For perhaps a minute there was silence. Then a gruff voice broke out, demanding to know who was there. This was followed by a sound of fighting, with Chick’s voice mingling with the gruff tones heard before.
“You’re a burglar. That’s what you are!” roared the gruff person. “I’ll have you pinched as soon as I can get you to the front door! Come on! You can’t get away! Lend me a hand here, Bill!”
“I’m here,” responded a voice that was strangely squeaky, and might have been that of a Chinaman, except that it had not the Mongolian accent. “And the others will help.”
“The durned, sneaking thief! Out with him!”
There was a little more noise. Then a door banged, and—silence!
Nick Carter hurriedly went through the window to the study, and, without taking the time to close it, rushed to the door, down the stairs, past the mystified Ruggins, and out to the street.
There he met Chick, very much ruffled, and with his battered hat in his hand, coming along from the next house, and occasionally looking over his shoulder, as if he expected to see somebody come out.
“Well, chief, they bounced me!” he said, in a rueful tone. “Chucked me out on my head.”
“Who?” asked Nick Carter.
“I don’t know. I didn’t see anybody. I only felt that there were at least three men, and they were all huskies, too. We were in the dark. They shoved me clean through the house and out of the front door before I had any chance to fight back. It was the quickest bounce I ever had—or ever gave any one else. What shall we do? Break down the door and go in?”