“My men will be at his heels,” returned Blaine, shortly. “They held back purposely, acting under my instructions. Come on now.”
He sprang from the car and up the steps, and the Doctor found himself following, with Ross and Suraci on either side. The driver turned their car around and ran it upon the lawn, its searchlight trained on the circling drive, its engine throbbing like the throat of an impatient horse.
In response to the detective’s vigorous ring, the door was opened by a short, stocky man, at sight of whom the Doctor gave a start of surprise, but did not falter. The man was clad in the white coat of a hospital attendant, 245 beneath which the great, bunchy muscles of his shoulders and upper arms were plainly visible.
“Hello, Al!” exclaimed Blaine, briskly.
The veins on the thick bull neck seemed to swell, but there was no sign of recognition in the stolid jaw. Only the lower lip protruded as the man set his jaw, and the little, close-set, porcine eyes narrowed.
“You were a rubber at the Hoffmeister Baths the last time I saw you,” went on the detective, smoothly, as he deftly inserted his foot between the door and jamb. “You remember me, of course. I’m Henry Blaine. My friends and I have come here to-night on a confidential errand, and I’d like a word in private with you.”
The man he called “Al” muttered something which sounded like a disclaimer. Then he caught sight of the Doctor’s face over Blaine’s shoulder, and a spasm of black rage seized him.
“Oh, it’s you, is it? You’ve snitched, d––n you! I’ll do for you, for this!”
He lunged forward, but Blaine, with a strength of which the Doctor would not a moment before have thought him possessed, grasped the ex-rubber and flung him backward, advancing into the hall at the same time, while his two operatives and the Doctor crowded in behind him.
“Al” staggered, regained his balance, and came on in a blind rush, bull neck lowered, long, monkey-like arms taut and rigid for the first blow. Blaine set himself to meet it, but it was never delivered. At that instant the whirring roar of a high-powered car, unmuffled, sounded in all their ears, and a second machine drew up at the steps.