A space of some three feet separated the two houses, but Jack jumped across it without hesitation. From the fact that the man was not in sight, and there was no other place down which he could have vanished. Jack argued that he must have descended by this scuttle.
A ladder, similar to the one he had just ascended, led down from the scuttle to the interior of the house into which he believed the red-bearded man had vanished. Jack descended this, and found himself on a landing illumined by a smoky lamp. Opposite to where he stood was a door.
While he stood there, still hesitating, he heard from within the room a cry that thrilled his blood.
“Don’t! Oh, don’t! I’ve told you all I know! I have, really I have!”
“Heavens! That’s Ralph’s voice!” gasped Jack; “those rascals have got him prisoner in there and are trying to find out something more about Mr. Peregrine from him. Oh, if Tom will only hurry with that policeman! I guess I’ll go back and meet him and——”
Crash! Jack felt a sudden stinging blow on the back of the head. A hundred brilliant lights danced in front of his eyes, and then came what seemed to be the bursting of a bomb within his head. At the same instant everything went black.
“Humph! That’s the time I fooled you nicely,” muttered a voice, as a figure stooped over the unconscious boy and raised him from the floor.
It was the red-bearded man, by name Jake Rook, who, instead of descending the scuttle as Jack had imagined, had been hiding behind a stack of chimneys. He had seen Jack vanish into the scuttle, and had crept softly after him without the boy having any notion that danger was behind him.
“Get the police after me, eh?” he growled, still holding Jack’s limp figure in his arms; “not yet, young man, nor soon, either, if Jake Rook knows his business.”
So saying, he half-lifted, half-dragged Jack toward the door and rapped on it three times in a peculiar manner. It was instantly opened, and the rat-like face of the black-moustached man appeared. The instant his eyes lit on Jack’s pallid countenance, as he lay supported in the other’s arms in the doorway, he gave an exclamation.