A blaze of light poured out upon Patsy, and he recoiled involuntarily.
That one slight move threw the board from the sill.
Patsy heard a roar from Gammon—but heard no more for several moments.
He fell through space as if out of an airship, turning while he fell, and in another instant he had crashed completely through the bulkhead door mentioned, and landed, stunned and bleeding, on the floor of the shop cellar.
CHAPTER IX.
THE LAST TRAIL.
There was a very good reason for Chick Carter’s disappearance from the suite in which Nick had left him. The designs of the latter in leaving, after hearing with the dictograph the interview between Chadwick and Gammon, must be perfectly obvious. It was a simple thing for Nick to hasten home and return in a disguise such as Gammon had described.
Nick also had in mind, of course, to arrest the genuine Mr. Pimlico the moment he put in an appearance.
The instinctive caution of Stuart Floyd, however, when venturing out of haunts in which he felt comparatively safe, prevented this second design of Nick Carter, or briefly postponed and transferred it to another quarter, and also occasioned the sudden disappearance of Chick.
For Floyd did not take the elevator after entering the Oriental Hotel, nor did he enter the house through the front door. He came in through a side door, then stole up the stairs to the third floor, seeking the corridor and door to which Gammon had directed him.
He came so quietly that Chick Carter did not hear him until the rascal was nearly to the door of the Englishman’s suite—and at the same moment Floyd caught sight of a slender wire glistening on the threshold.