The large double doors had been thrown wide open and Mac Alarney, the burly Al, and the two operatives appeared, bearing between them a limp, unconscious, blanket-swathed form. As they eased it into the back seat of the limousine, Blaine flashed his electric pocket light upon the sleeping face.
“I knew I wasn’t mistaken!” he whispered exultantly to Mac Alarney and the Doctor. “It’s young Hamilton, all right. Now, let’s be off!”
The others crowded in, and they whirled down the drive and out once more upon the wide State road, in the opposite direction to that in which they had come. A bare half-mile away, and they came abruptly upon the ambulance, screened by the clump of naked elms at the side of the road.
“You get in first, Doctor,” ordered Blaine, significantly. “You’ve got to look after your patient now.”
As the Doctor obeyed, Mac Alarney, with a shrewd gleam in his eyes, turned to the detective.
“I think I’d better ride with him, too, Mr. Blaine,” he observed. “You don’t know who you can trust these days. Your ambulance driver may give you the slip.”
“All right, Mac!” Blaine assented, with bluff heartiness. “We’ll both ride with him! Did you think I’d try to double-cross you, too? I can’t blame you, after the rotten deal that’s been handed to you, but we won’t waste time arguing. Here’s the stretcher. Come on, shove him in!”
The Doctor had been wondering when the dénouement of this adventure would be. Now it came without warning, with a startling suddenness which left him dazed and agape.
The inert body of his patient was laid carefully beside him, and he glanced out of the ambulance door in time to see Mac Alarney dismiss his burly assistant, and turn to enter the vehicle. His foot was already upon the lowest step, when the Doctor saw Blaine raise his hand to his lips. A short, sharp blast of a whistle pierced the air, and in an instant a dozen men had sprung out of the darkness and leaped upon the two surprised miscreants. Then ensued a struggle, brief but awful to the onlooker in its silent, grim ferocity, as the two separate knots of men battled each about their central orbit. The scuffle of many feet on the hard-packed road, the mutter of curses, the dull thud of blows, the hoarse, strangulated breathing of men fighting against odds to the last ounce of their strength, came to the Doctor’s startled ears in a confused babel of half-suppressed sound, with the purring drone of the two engines as an undertone.