Papa gasped, stammered, and turned his face toward Franz, who now came forward, saying fiercely:
“Look here, my fly cop, afore ye ask any more important questions, just answer a few.”
“Take care, jail bird!” cried Vernet, enraged at his persistent interference, “or I may give the police a chance to ask you a question too many!”
“Ye’ve got to git out of my clutches first,” hissed Franz Francoise, “and yer chances fer that are slim!”
As the young ruffian bent close to him, Vernet, for the first time, fully realized his danger. But his cry for help was smothered by the hands of his captor, and in another moment he was gagged by the expeditious fingers of the old woman, and his head and face closely muffled in a dirty cloth from the nearest pallet.
“There,” said Mamma, rising from her knees with a grin of triumph, “we’ve got him fast. Open the door, old man, he’s going into the closet for—”
“For a little while,” put in Franz, significantly.
Into a rear room, across this, and into the dark hole, which Mamma had dignified by the name of closet, they carried their luckless prisoner, bound beyond hope of self-deliverance, gagged almost to suffocation, his eyes blinded to any ray of light, his ears muffled to any sound that might penetrate his dungeon.