His voice rose and thickened.
"I've just got the word. An explosion was planted in front of their van on the way to the Grand Central. There was a crowd of rats from the slums. Those birds were torn from the sheriff's men, and their bracelets knocked off. They were spirited away. But don't you suppose Slim and George would gamble I'll never let them out of this town? Every exit's barred now. They know their liberty's only good to pay old debts. What'll they do at the start?"
Garth braced himself against the desk.
"They'll go for Nora first. Then they'll get me. I've been afraid of it all along."
"I'm trying to warn her," the inspector raged. "She doesn't answer."
He shouted into the transmitter:
"Are you all dead out there? Get me that number, or by heaven—"
While the inspector stormed to be put in communication with his daughter Garth tried to plan. Could he devise any useful defence against Slim's imagination, abnormally clever and inscrutable; or against such naked brutality as George's? And the malevolence of these two would be all the more certain in its action since no fear of punishment would restrain it. The murder, or worse, of Garth and Nora, which undoubtedly they intended, could earn for them only the death penalty to which they were already condemned.
"You've got to get Nora," Garth urged the inspector. "The servant at least should be there."
"Her afternoon out, and Nora said she would be home."