Suddenly to Shirley's straining ears came the tick-ticking of an alarm clock, from the corner of the room to his right. He dare not look at it. Warren's eyes grew black with the Great Fear!
“You fool, you've locked all the entrances, and sent the men away. That clock will ring in exactly five minutes. When it does, this place will go up from a load of lyddite. You've dug your own grave!”
Warren's voice was hoarse, and his bright eyes radiated venomously, as he kept his weapon pointed, like Shirley's, at the face opposite. They were both prisoners in the death cellar, with the advantage in favor of neither!
And the ticking clock, with its maddening, mechanical death chant seemed to Shirley to cry, with each beat, like the reminiscence of some nightmare barbershop: “Next! Next! Next!”
CHAPTER XXIII. CAPTURED AND THEN
Warren's white lips were moving in perfect synchronism, as he counted the seconds and ticks of the clock. Shirley, never so acute, cudgeled his mind for some devise by which he might overcame the other. It was hopeless. At last, just as he knew the inevitable second was almost completed, a faint rustling came from the other side of the iron door. Warren's face brightened with hope. With a nerve-racking rasp, the iron bar on the other side was raised: it was a torturing delay as the two waited!
The door slowly opened. After a harrowing pause a revolver muzzle slid gently through the crack, and a woman's voice murmured softly: “Drop the gun!”
It was Helene Marigold!
Warren's ashen face changed to purple hue, his hand trembled just enough to incite Shirley to a desperate chance. As the criminal drew the trigger with a spasmodic jerk, Shirley was dropping to the floor, whence he pushed himself forward with a froglike leap, as he straightened out the great muscles.