Then Rob quietly climbed down from the table, picked up the other shaft, and, by using great care, was able to get this shaft also in position, balanced on top of the other, both of them directly over the door, both looped with the slender rope.
Rob dropped the rope to the floor, got down, moved the table back, stepped over, took hold of the rope, and waited.
He didn’t have long to wait.
He heard steps coming towards the door.
If the manner in which the key on the other side was turned was any indication of the emotions of the man who was entering the room, that man was in a violent and nasty temper. The bolt shot back with a vengeful click.
Rob stepped back so that he would be slightly behind the door as it opened.
The door shot back with a jerk. The heavy-set man standing on the threshold could not immediately see Rob. He took a half-step forward into the room said, “What the hell!”
Rob pulled the slender rope a hard, quick jerk.
The man sensed the menace about him, started a forward leap, but was too slow. A hundred and sixty five pounds of steel shafting descended unexpectedly on his head and shoulders. He went down with hardly a moan.
Rob sprang forward.
He had no time to engage in any of the niceties of deception. The prone, quiet figure of the heavy-set man lay motionless save for a heavy deep breathing. The lighted Havana, which had been in his mouth, had rolled a few inches away and, still glowing, sent up a spiral of blue, aromatic smoke.
Rob bent over the figure and for a moment seemed to be all thumbs. He realized how difficult it is to search someone else. A side trousers pocket yielded Rob’s knife, which he knew was razor sharp, and then he turned back the man’s coat and found a .32-caliber automatic which he withdrew from a shoulder holster.
Rob listened and could hear nothing. He tried to drag the heavy-set man inside the door. It was too much of a job. Rob rolled him, pushed him entirely over the threshold, then shoved in the bars of steel.
Consciousness started to return to the sprawled figure. His muscles twitched. He groaned, flickered his eyes open, tried to sit up.
Rob slammed the door shut, locking it from the outside and pocketed the key which had been left in the lock on the outside. He grasped the captured gun in his perspiring hand and walked quickly to the bend in the corridor, then hurriedly climbed stairs to the deck of the boat.
There were no lights of any sort visible, and Rob gathered that the portholes had all been darkened, but in the starlight he could plainly make out the form of the boat and saw that it was as he had gathered, a big roomy houseboat.
There seemed to be no one on deck. Rob cat-footed to the gunwale and jumped to the dock, still holding the automatic in his hand. He had made certain there was a shell in the chamber, had slipped the safety off and was ready for business. He was under no illusions as to the stakes. He was now playing for his life.
The boat was moored to the dock, fore and aft, and there was a slight current gurgling against the little pier in the tree hidden alcove where the boat was moored. He decided to take a chance on gaining more time to perfect his escape.
Running to the stern, he used his razor-sharp knife, cutting through the light hawser which was holding the boat by the stem. Then he ran back to the bow line and pulling it over the bollard cast it into the water. Watching, he was pleased to see that almost instantly a black gap some few inches in width began to appear between the boat and the dock. The gap constantly widened.
He turned back to the trees, paused motionless as he heard an automobile coming from the direction of the road. Powerful headlights danced through the trees, then were turned down to dim and shut off. Rob heard the sound of the motor for a second or two, then silence. He was now squarely between two fires.
So absorbed had he become with this threat in his rear, that he momentarily took his eyes from the deck of the boat. When he looked up a figure was running along the deck.
“Hey!” the man shouted at him.
Rob knew that he was only an indistinct figure in the starlight, probably less distinct than that of the man who was running towards him. The bow had swung clear of the dock, but the stern was coming in close and there was still opportunity for the man to jump ashore, grab the stern line, tie the boat up, give the alarm, and take after Rob.
Rob turned and started to run.
“Hey, you!” the man on deck called. “Come back here.”
“It’s okay,” Rob called back over his shoulder, racing for the land.
He looked back and saw that the man had turned and was rushing towards the rear of the boat, apparently preparing to execute the very maneuver which Rob feared. Rob knew that if he only had some way of holding the men’s attention, of freezing him into immobility for even a few seconds, the boat would then have swung out into the current, and the gap would be so wide that the man would have to jump in the water and swim before he could gain the pier. By the time he did that, the boat would have drifted far out into the middle of the stream and it would be too late for reinforcements from below to head Rob off. It might be a matter of some fifteen or twenty minutes before the engines could be started, the boat brought back to the pier, and anything like organized pursuit placed in operation.
“Halt!” Rob shouted. “You’re under arrest,” he added as an afterthought.
The man kept running.
Rob squeezed the trigger on the automatic, firing twice, blindly. He saw tongues of blue-orange flame spurt from the muzzle of the gun, felt the reassuring jar of the recoil as the mechanism kicked fresh shells into the barrel, and saw that his ruse apparently was effective. As nearly as he could tell in the starlight, the man had ceased to run and had flung himself full length on the deck of the houseboat.
By this time, Rob was clear of the pier, and he could see that the boat had swung completely around and was now well out away from the dock, the current carrying it out towards the middle of the stream.
Rob turned and raced for the friendly protection of the shadows, holding the automatic in his hand.
At the point where the trees made deep shadows and where soft, black loam muffled his steps, Rob paused and waited, taking stock of the situation, trying to locate the motorists who had just driven up.
He could hear someone running, someone coming towards him from the direction of the road.
Rob slipped in closer to the trunk of a towering oak tree. As nearly as he could tell, there was only one person running down the trail.
Rob looked back towards the houseboat and suddenly became rigid.
A shaft of ruddy light was coming up through the bow of the houseboat and, even as Rob looked, a streak of orange flame licked up into brilliance, extinguished itself momentarily, and then shot up once more, fiercer than at first. A moment later there was something similar to a muffled explosion and the flames seemed to blast a channel for themselves right up through the deck at the bow of the ship. Ten seconds more, and the whole front of the houseboat was a mass of flames.
Rob watched the boat as it drifted out into the river, the flames rearing skyward. The boat gradually drifted farther and farther out into the center of the current, until a ruddy reflection was flung back, not only from the low clouds which were coming up from the south, following the course of the river, but also from the swirling waters of the river. The ruby-red glow outlined the pier to which the ship had been tied, as well as the over-hanging tree limbs. Then, even as Rob looked, a woman stepped out from the trees, to stand on the edge of the river, silhouetted against that red, flaming spectacle. A woman who, judging from her slender figure and easy grace, was young and lithe.