“I’ll be through in a minute, Archer,” said the experimenter at the work-table, still without looking around. “Did you find your man?”
“Yes; and Starbuck is with him. What do you want me to do with this geezer?”
“Nothing. I’ll fix him when we’re ready to go.”
“I’ve got a pair of handcuffs,” Tarbell suggested.
“They won’t be needed—not for this one.”
Tarbell dragged out a chair and sat down, tilting comfortably against the wall and staring half-absently at the man in the corner. “Before I’d let any bare-handed man take my arsenal away from me and slam me around like that,” he murmured, quite impersonally.
The man on the floor lifted the challenge promptly.
“Lemme git up and gimme half a chanst,” he croaked. “I won’t hurt you none if you don’t git in the way o’ that door.”
“Not this evenin’,” said Tarbell succinctly; and there the matter rested until Sprague put his beakers and test-tubes aside, and, resuming his coat, took a flat black box from a shelf and slipped it into his pocket.
“Now we’re ready,” he announced; and then he turned to the captured spy. “We’re going to leave you here in the dark for a little while, and there will be nothing between you and a get-away but a small matter of fear. After we turn the lights off I shall leave a few bottles of stuff around where they will do the most good. If you should happen to upset one of them in moving about, it’s good-by. If it doesn’t burn you to death, you’ll stifle.”