Before the fierce intruder could recover his balance, the policeman with bench brace poised for action brought the oaken weapon down with terrific force on the raised right arm of Hamar, a muscle-numbing stroke, which relaxed the latter’s grip on the haft of the glittering blade and sent it spinning under the counter across the room. A second blow cut into his forehead.
The men grappled, swayed to and fro in interlocked fury, rolled over the fallen door and out upon the platform. Hamar was at a disadvantage by reason of the blinding effect of blood from the forehead wound, and it was evident that he was seeking to break away from his burly antagonist.
Billy and Henri, wildly excited over the fray, danced around the combatants, narrowly escaping at times a bruising jab from whirling heels.
The fight ranged closer and closer to the head of the basement stairway, the plain intent of the policeman’s hairy adversary.
Here it was, by some cunning wrestler’s trick, that Hamar broke the hold of the heavyweight, bounded through the opening and down the stairs with an agility that baffled interference.
The policeman, though winded by exertion, did not delay pursuit, and he was not far behind his wily foe when the latter paused for a second as though hesitating over the course to take.
The boys, in the immediate wake of the doughty officer, saw that the fugitive was making the run back in the same direction that they had followed in coming. Speeding along with the policeman, their judgment as to this was verified in the passing under an arch out of which several large stones had fallen.
“He’s making for the chimney grating,” advised Billy.
The policeman, under ordinary conditions, might have yielded to detective instinct and asked the boy how he knew so much, but this was no time for cross-examination by him, racing through a cellar after a fight for life, and in eager pursuit of a desperate and dangerous enemy.
Hamar had climbed the spikes to the chimney base, and by the time the policeman got his head through the grating was shinning up the big smokestack like a monkey.