For fifteen minutes perhaps he paced the floor, glancing at his prisoners now and then, and often stopping to issue some whispered instruction. Then one of the men he had sent below returned.
“All ready, sir,” he reported.
“The vaults are opened?” the Black Star asked.
“Yes, sir, and every strong box. All you have to do is take out the swag, sir.”
“The suit cases are there and ready?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Two of you carry Mr. Verbeck to the dumb-waiter, and we’ll descend with him,” the master criminal commanded. “Sorry I cannot take you at the same time, my dear Muggs, but the capacity of our dumb-waiter is limited. I’ll have you taken below before we are through, though. In the meantime, sit calmly on your chair.”
He laughed as he turned toward the aperture in the wall, laughed again as two of his men carried the bound and gagged prisoner as if he had been a log of wood, and chuckled as he saw the anger flashing in Muggs’ eyes. The Black Star, his helpless prisoner, and his two men disappeared, and the aperture in the wall was closed.
Those who remained glanced at Muggs, but did not approach him, and made no offer to taunt him. They left that to the Black Star. All except the guards at the two doors and one who peered through a slit in the curtain at a front window, gathered in the middle of the room and spoke in whispers.
Muggs tugged at his bonds for the hundredth time, and realized that he had been bound well. There was no hope of slipping from these ropes. Here was no broken glass upon which he could saw the ropes, as Roger Verbeck had done once. Nor could he manage to get his fingers into a hip pocket and extract a knife that opened with a touch of the thumb and cut his bonds with that as he had done once before when in the Black Star’s hands. Back at the master criminal’s headquarters he had been searched and his knife taken from him.