"They blackjacked us," whispered Kennedy to me as I staggered to my feet."Then they dragged us through a secret passage into another house.How do you feel?""All right," I answered, bracing myself against a chair, for I was weak from the loss of blood, and dizzy.I was sore in every joint and muscle.I looked about, only half comprehending.Then my recollection flooded back with a rush.We had been locked in another room after the attack, and left to be dealt with later.I felt in my pocket.I had left my watch at the laboratory, but even the dollar watch I had taken and the small sum of money in my pocketbook were gone.
Kennedy still had his camera slung over his shoulder, where he had fastened it securely.
Here we were, imprisoned, while Pitts Slim, the man we had come after, whoever he was, was making his escape.Somewhere across the street was O'Connor, waiting in a room as we had agreed.There was only one window in our room, and it opened on a miserable little dumbwaiter air-shaft.It would be hours yet before his suspicions would be aroused and he would discover which of the houses we were held in.Meanwhile what might not happen to us?
Kennedy calmly set up his tripod.One leg had been broken in the rough-house, but he tied it together with his handkerchief, now wet with blood.I wondered how he could think of taking a picture.His very deliberation set me fretting and fuming, and I swore at him under my breath.Still, he worked calmly ahead.I saw him take the black box and set it on the tripod.It was indistinct in the darkness.It looked like a camera, and yet it had some attachment at the side that was queer, including a little lamp.Craig bent and attached some wires about the box.
At last he seemed ready."Walter," he whispered, "roll that sofa quietly over against the door.There, now the table and that bureau, and wedge the chairs in.Keep that door shut at any cost.It's now or never - here goes."He stopped a moment and tinkered with the box on the tripod."Hello!
Hello! Hello! Is that you, O'Connor?" he shouted.
I watched him in amazement.Was the man crazy? Had the blow affected his brain? Here he was, trying to talk into a camera.Alittle signalling-bell in the box commenced to ring, as if by spirit hands.
"Shut up in that room," growled a voice from outside the door."By God, they've barricaded the door.Come on, pals, we'll kill the spies."A smile of triumph lighted up Kennedy's pale face."It works, it works," he cried as the little bell continued to buzz." This is a wireless telephone you perhaps have seen announced recently -=20good for several hundred feet - through walls and everything.The inventor placed it in a box easily carried by a man, including a battery, and mounted on an ordinary camera tripod so that the user might well be taken for a travelling photographer.It is good in one direction only, but I have a signalling-bell here that can be rung from the other end by Hertzian waves.Thank Heaven, it's compact and simple.
"O'Connor," he went on, "it is as I told you.It was Pitts Slim.
He left here ten or fifteen minutes ago - I don't know by what exit, but I heard them say they would meet at the Central freightyards at midnight.Start your plain-clothes men out and send some one here, quick, to release us.We are locked in a room in the fourth or fifth house from the corner.There's a secret passage to the yegg-house.
