By this time the car was moving at a fast clip, and from the way it bumped at intervals, he knew he was not on the road by which he had come to this little village, but was hustling along a rough trail, that never had been laid out for motoring.
Nick Carter’s thoughts were busy as he rushed through the air. But he possessed the great gift of patience, and since he knew he could not help himself at present, he was content to await developments.
“I wish I had on my clothes, and that I knew whether they have taken my pistol,” he muttered behind the pillow. “There is one comfort. I am pretty sure who the rascals are that are doing this. How was it they did not disturb Patsy or Chick?”
He was soon able to answer this question for himself, as he reflected on the incidents immediately preceding their going up to bed.
“I didn’t drink any of that fellow Mala’s coffee. The other three did. Phillips was watching everything in the kitchen. But it does not take long to slip a few drops of a narcotic into a coffeepot, or even to mix in some powders of the same kind. I guess that was it. Perhaps I am wrong, but I can’t account for their sleeping through it all in any other way.”
He estimated that he had been traveling for more than an hour, when the car slowed down easily and came to a standstill.
Hardly had it stopped when he was lifted out of the car, the pillow still over his face, and led up a steep path which he found was plentifully strewn with bowlders.
There were so many hands on him, and he could hear the tramping of so many feet, that he judged it would be well to wait a little longer before making the fight for liberty that was in his mind from the first.
When he stopped walking, which was not till he had climbed the rough path for ten or fifteen minutes, he felt a difference in the atmosphere. The breeze ceased, and a dampness crept through him.
The pillow was whisked off, and he put his hands to his eyes in the endeavor to see what was around him.