"Let me come with you!"
"No. Your work is too important for you to take risks. I will go alone."
CHAPTER XI
CRAFT AGAINST CRAFT
In the boathouse where Stepan had left him, Dick knew almost as soon as he saw Mike Hallo's narrow eyes appear around the closet door, that Mike had not seen him as yet. But he was too frightened to take any advantage of that consciously. Dick had proved that he was not a coward, and yet he was afraid of Hallo. He knew that the man hated him, and, for some reason, feared him. And here, where he would be so completely in his power, there would be nothing to restrain Hallo. He would not even have to call in the police to help him; he could get rid of a boy who threatened him without a witness. And Dick knew enough of Mike Hallo to feel that he would not be deterred by any scruples.
In another moment Mike's little eyes, peering around the dimly lighted room, but not yet well enough accustomed to even that much light after the utter darkness of the closet, would have fallen on Dick. But fear loosened Dick's hold on the electric flashlight that, by pure chance, happened to be in his hand. He started with dismay and tried to catch it, succeeding partly, so that it made only the faintest of noises as it struck a button of his coat. But that was enough. Hallo heard it, and started.
Yet it was that trifling accident that saved Dick. For Hallo, startled, and nervous himself, as of course he had good cause to be, better cause than Dick could guess, darted back into his closet at once. For a moment as Dick stared at it with fixed eyes, the closet door remained ajar. Then very slowly, very quietly, it was drawn to, until it clicked, and was firmly closed. On the instant, then, Dick moved.
He took the chance of being heard, and made a swift dash for the boat. His reason was a twofold one. For one thing, it offered the only possible place of concealment, aside from the closet that Mike Hallo had already preëmpted for himself, and it contained the weapons of which Steve had told him. Dick knew how to use a pistol, and he felt that with a gun of some sort in his possession he would have a chance at least with Hallo, even if he were armed. He would not hesitate to shoot, he told himself, if he had to. He had reason enough to believe that Hallo would not spare him, and in self-defence he would be justified in taking any means to save himself.
But he did not think it was particularly likely that it would come to anything so desperate now as a hand-to-hand struggle. He was recovering his nerve, and the panic that had possessed him when he had first seen Hallo's face had passed. Once he was in the boat, well concealed by the steel hood, he felt that the odds were in his favor, rather than against him, and he could stop to think and reason, which he had certainly not been able to do in the first moment of shocked surprise.