I was too stupefied to reply.
“Why!” I gasped. “There’s some mistake—mouse——?”
“You’ve fallen into a trap, haven’t you?”
By degrees my breath came back to me.
“I’ve never seen you before,” I managed to say. “Surely——”
He cut me off with a growl.
“You don’t have to see a man to do him a harm, do you?” he said, and took a step towards me. “The next time a man is tied to a tree and asks for a drink of water——”
He did not finish, but made a lunge at me with his arms outstretched. It took all my alertness to spring back out of his way. Then, like a flash the thought of the scrivener’s dagger popped into my mind. I jerked it from my belt and raised it menacingly over my head.
The fellow stopped in his tracks. He shot a glance over my shoulder to the back of the room. I swung the dagger in the air with the thought that if I forced him from the door, I might escape. But my arm was hardly half way around when a sharp crack caught me on the wrist. The pain shot through me like the cutting of a knife. I loosed my grasp. The dagger flew across the room and fell clattering onto the wooden floor.
In the next breath my arms were caught from behind. They were pinned together with the firmness of a vise. A foot shot out and entangled itself in mine. A quick twist and I was jerked sideways and sent tumbling like the dagger across the room.