“Who’s that at this hour of the morning?” Drew grumbled.
“Search me.” Tom Howe slipped a blue-barreled automatic into his coat pocket, gripped it firmly in his left hand, then threw the door wide, to exclaim:
“Oh! So it’s you!”
CHAPTER IX
RED GOES INTO ACTION
All his life Red Rodgers had been trained for action. In the steel mills there come times when men are divided into two classes, the quick and the dead. Red was not dead. The instant that piercing cry, coming from the opposite shore, reached his ears, he was alert, ready to act. His hand, already on the side of the rowboat, relaxed.
“Oars creak,” he murmured.
Across the dark pool rested a canoe. He was there in a flash, canoe in the water, paddle in place.
“But a weapon!”
He was, of course, unarmed. As his eyes roved about in that narrow space, they fell upon a pike pole. With a stout eight-foot handle and a steel point it was a weapon of a sort, spear or club, whichever he might choose. Reaching for this, he placed it without a sound in the canoe.
Then he slid out into the silent night. The wind, he found, was growing stronger. It chilled him through. “Be warm enough soon.” He set his teeth grimly.