And then Crang laughed out raucously:
“This way, Mr. Peters—please! You three can stay where you are—I'll call you if I need you!”
For still another instant John Bruce watched through the crack. Larmon, though his face was set and stern, advanced calmly to where Crang stood. Crang, with a prod of his revolver, pushed him onward. They were coming now—Larmon first, and Crang immediately behind the other. Without a sound, John Bruce slipped around to the other side of the door; and, back just far enough so that he would not be seen the instant the threshold was reached, crouched down close against the wall.
A second passed.
“Go on in there!” he heard Crang order.
Larmon's form crossed the threshold; and then Crang's—and John Bruce hurled himself forward, striking, even while his hands flew upward to lock like a vise around Crang's throat, a lightning blow at Crang's wrist that sent the revolver to the soft earthen floor without a sound—and a low, strangling, gurgling noise was alone the result of Crang's effort at a shout of alarm.
“Shut the door—quietly! And lock it, Larmon!” John Bruce flung out.
It was an impotent thing. It struck at the air blindly, its fists going like disjointed flails. Strong! He had not just risen from a sick bed this time! John Bruce and the soul within him seemed to chuckle In unison together at this wriggling thing that he held up by the neck with its feet off the ground. But he saw Larmon, though for the fraction of a second held spellbound in amazement, spring and lock the door.
“If you make a sound that reaches out there”—John Bruce was whispering now with panting, labored breath, as he swung Crang over to the corner and forced him down upon the mattress—“it will take too long to break that door in to be of any use to you! Understand?”
“Bruce!”