CHAPTER XXXV.A COMPLETE KNOCK-OUT.
Meanwhile, Margie Marne was having an adventure of her own, to which we will now recur.
In another part of the city, and about the same hour that witnessed the strange explosion in the dungeon where Carter was confined, the girl sat in her little room.
She was quite alone, but all the time she was watched by a pair of eyes that did not lose sight of her.
These eyes glittered in the head of a man on the floor above, and he was enabled to watch the girl through a hole deftly cut in the floor.
All unconscious of the espionage, the girl looked over a few papers which she had taken from their hiding place in one corner of the room, where they would baffle the lynx eyes of a keen man, and now and then a smile came to her face.
All at once she heard footsteps approach her door, and for the first time in an hour she looked up.
A rap sounded, but Margie hesitated.
Should she open the door and admit her visitor?
Perhaps it was Carter, whom she wanted to see just then, but a sudden fear took possession of her.
At last, however, Margie arose, and hiding the papers in her bosom, crossed the room.
Her hand was on the latch, but for all this she still hesitated.
In another moment, as if beating down her last suspicion, Margie opened the door.
A man stood before her. It was not the person who had offered to protect her from Caddy’s advances, nor was it Caddy himself.
As she held the door open the stranger advanced into the apartment and turned suddenly upon Margie.
Her breath went fast, and she gazed at the man with half-stifled feelings.
“Miss Marne?” he asked in a peculiar voice.
“Yes, sir.”
“Alone, I see.”
“I am quite alone, but I cannot imagine to whom I owe the present call.”
“Sit down, girl.”
There was something commanding in the tones, which had suddenly changed, but Margie did not stir.
“I want to talk with you,” continued the man. “And I prefer to have you seated.”
Margie glanced at the door and then toward the window, the eyes of her caller following her, and for half a second her heart seemed in her throat.
“I want those papers,” and the fellow, whose face was covered with a heavy brown beard, held out his hand.
“What papers?” demanded the girl.
“The ones you have just been looking over.”
No wonder Margie started.
“Come, don’t mince matters with me. I won’t have it. Are they in your bosom, girl?”
Margie fell back, but the man advanced.
“I am here for them,” he went on. “You can’t cheat me out of them. Come, hand them over.”
“But——”
“Not a word unless you intend to comply with mydemand! You know where the papers are. You got them in Mother Flintstone’s den.”
“My God——”
“I hit the nail on the head, did I?” brutally laughed the man. “I thought my arrow wouldn’t go far wide of the mark. Here, I’ll despoil you of the papers by force if you don’t tamely submit.”
Margie was nearly against the wall now, and she looked at the man like a startled fawn.
She now felt, yes, knew that the beard was but a mask, and she asked herself whom she faced.
Claude Lamont or George Richmond?
She could retreat no farther, and remembering her adventure in the house which had succumbed to the fire fiend, she nearly fainted.
Already the powerful hands of the unknown almost touched her bosom; she could feel his hot, wine-laden breath on her cheek and she expected any minute to be hurled across the room and robbed.
She made one last effort, but the movement was intercepted, and she stood in his grasp!
He held her at arms’ length and glared at her after the manner of a wild beast.
The poor girl was a child in the iron grip of the man, and all at once he drew her toward him and began to look for the documents.
“Don’t! For Heaven’s sake, have some respect for my sex!” gasped Margie. “You can have them.”
“I can, eh? Well, hand them over.”
Margie, with trembling fingers, did so, and at sight of the papers he uttered a gleeful cry.
The next moment he released her, and she sank into the nearest chair.
She saw him step back a pace and open the papers, over which he eagerly ran his eye.
“Is this all you had, girl?” he suddenly demanded.
“Yes.”
“It’s a lie!”
Margie’s face colored.
“I want the others.”
“I have no others.”
“These are but letters from a lover. Where are the papers that once belonged to the old hag?”
“That is not for me to tell.”
“You defy me, eh?”
“I defy no one.”
“I’ll choke you to death but what I get the truth. I’ll have the right papers or your life!”
“You must take my life, then.”
The girl had strangely recovered her self-possession.
She could look at him now without flinching, and the terrible hand dreaded a few moments before had no terrors for her now.
Suddenly the man threw the letters upon the table and looked fiercely at the girl.
She withstood his look like a heroine.
“Be quick about it!” he cried.
“I have no other papers,” calmly said Margie.
He laughed derisively and then glanced toward the door.
“I’ll fix you,” he exclaimed. “You’ve been in our road long enough, and the only sure way to get rid of you is to leave you here a fit subject for the morgue.”
The moment he came toward her Margie sprang up.
She was strong again, and suddenly catching up apoker which stood near the chair, she placed herself in an attitude of defiance.
“You advance at your peril,” she said, in determined tones. “I shall defend myself to the last extremity.”
“Against me? Why, girl, you don’t know what you are saying.”
“You shall find out if you advance, I say.”
He laughed again, and came forward.
In an instant the heavy rod was lifted above the girl’s head, and the next second she brought it down with all her might.
It was a blow such as a giantess might have delivered, for the man’s lifted arms went down, and he received the full weight of the poker upon his head.
He gave one gasp and sank to the floor like one killed outright, and Margie, with the novel weapon still clutched in her hands, looked at him, while a deathly pallor overspread her face.
Had she killed him?
For a short time she stood there, barely realizing that the whole thing was not a dream, and then she bent over the man.
As she touched the beard it came off and fell to the floor beside the face.
Margie uttered a scream.
She had seen that face before—seen it in company with Claude Lamont, and she knew that the man was his associate in evil and one of the chief men in the plot against Mother Flintstone and herself.
She sprang up suddenly and ran from the room, shutting the door behind her.
Down on the street she saw no one, though she looked everywhere for a policeman.
Moments were flitting away, and she suddenly thought of Carter.
She knew where he lodged, and she would tell him of her adventure.
In a moment she was on her way, but she was doomed to disappointment; the detective’s door was locked and she could not elicit a response.
Baffled, Margie turned back again.
She had taken up nearly twenty minutes on the streets, and when she reached the vicinity of her humble home she thought of the man left on the floor.
She glided upstairs cautiously, just as if the dead could hear her, but at the door she stopped and listened.
All was still beyond it.
Margie put on a bold front, and opened the portal.
The first look seemed to root her to the spot.
The room was untenanted.
No one lay on the floor, and the little place, with this exception, seemed just as she left it.
The man, her victim, was gone.
“Thank Heaven! his blood is not on my hands, rascal though he was!” exclaimed Margie Marne, as she leaped across the threshold and shut the door behind her.
If she had returned a little sooner she might have caught sight of her would-be robber.
She might have seen a man come out of the house, with his hat drawn over his brows and the brown beard awry.
This individual hurried away, nor looked he back, as if he thought he was not safe from molestation, andhis gait told how eager he was to get out of the neighborhood.
A few minutes later he turned up in a certain house in another part of the city, and dropped into a chair as the tenant of the room demanded to know if he had been in a prize fight.
“Not quite, but I struck an Amazon,” was the reply, and he of the brown beard tried to smile.
“Tell me; did you encounter Margie?”
“No one else. What made you guess her?”
“Her name popped into my head somehow or other. Guess I must have been thinking of her when you came in. What did she hit you with?”
“With a crowbar, from the way my head feels; but never mind. It’s a long lane, you know.”
Claude Lamont smiled.
“You do pretty well for a ‘dead man,’” and then both men burst into a laugh.
“I’ll wring her neck for it yet!” suddenly cried George Richmond. “I’ll have the blood of that girl for her blow!”