Silently and slowly he reopened the door, having buckled a sword upon him. There came a light patter of footsteps on the corridor floor. Just as the rover was stepping forth, Psalms Higgler, who had not been satisfied with the theory of the rats, came gliding to the spot. He and Adam suddenly faced one another, a foot apart. The startled little monster stared wildly for the briefest part of a second and then would have fallen back, yelling like a demon to raise the alarm.
Pouncing upon him, without a sound, yet with the terrible strength and nimbleness of a tiger, Adam clutched him fiercely by the neck, with both his powerful hands, and choking back the yell already starting to the creature’s lips, lifted him bodily off the floor, to prevent him from kicking upon it, to raise a disturbance, and carried him, squirming and writhing, to the door by which the visitors had so recently entered.
“Open the door! Open the door and get out!” ordered Rust of his followers, sternly, never for a moment relaxing his grip or his lift on Higgler. “Lift the bar! Lift it! There!”
The door swung open. The beef-eaters sprang outside, trying both to go at once. The commotion they made rang through the building. Adam was after them swiftly, forgetting to limp, as he felt the outside air in his face.
Higgler by this was becoming absolutely limp. Adam dropped him on the ground, where he lay, barely left alive and unable to move or to speak.
Adam had the keys in his pocket, the largest one uppermost. This was the one to this outside door. He could hear the men inside running toward the spot and already shouting the alarm. He dared to lock the door, deliberately, and to pull out the key and put it again in his pocket. Then he calmly drew the borrowed sword from its scabbard, rammed its end smartly home, in the key-hole and snapped it off short, spiking the aperture completely.
Already the beef-eaters were running up the street. Psalms Higgler was drawing his breath in awful gasps, where he lay.
“Good friend, farewell,” said Rust to him, cheerfully. “I shall be pleased to report you an excellent rat-catcher, at the earliest opportunity afforded.”
He disappeared from Higgler’s ken in a twinkling and soon overtook his retinue, making good time for the country.