But what a change! In all his life Dee had only known his step-father as bowed, half helpless, nearly blind, his eyes always guarded by the dark, disfiguring glasses. Now before him stood a straight, sinister man, with clear, piercing eyes that bored into his own. As he saw Dee an indescribable snarl distorted his features.
“Spying!” he cried, and with a savage blow knocked the boy down.
Dee leaped to his feet. A trickle of blood ran down where De Lorme’s heavy seal ring had cut his cheek, and Dee mechanically wiped it away. As De Lorme took a step toward him the front door bell rang. Zip had returned. For a moment Mr. De Lorme hesitated, then taking Dee by the collar roughly bundled him to the attic door, thrust him up the stairs, and Dee heard the key turn in the lock.
The boy sat down on the top step, his heart pounding furiously. Well, he was a prisoner all right! He wondered dully if they would kill him. He supposed so. And that very plan was being discussed down in the closed laboratory. Mr. De Lorme was walking the floor, furiously gesticulating, tossing the hair from his forehead, striking one hand savagely into the open palm of the other.
“Of course we will have to get rid of the worthless cub,” said De Lorme. “I have kept him with me because of the fat inheritance he will receive when that old aunt of his dies. She does not know where he is, but it has been enough for me to know where the property is. And that can’t escape. But I can’t afford now to have him about. He knows too much. Get rid of him, Zip.”
“How?” asked Zip blankly. Zip was perfectly willing to assist in the manufacture of infernal machines that would blow hundreds of innocent persons to a frightful death. That was part of Zip’s distorted creed—the wholesale abolishment of property and personal power; but he was kind to animals, and it did not occur to him that Mr. De Lorme meant what he said, so “How?” he repeated.
“Any way you like!” raved the madman. “Shoot him! Poison him! Drown him! I don’t care! Do you suppose that we can afford to get ourselves strapped into the electric chair for a blundering cub like that? You might, but not I. I, De Lorme, the maker of explosives, I who am known in our Order as the Avenger: what right have I to risk my life for a cub?”
“How much does he know?” asked Zip.
“Much or little, it does not matter,” said De Lorme. “He was at the wireless; he has seen me with my disguise off. Why, you were the only man living who knew that I am a perfectly well man! That boy has never guessed or dreamed that I am not half blind. Think how I stumbled round the Park with him. Half to win pity from our most aristocratic and respectable neighbors, half to fool that boy.”
“Why not swear him to secrecy and make him one of us?” asked Zip.