It was an opportunity not to be lost; one which, from his standpoint, was well worth waiting for.
And then the opportunity came.
The door he was watching did swing open, and a figure did appear in the aperture; and instantly the crang! crang! of the weapon crashed through the room.
The man in the doorway, his hand still upon the doorknob, fell backward, dragging the door shut after him, and with a laugh Red Mike turned the weapon upon the man on the bed and let drive two more bullets in that direction.
The four reports sounded more rapidly than one would care to count, and with the last one Mike disappeared beyond the door he had been holding open with his left hand while he fired the shots.
Even as that door closed behind him—and he locked it on the opposite side, for he had provided for that also before he entered the room at all—the other door was thrown violently open again, and Nick Carter leaped into the room; leaped across the figure of a man who was almost on the threshold, and who was trying even then to regain his feet.
The pungent, half-suffocating odor of smokeless powder was in the room, but there was no way of telling which way the would-be assassin had escaped from it, and Nick, perceiving that Carleton Lynne had raised himself upon the bed, and that there was blood upon one of his shoulders, showing that he had been wounded, sprang to him instead of giving immediate chase after the man who had fired the shots.
But Lynne was wearing that habitual smile of his by the time the detective got to him.
“It’s only a scratch,â€� he said. “Just a mere touch on the shoulder. Where——â€�
He paused. Thomas had entered the room holding one hand against his head, and it was stained like his own shoulder.