"You can come in, now," I said. "The place is empty. Nobody here but us Vigilantes."
"Huh?" Joe couldn't believe that. "How'd they get out?"
"They got out on the Second Level Down." I told him about the sleep-gassed guard.
"Did you bring him to? What did he say?"
"Nothing; we didn't. We can't. You get sleep-gassed, you sleep till you wake up. That ought to be two to four hours for this fellow."
"Well, hold everything; we're coming in."
We were all in the social room; a couple of the men had poured drinks or drawn themselves beers at the bar and rung up no sale on the cash register. Somebody else had a box of cigars he'd picked up in Ravick's quarters on the fourth floor and was passing them around. Joe and about two or three hundred other hunters came crowding up the escalator, which they had turned on below.
"You didn't find Bish Ware, either, I'll bet," Joe was saying.
"I'm afraid they took him along for a hostage," Oscar said. "The guard was knocked out with Walt's gas gadget, that Bish was carrying."
"Ha!" Joe cried. "Bet you it was the other way round; Bish took them out."