"Why, he is dead!" did we hear some one exclaim?
Not at all.
Detectives, as a race, are hard to kill, and Caleb Hook offers no exception to his class!
Beneath the cellar of the Donegal Shades lies that brave man, neither dead nor helpless, but able to stand erect and move about, eagerly longing to escape.
And no wonder.
The foul pit in which he found himself confined was damp and slimy—filled with a thousand noisome smells.
For an hour and more after the body of the unconscious detective had been dropped through the trap-door by Callister and Cutts he remained lying unconscious upon the muddy floor of the place into which he had fallen, an old sub-cellar, used in former days by the occupants of the building, but long since abandoned on account of its dampness and from the fact that it was filled to the brim with the water of the East River at every tide rising above the usual height.
But Caleb Hook was not dead.
No.
By a merciful Providence the ball from the burglar's pistol, missing by a hair's breadth a vital part, touched a certain nerve, well understood by the medical profession, glanced from the accompanying muscle and buried itself in a fleshy spot, leaving its victim in a state of suspended animation, practically unharmed.