"They've guessed I came this way. In fact, they couldn't very well help doing it," thought Herc.
He glanced up at the window above him. Would it be possible to escape that way?
With frenzied haste he began pulling a dusty bench from one corner and flinging upon it the old boxes with which the room was littered. But his time was all too short. Herc had to give over his labors half completed at the nearer approach of footsteps.
"I've got to hide some place, and that right quickly," he muttered, glancing about him in every direction.
Herc darted for the dimmest corner and crouched behind a large open box that stood there.
He had just time to squeeze himself back of it and draw it over him like the shell of a tortoise when the door was burst open.
Half a dozen men, headed by Kenworth, Saki and the spectacled Jap, burst into the room. They gazed wildly about them.
"Why—why, he's not here!" gasped out Kenworth. "The red-headed fox has escaped!"
"Eem-poss-ible," the spectacled Jap informed him. "There is no way of getting out this room."
"Then he must be here," declared Saki sententiously; "we must find him. He is one of the most dangerous enemies we have got. He is even worse than that Ned Strong, whose body now lies at the bottom of the Sound, for the meddling fool that he was."