Chapter XXIV The Empty House
The instant Lawrence stepped out of the car he was surrounded by the four men, and hurried across the icy sidewalk. There was a brief glimpse of a row of squalid-looking buildings, unfamiliar in their monotonous regularity, then he was pushed into the shadowy doorway, through the door, which yielded to a touch, and thence to the pitchy blackness of a hall where the echo of their footsteps sounded hollow and ringing, as in an empty house.
A brief pause followed, broken only by low whispering. Then the door closed, and, as the purring of the motor car died away in the distance, a round, brilliant spot of light suddenly flashed out of the darkness, showing Barry the uncarpeted stairs near which he stood, the dingy railing, and, more dimly, the figures of the men grouped about him.
“Ed, you and Jim stay down here,” the detective ordered tersely. “Beat it upstairs, Billy, and light the lamp. Now, Mr. Lawrence,” he went on, with a sort of mocking politeness, after his man had disappeared into the darkness above, “I’ll have to ask you to follow. Your room is all ready for you.”
With a slight shrug of indifference, Barry obeyed. From his manner one would have supposed him quite resigned to the unpleasantness of the situation. He seemed to look neither to the right nor left, but, as he reached the second floor, with the detective close behind, he shot a swift, comprehensive glance around, without turning his head.
In that brief instant, aided by the feeble yellow light streaming out of the back room, he saw that there were but three doors opening on the narrow hall. One led into the lighted room; another, close beside it, and also standing partly open, seemed to give access to a small back bedroom or bathroom, while the third was at the other end of the hall, close to the shadowy outlines of the stairs leading up to the third floor.
Having taken in this, much without apparently noticing anything, Lawrence walked directly into the lighted room, and stood in the middle of it, staring around with a disgusted expression.
The place was absolutely bare, and filthy to a degree. Opposite the door was a rough wooden mantel above a boarded-up fireplace, on which stood a common glass lamp. Not another stick of furniture was visible. The paper hung in strips from the dingy walls, and the floor seemed covered with the dust of ages. There was a door which led apparently into the front room, and a single, uncurtained window, the panes of which were so incrusted with dirt as to make a shade unnecessary.
Barry’s lips curled scornfully as he met the keen, dark eyes of the detective.
“A nice hole!” he commented disgustedly. “And how long do you propose keeping me here?”
The man whom he addressed shrugged his shoulders slightly, and glanced at his subordinate.
“That’ll do, Billy,” he said. “Just wait in the hall outside.”
When the fellow had departed, he closed the door, and turned again to the Harvard man. He still held the automatic in his hand, but Barry observed that it was no longer covering him.
“Now, don’t get in a stew,” the detective said. “An hour or so of this ain’t going to hurt you any.”
“It’s outrageous!” Lawrence exclaimed angrily. “Here I’m giving a theater party to-night, and have the tickets in my pocket. What do you suppose my friends will think when I don’t show up? If you don’t smart for this, it won’t be my fault, I can tell you!”
“Keep your shirt on,” drawled the detective. “Losing your temper won’t help you.”
He strolled over to the wooden mantelshelf, and leaned one elbow negligently on it, idly snapping the switch of the pocket flash light on and off.
“So you really don’t know what you’re wanted for?” he went on, in a semijocose tone.
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Barry answered.
“That’s rich,” chuckled the other, laying the pocket battery on the mantel. “Not a thing lying heavy on your conscience, I s’pose?”
“There is not!” Lawrence retorted sharply. “And I’ll tell you this: You’ve made one big mistake, and I should hate awfully to be in your shoes when I tell my story in a station house or courtroom. If you’re on the regular force—which I doubt very much—you’ll be broken into little bits. If you’re just a private citizen from one of these bureaus, you’d better make plans for skipping the country, for I give you my word I mean to push this to the limit.”
The flash of worried doubt which swept across the detective’s face, and was gone in an instant, was all Barry needed to confirm the suspicion which had been growing in his mind for the past few minutes. The fellow did not know what his prisoner was wanted for. That was one of the reasons why he had remained in the room. What was the motive of these apparently casual hints and questions. He did not know, and he was beginning to be very anxious to find out.
Probably he had been hired to kidnap Lawrence, and bring him to this house without being told anything definite as to Barry’s supposed misdoings, beyond a vague tale of some lawlessness said to have been committed abroad.
It would be simply a waste of valuable time to linger longer here trying to learn the impossible, and Lawrence had no wish to stay until the arrival of his real enemies. He was intensely curious to meet them face to face, and find out something of the cause of the extraordinary persecution, but he much preferred choosing his own time and place.
“I think before this time to-morrow,” Barry went on swiftly, “that you’ll be mighty sorry you ever undertook the case.”
The detective shrugged his shoulders in an affectation of bravado, which did not deceive the captive for a second. The latter had not stirred from the middle of the room, but now his muscles were tense and ready for action, and every nerve quivered as he awaited the slightest opening.
“I ain’t worrying a whole lot,” the dark-haired man returned. “I reckon you’re the one who’ll be sorry you ever bumped up against me. There ain’t a doubt in——”
In his attempt to show how little he was disturbed by his prisoner’s threats, he had been swinging the automatic negligently back and forth on one crooked finger. Either his suppressed nervousness got the better of him, or his mind was so busy with other things that he did not realize how careless he had become. At all events, the weapon slipped off his finger and struck the floor with a thud.
Like a flash he stooped to snatch it up. But Barry was even quicker. With a single lithe spring he had leaped across the intervening space. One hand, the muscular fingers tightly clenched, caught the detective on the chin, and sent him backward with a crash which made the floor shake. The other arm, outstretched, swept the glass lamp from the mantel, and caught up the pocket flash light in one and the same motion.
There was a yell of fury from the man on the floor, a splintering of glass, then darkness—inky, pitchy, smothering darkness—dropped like a heavy pall over the room, and blotted everything.