"And now, Mike," continued the voice, "I'd like to know how you happened
to be caught napping."
Dorothy swung round to see a young woman standing in the doorway. With a
gasp of consternation she found herself staring down the barrel of a
revolver. For a fraction of a second her heart turned over with a
sickening thud. Then she recovered her poise.
"Well, I guess _my_ trick's over," she exclaimed as cheerfully as
possible.
Mike scrambled to his feet, catching up his automatic as he did so.
Instead of answering the girl who leaned against the door frame, he
stared at Dorothy in a sort of amazed wonder. She met his gaze, a
malicious little smile at the corners of her mouth. Aside from a flush
on her cheeks, she showed not the slightest sign of the ordeal she had
just passed through, nor the exhaustion it must have produced. His eyes
fell rather stupidly to her feet. If Mike had not so recently staggered
under Dorothy's material weight, he would not have believed her to
possess any at all. He drew a deep breath.
"Who taught you jiu jitsu?"
"A woman professional in New York. She had a class--the others went in
for it in a lady like way. But I took it up seriously because I thought
I might need it some day."
"Have you--ever?" He had dropped his east side argot, she noticed.
"Once or twice--but never like this," she smiled.
"I should hope not." Mike was rather pale. He frowned. "Where do you get
your appalling strength?"
"Heredity--and training. I come by it honestly. It's not so
extraordinary as some people seem to think." Her smile widened. "My
father is the strongest man I've ever known. Although you'd never guess
it by looking at him. He can do all sorts of stunts. He's trained
me--running, boxing, fencing, swimming--"
"I'll say he has! I wouldn't have believed it possible--and you only a
kid!"
Dorothy nodded and looked at him with a curious light in her gray eyes.
"Perhaps I'm not so strong as you think--I know a little more about
Oriental wrestling than you do, that's all."
"Yes, that's all!" said the woman by the doorway in a mocking tone. She
stepped across the threshold and came toward them. "Go over there and
sit down." She motioned Dorothy to a chair. "And not another peep out of
you--understand?" Her eyes gleamed at Dorothy through narrowed lids with
a light more metallic than the reflection from the barrel of her
automatic. It was a strange look--combined of ruthlessness and malicious
amusement.
"Interesting--very interesting, indeed!"
She turned to Mike, as Dorothy obeyed her and sat down.
"And now that you and your little lady friend have finished your
heart-to-heart, perhaps you'll tell me what it's all about--why I find
you flat on the floor covered by her gun?"
"Jealous, Sadie?" Mike's tone was tantalizing.
"You _fool_!"
She took a step forward. The expression on her face underwent a
startling change. Mockery gave way to an exasperated ferocity. Her eyes
opened to their full size. Then the volcano of her wrath erupted. Words
poured forth with the sharp regularity of a riveting hammer. Mike was
given a description of his characteristics, moral, mental and physical,
that brought the angry blood to his forehead.
Whereupon he retorted in like spirit and soon they were going it hammer
and tongs, while the fury on Sadie's face froze into livid hate.
It was a wicked face, yet beautiful, Dorothy thought as she watched from
her chair in the corner; a strangely beautiful face beneath a coiled
crown of glorious red hair. But its beauty was distorted, devilish. Her
lips were scarlet, slightly parted, showing the double rim of her even
teeth as she hurled insult after insult at the man before her. Like some
evil goddess, she stood motionless, the rise and fall of her bosom the
only token of the deadly emotion she felt as her even tones poured forth
vituperation.
Presently Dorothy's ears caught the sound of footsteps thumping on the
porch. The lame man limped into the room and sized up the situation at a
glance.
"Stop that scrapping, you two!" he commanded. "Stop it, Sadie! Do you
hear me? Stop it at once!"
The red-haired girl glared at him, but she obeyed. There was a dangerous
finality in his tone that debarred argument. She swept over to the
table, and deliberately turning her back upon the others, poured herself
a cup of coffee.
"Mike!" barked the Italian. "Go out and give the others a hand. We've
got a couple of invalids with us. I've already administered first aid,
but they will have to be carried upstairs and put to bed. Hustle, now!"
