Luckily for them, the two men that Herc had just attended to lay there and their bodies broke the force of the fall. Not injured in the least, owing to this—for him—lucky accident, Kenworth was on his feet again in the wink of an eyelid.
As Herc's form vanished through the doorway, he drew a revolver and in the insane fury of his rage, fired a shot at the Dreadnought Boy's fleeing form. Herc felt the breeze of the bullet as it winged past him and buried itself harmlessly in the wall.
"Blaze away!" he shouted. "In five minutes' time I'll have the whole boiling of you in——"
The sentence was not completed. In the room he had left behind him, the spectacled Jap, who had recovered his wits, had darted for a lever in the wall. He pulled it toward him.
At the same instant, Herc felt the floor of the passage drop from under his feet and found himself falling, falling, falling into a black void, while fires and lightnings wheeled and darted wildly through his confused brain.
[CHAPTER XXX.]
IN FRESH TERROR.