the turn I stopped. The rain-soaked street was empty for a block before me. Far down the next block a plodding figure under an umbrella bent to the gusts of the wind and tried to ward off the driving spray of the storm. But Darby Meeker had disappeared as though the earth had swallowed him up.
“Where is he?” cried Porter, the first of my men to reach my side.
I shrugged my shoulders. “I haven't seen him.”
“He didn't come our way—that I'll swear,” panted Fitzhugh.
“He was out of sight before I got my feet,” said I. “They must have a hiding-place close by.”