Mike disappeared through the door without a word. This little lame
person seemed to brook no opposition. He was probably the brain and the
leader of this gang, thought Dorothy--but he was speaking to her now.
"Good evening again, Miss Dixon! I felt somehow certain we were fated to
meet a third time tonight!" His glance snapped from her to Sadie and
back again. "Sorry we had to 'bag' you, as it were--hope you suffered no
great inconvenience?"
"Oh, I'm all right," she replied coolly.
"But I notice that your sweater is torn in several places. You will
excuse me?--but you look rather rumpled. I got the impression that you
and the young lady who is at present drinking coffee might have had--a
difference of opinion, shall we say?"
"No. These tears in my sweater were caused by accident. Miss Martinelli
had nothing to do with it."
"So you know her name! But, of course you would. That bicarbonate of
soda proved a boomerang. Too bad she really needed it at the time. It's
a lesson to us, to remember that servant girls are likely to be lazy."
"Oh, it wasn't Lizzie's fault," smiled Dorothy. "I caught her before she
had had time to wash the glass, that's all."
"You are a very clever young woman."
"Well, I don't know about that--" she drawled. Then she left her chair
and took a step toward him. "Tell me--is Bill Bolton very badly hurt?"
"Just a bit frazzled, that's all." Her aviation instructor limped into
the room. His coat was gone and his soft shirt, once white, hung from
his shoulders in dirty, tattered streamers. One eye, half-closed, was
rapidly turning black. Blood streaked his cheeks. Just above his left
knee the trouser-leg had been cut away and a blood-soaked bandage was
visible. Dorothy saw that his wrists were handcuffed behind his back. At
his elbow, a man whose jaw was queerly twisted to one side, stood guard
with drawn revolver.
The lame man grinned. "Here's your young friend now. You can take him in
the kitchen if you like and wash him off a bit. I'll come in later with
some bandages. You'll find matches and a lamp on a shelf just inside the
door.--Stick that gun in your pocket, Tony," he added to his henchman.
"Come over here. Now that we've proper light, I'll snap that jaw of
yours back into place."
Dorothy put an arm about Bill without speaking and led him slowly into
the dark room. Then as her hand groped for matches on the shelf, there
came a loud click from the other room, followed by a scream of anguish.
Dorothy felt her hair rise on the back of her neck. There was a
momentary silence, then low, breathless moans.
"What is it, Bill?" she whispered fearfully. "What's happened?"
Bill chuckled. "Tony's dislocated jaw is back in place, now, that's all.
Too bad I didn't knock it clean off while I was about it. He's the bird
who knifed me a while ago. No fault of his that he only got me in the
leg, either. I'm glad to hear he's getting his, now."
"Goodness--" Dorothy found the matches at last and struck one. "Here I
stand--and you're badly hurt--don't say you aren't--I know it. Where's
that lamp? He said it was on the shelf. It isn't. There it is on the
table. _Dash_--there goes the match!"
"Take it easy, kid!"
"Oh, I'm all right. That man's scream kind of set my teeth on edge."
She struck another match, then lit the lamp and carried it to a dresser
by the sink.
"Come over here and sit down," she said, drawing out a chair. "I want to
swab out that cut in your leg. The rag is filthy--" She pulled out the
drawer in the dresser. "Here's luck! Towels--clean ones! Who'd have
thought it!"
With deft fingers she unfastened his bandage, then cleaned the wound
with fresh water from the pump, using every precaution not to hurt him.
"You're certainly good at this kind of thing," was Bill's sincere
tribute as she turned her attention to the bruised cut on his head.
"Part of my high school course, you know. I'm better at this than at
Latin," she admitted with a smile. "Tell me what happened in the woods
after I got scragged and Mike carted me up here?"
"Who's Mike?"
"I'll tell you about him in a minute. Get along with your story first."
"Not much of a story. I didn't last long enough to make it interesting."
"Tell me about it, anyway."
"Well--I heard you yell and half turned when Tony and another lad jumped
me. You know what happened to Tony--"
"Yes, but the shot right afterward? Oh, Bill, I was scared silly they'd
killed you! Whose gun _was_ that?"
