“It’s a good thing I happened to meet this fellow, I guess,” observed Chick. “He was making for the stairs.”
“Yes, and if ever he’d got out, he would have raised an alarm that might have settled this business at once.”
They hustled Pike back to the room from which he had just run, and Chick was surprised to note that it was luxuriously furnished, and that the two windows, looking out on the square, were a little way open, so that any one could easily get out that way if he wished.
“There are no bars to the windows,” thought Chick, “and it isn’t far to the ground. Not much of a prison.”
They hustled the sullen Pike into the room, and Chick closed the door.
The door was not thick, and there was nothing complicated about the lock. It was just such a door and lock as might be on any ordinary room in New York.
Pike was not a prepossessing man now, with his clothing disordered, his hair rumpled, and a smudge of dust across his cheek. But Chick, accustomed to sizing men up at a glance, decided that he would pass for a very respectable type of business man under ordinary conditions.
“I suppose you know I could have raised an alarm and brought the whole city down on you, if I’d liked,” growled Pike, as he suffered himself to be shoved into a large easy-chair behind the big table. “You have broken into my private room, after murderously attacking my servants outside, and you have injured this poor fellow who acts as my secretary.”
The secretary was tied to a chair hand and foot, and a handkerchief had been fastened over his mouth, gagging him effectually. He looked like a Bolongu, for he had the rather light yellow complexion and the general appearance of all the people Chick had met in this strange country.
“Look into that bag and see what there is,” directed Jefferson, without taking any notice of William Pike’s words. “You do it, Leslie. You know what we’ve lost.”