“Gods! was it you I hit? I’m most awfully sorry.”
“It didn’t hurt, really, but for a little while I didn’t know where I stood—er, that is, I wasn’t standing at all.” He felt a place on the back of his head. “It’s hardly the size of a teacup—I mean the bump. And I wasn’t dazed for long either.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” I avowed. “You certainly lost no time waking and legging it.”
“Oh, I was awake, wide enough, when you were fastening me up—and a neat job, that.”
“You don’t mean to say—”
“Yes, but I thought it was better to let you do your worst and untie myself afterward. I wasn’t sure that the time for explanations had come, and I wasn’t sure—then—just what you yourself were up to.”
“But if I’d been someone else, you might have been killed.”
His eyes were merry. “I knew it wasn’t somebody else. Suppose we call it a draw.”
“We’re dying to hear how you escaped,” said Lib. “Why do you keep it bottled up?”
“It’s my living, you see,” returned Heatheringham apologetically, but with his customary smile. “I have to be up to a few of the little secrets of my trade, or I don’t get any bread and butter. Some do it on the stage for money, but in my business it comes in valuable in good earnest to carry a few skeleton keys and know how to twist a hand out of a knotted handkerchief.”