"Mine. I'd got my gat loose by that time and drilled him through the
shoulder. It turned out later that he tripped over a log when he fell,
came down with his leg under him and snapped the bone. When I learned
the horrid truth, I wept!"
"I'll bet you did! Couldn't you break away then?"
"I could not. Several others had joined the rough-house by that time.
For a while--not very long--we played a lively little game of tag,
blind-man's-buff, postoffice, dilly-dilly-come-and-be-killed, with me as
dilly, until another chap jumped out of a Ford on to the middle of my
back and rubbed my face in the cool, wet soil! At that bright moment old
Limpy clinched these handcuffs on my wrists and read me a lecture on the
error of my ways.
"He's a physician when he isn't bank-robbing, I think. Anyway, the gang
call him 'Doctor.' He seems to be running the show. Not such a bad lad
if he could be made over again. Tony, you must know, has developed an
almost uncontrollable penchant for sheathing his pigsticker in my
carcass once more. Strangely enough, I can't see it Tony's way. And
fortunately for me, neither can the Doctor! Now, young lady, if you're
finished squeezing cold water into my sore eye, I'll sing the doxology!"
Dorothy giggled. "Aren't you funny! I don't believe more than half of
that tale is true. I'll wager things were a whole lot worse than you've
painted them, sir!"
"Well, you've proved to be a good little guesser quite often--what I'm
interested in is what happened to you."
Dorothy told him.
"Nice work!" Bill complimented her as she finished talking. "I know a
few jiu jitsu holds, but you must be a wonder at it. It's too bad Staten
Island Sadie had to butt in and spoil your show. The more I see of that
lady, the less I like her. She was in the woods when the gang jumped
us--barged off in a huff later, because the Doc wouldn't let her croak
me then and there. She's a nice little playmate. Every one of this gang
is a cold-blooded thug--but she's a fiend! But, to tell the honest
truth, it's our lame friend who worries me most."
"Yes," agreed Dorothy. "That suave manner of his gives me the creeps!"
"So sorry--" purred the Doctor's voice directly behind them. "But if I
were in your position, my young friends, I should undoubtedly be
worried, too."
Bill and Dorothy swung round to see him coming toward them. In his hand
he carried a small, black bag.
"How is our invalid, nurse?" he inquired, feigning ignorance of their
startled surprise, and placing his satchel on the table. "Those who live
by the sword--but you are familiar with the quotation, I'm sure?"
Opening the bag, he produced bandages, adhesive tape, a pair of surgical
scissors and a large tube of salve.
"Lay these out, so I can reach them easily, please," he ordered as he
unwrapped the temporary bandage Dorothy had bound about Bill's leg.
"Ah! I see you have cleansed the wound, but it is safer to be more
thorough. Hand me one of the swabs you will find wrapped in cellophane
in the bag, please. Strange how the professional spirit will
dominate--even though the patient's life may not be a long one!" He
glanced smilingly at Dorothy.
"Don't tell me the knife was poisoned?" she cried in horror.
"Hardly anything so melodramatic, my dear. You don't quite grasp my
meaning."
"He means," said Bill grimly, "that after he has had the fun of patching
me up, I'm to be taken for a ride. But don't let him bluff you. He's
only trying to scare us."
"Too much knowledge is dangerous at times--entirely too dangerous,"
returned the lame man. "Hand me another swab, nurse. But you put it
rather crudely, young man--and I am perfectly in earnest, I assure you."
"Oh, you couldn't do _that_!" Dorothy blenched and her hand shook as she
passed him the swab.
"Well, you see, it is not entirely up to me," he replied, carefully
cleaning the wound. "The matter of your friend's future, shall I
say?--as well as your own, will have to be put to vote presently. Of
course, if Miss Martinelli has her way--but why anticipate the
unpleasant?"
To Dorothy's surprise, Bill chuckled.
"They hang in this state, for murder," he remarked coolly. "It's a nasty
death, I've heard. What's more, Doctor, a man of your mentality does not
deliberately stick his head into a noose!"
"Perhaps not, my young friend. But you forget that in order to prove
murder, there must be a body--or bodies, as the case may be." The Doctor
looked up at Bill and smiled again.
_Chapter XV_