The lock gave way with a report like a muffled pistol shot and the door flew open. The room was lighted by a single incandescent bulb swinging on its cord from the ceiling. On a cot which had been dragged out from its place beside the wall lay the chief clerk, bare-footed, gagged, and securely bound with many wrappings of cotton clothes-line. Standing over him, one of them with the lighted match he had been holding to the bare foot-soles still blazing, were two others; a red-headed, yellow-faced man with one eye missing, and a thick-shouldered athlete aptly answering to Sprague’s description whispered to the superintendent in the room below.
Maxwell sprang forward with an oath when he recognized the man with the burning match. “Murtrie!” he exploded; and the torturer with the black eyes and puffy face dropped the match-end and grabbed for his weapon. He was a fraction of a second too slow. Tarbell had covered him with a movement which was too quick for the eye to follow and was reaching backward for the other gun—which Maxwell gave him—while Sprague closed the door and set his back against it.
“The jig is up—definitely up, Givens,” said the Government man pleasantly. And then to Tarbell: “Herd those two into a corner, Archer, while we take some of these impediments off of Mr. Calmaine.”
When the chief clerk was freed he tried to sit up; tried and would have fallen if Maxwell had not caught him. “They’ve burked me,” he mumbled; “but—they didn’t make me tell, and they didn’t get—the papers.”
“Take it easy,” said Maxwell soothingly; “You’ll be all right in a minute or so.” Then, in a fresh access of rage: “They’ll pay for this, Harvey, if it takes every dollar I’ve got in the world!”
Calmaine tried sitting up again, found that he could compass it, and reached feebly for his shoes and socks.
“The—the proxies are safe—if it doesn’t rain,” he quavered, his mind still running on the precious papers of which he had been the bearer. “Get—get me out of this and into an auto and I’ll find them for you. We might—might catch Number Six, if we hurry.”
Tarbell, with Sprague’s help, had deftly handcuffed the two men whom he had backed into a corner. It was the one-eyed man who first found speech in an outpouring of profanity venomous and horrible. “You ain’t got us out o’ here yet,” he spat, trailing the defiance out in more of the cursings.
“But we’re going to get you out if we have to throw you through the window,” said Sprague quietly. Then to Maxwell: “Help the boy with his shoes, Dick. We’re due to have a jail delivery here, any minute.”
It took some little time to get the maltreated chief clerk shod and afoot, and even then he was well-nigh crippled. But he was game to the last. “They took my gun away from me,” he complained. “If I only had something to fight with—Archer, give me that black devil’s pistol.”