“Perhaps you’re right,” he said, and then came over to test the lashings about my arms and body.
Finding them satisfactory, he picked up the tan bag, and held out the gun he had taken from the ugly man a few minutes before.
“Here’s your revolver, Hook, now try to be sensible. We may as well go now. The old man and his wife will do as they were told. They are on their way to a city that we needn’t mention by name in front of our friend here, to wait for us and their share of the bonds. Needless to say, they will wait a long while—they are out of it now. But between ourselves there must be no more treachery. If we’re to get clear, we must help each other.”
According to the best dramatic rules, these folks should have made sarcastic speeches to me before they left, but they didn’t. They passed me without even a farewell look, and went out of sight into the darkness of the hall.
Suddenly the Chinese was in the room again, running tiptoe—an open knife in one hand, a gun in the other. This was the man I had been thanking for saving my life!
He bent over me.
The knife moved on my right side, and the rope that held that arm slackened its grip. I breathed again, and my heart went back to beating.
“Hook will be back,” Tai whispered, and was gone.
On the carpet, three feet in front of me, lay a revolver.
The street door closed, and I was alone in the house for a while.
You may believe that I spent that while struggling with the red plush ropes that bound me. Tai had cut one length, loosening my right arm