“Ah——”
“You’re takin’ a hell of a long time, doc. Has she got smallpox?” The man still stood with his back to the foot of the bed, but Carlson realized that he could not temporize much longer.
“Just about a minute more and I can tell you,” he said, as nonchalantly as he could say the words.
How could he get rid of the kidnappers and telephone for the police? Then came an idea—a wild, forlorn hope; but he would try it.
“I will have to examine her throat,” he said, with professional voice.
He walked to the table where his medical bags were and took out a circular mirror with an aperture in the center, a small electric bulb, and a black elastic band with a buckle in it. Next, he detached a connecting-plug from a cell battery in the bottom of the bag, being careful to conceal the battery from the gimletlike eyes of the two men and the woman. With the plug hidden in his hand he crushed the two contactors together.
Then he adjusted the elastic band and mirror to his forehead, connected the two wires with the small bulb on the head mirror and deliberately unscrewed the bulb from the table lamp. He drew a deep breath; then quickly inserted the crushed battery plug into the lamp socket.
Flash! The room was in complete darkness. Carlson had short-circuited the current and fulminated the fuse, probably for the whole house.
“Damn it!” he exclaimed, ostentatiously. “What am I going to do now?”
Almost instantly the beam of a pocket flashlight came from the hand of the “boss.”