Grange blew the whistle. Instantly the room became filled with masked men. But Florence was ready. She seized the lamp and hurled it to the floor, quite indifferent whether it exploded or went out. Happily for her, it was extinguished. At the same moment she cast the lamp she caught hold of a chair, remembering the direction of the window. She was superhumanly strong in this moment. The chair went true. A crash followed.
"She has thrown herself out of the window!" yelled a voice.
Some one groped for the lamp, lit it and turned in time to see Florence pass out of the room into that from which they had come. The door slammed. The surprised men heard the key click.
She was free. But she was no longer a child.
CHAPTER V
"Gone!"
Jones kept saying to himself that he must strive to be calm, to think, think. Despite all his warnings, the warnings of Norton, she had tricked them and run away. It was maddening. He wanted to rave, tear his hair, break things. He tramped the hall. It would be wasting time to send for the police. They would only putter about fruitlessly. The Black Hundred knew how to arrange these abductions.
How had they succeeded in doing it? No one had entered the house that day without his being present. There had been no telephone call he had not heard the gist of, nor any letters he had not first glanced over. How had they done it? Suddenly into his mind flashed the remembrance of the candle-light under Florence's door the night before. In a dozen bounds he was in her room, searching drawers, paper boxes, baskets. He found nothing. He returned in despair to Susan, who, during all this turmoil, had sat as if frozen in her chair.
"Speak!" he cried. "For God's sake, say something, think something! Those devils are likely to torture her, hurt, her!" He leaned against the wall, his head on his arm.