He wished he could communicate with Nick and get the benefit of the great detective’s advice, but that was out of the question—for the time being, at least.
Patsy was quite used to going ahead alone and relying upon his own keen wits. He did so now.
His first thought concerned his bonds themselves. Could he wriggle out of them?
His captors were not experienced criminals of the ordinary sort. Perhaps they had failed to tie him securely. Certainly they had shown their ignorance by binding his hands in front of him instead of behind.
He went to work at once, slipping his wrists back and forth and making his hands as small as possible in an effort to draw them out of the loops of rope.
Nevertheless, despite the fact that he had doubled his fists and made his wrists as large as possible while the ropes were being fastened, he found it impossible to free his hands. The knots did not give to any appreciable extent, and it was obvious that they had been tied with greater skill than Patsy had supposed.
Nick’s assistant next tried his teeth on them. This would have been out of the question if his hands had been secured behind his back, but, fortunately, they were not.
His teeth were sharp and strong, and had often been put to a similar use. It was tedious work at best, but gradually one strand after another was gnawed away.
Victory was in sight, when, to his supreme disgust, his teeth encountered something hard. He ran his tongue investigatingly over the place. The rope had a core of strong, flexible wire.
Patsy’s teeth, efficient as they were, were powerless against such an obstacle. This setback would have discouraged ninety-nine out of a hundred detectives, to say nothing of other men, but the young Irishman was not daunted.