“There is bad blood between this man and myself,” he said, then. “If he saw me with Chester to-day he will present himself here to-night. If he comes and finds me a prisoner, bound and at his mercy—if he comes here to-night, and finds us in this room, and you are unable to deal with him, will you cut my bonds?”
“And permit you to run away together and give me the laugh?” said Jimmie. “You’re a modest kind of a fellow after all, and with nerve to spare.”
“If you do this,” Gaga replied, “I promise to return to you and submit to be bound again, if I come out of the conflict alive.”
“Do you think Pedro would murder an unarmed man, and a bound one, at that?”
“Yes, the hatred he has for me is so great that he would take any advantage of me.”
Jimmie was getting the notion that there was something tragic in the air, and was even considering the proposition seriously when there was a movement at the open doorway.
“If he comes here,” Gaga went on, “you must either kill him yourself or let me. He will spare neither of us.”
The boy was listening for a repetition of the sound at the doorway, when a form lifted from the crumbling threshold and stood peering in. Gaga gave a cry of terror and the intruder drew back for an instant.
The boy knew that the man whose figure he had seen outlined against the star-sprinkled sky was the man he had seen standing by the couch of the owner of the Daily Planet on the night of the robbery, the man he had seen later in the Chester camp in the jungle.
“For the love of Heaven!” the prisoner whispered.