Miss Caprice Part 13

"I wanted to uncover your batteries; to learn what you knew; to understand your designs. Now that you give me no alternative, I am compelled to hurt your feelings by declaring myself able to find the one I seek without the aid of Pauline Potter."

As he speaks the last word he rises to his feet, once more feeling like himself.

"What would you do now, John Craig?"

"Leave this building, since I was lured here under false pretenses. What have you done with my companion?"

"The funny little man? Oh, he left here long ago when he learned you had fallen among old friends," she replies, carelessly.

John remembers something now; it is the sight of Philander Sharpe lying back in his chair drugged, and therefore he does not credit what the actress says.

"Will you show me the way out?" he asks.

"I will do more."

She claps her hands together in the oriental way of summoning a servant.

Instantly the curtains move; three men enter the apartment, and John realizes that Pauline Potter is about to show her teeth.

He draws his figure up, for while not a pugnacious man, he knows how to defend himself. As to his bravery who can question it after his action of the afternoon?

"Does it take three to show me to the door? With your permission I will depart."

"Not yet Doctor Chicago--not yet."

"Ha! you would attempt violence. Well, I'm ready to meet these fellows, thanks to the forethought that caused me to arm myself before starting on this quixotic errand to-night."

The young Chicagoan throws a hand back, meaning to draw the little pocket revolver which has more than once served him well, but, to his dismay, it is gone.

He sees a derisive smile upon the features of Pauline, and knows she has taken it while he lay there unconscious on the couch.

"I was afraid you might do yourself damage, John. If you are wise you will submit tamely," she says, and clapping her hands again sets the three men upon him.

Craig is no Hercules in build, and besides, his left arm is in rather a poor condition for warfare, being exceedingly sore.

Still he is not the one to submit tamely so long as a single chance remains, and for the s.p.a.ce of a minute there is a lively scene in the oriental apartment, in which divans are overturned, men swinging desperately around, and even Pauline Potter, accustomed to stage battles only, is constrained to utter a few little shrieks of alarm.

Then it is over.

Doctor Chicago, breathing hard and looking his dogged defiance, stands there in the hands of his captors.

"Do you change your mind, John Craig?" asks the woman, fastening her burning gaze upon his face.

"I have too much Scotch blood in me for that. On the contrary, I am more than ever determined to pursue my mission without any outside a.s.sistance," he answers.

"Take him away!" she cries, and the look that crosses her face can only be likened to the black clouds preceding the hurricane.

John struggles no longer, for he realizes that he is safer out of her sight than in it.

They take him through a door-way and the last he hears from the beautiful tigress is her taunting cry of:

"We will break this proud spirit of yours, John Craig--what you scorn now you will beg for after awhile, when it is too late!"

He wonders whether this is a prophecy.

The men hurry him along a narrow hall, for many of these Maltese houses are built in a queer way, nor do they treat him with consideration, but rather the contrary.

When he ventures to protest, the man who opened the door orders silence and enforces it with a cowardly blow from his fist.

John looks him straight in the eye and says:

"You coward! I will remember that," at which the man turns his head away and swears under his breath.

Presently they halt in front of a door, which the leader unlocks. At a word from him the young American is pushed inside.

John, receiving such an impetus, staggers and throws out his hands for support, but failing to find anything of this kind, pitches over, just as the door slams shut.

He recovers himself and sits up, a trifle bruised, but not otherwise injured through his rough treatment.

This is a nice predicament, to be shut up in a house of Valetta, while, perhaps, Philander Sharpe returns to the hotel with a story of his succ.u.mbing to the wiles of a beautiful enchantress.

The steamer will sail without him, and the duse must be to pay generally.

John begins, like a man, to wonder if he can do anything for himself; that spirit so distinctive, so Chicago like, will not allow him to sit down and repine.

Surrounded by gloom, how will he find out the nature of his prison?

He endeavors to penetrate the darkness--a trace of light finds an entrance under the door and relieves the somber blank. It does more, for all at once John's eyes discover something that rivets his attention.

There are two of them--eyes that gleam in the darkness like those of a great cat.

A thrill sweeps over the doctor; can it be possible they have shut him in here with some great fierce animal that will tear him limb from limb?

Is this Pauline Potter's dramatic revenge?

Who can blame him for a sudden quaking in the region of his heart--such a fate is too terrible to calmly contemplate; but this qualm is only momentary, and then Doctor Chicago is himself again, brave and self-reliant.

CHAPTER VIII.

HER DEBT CANCELED.

He begins to reason, to strain his mind in search of all the things he ever heard with relation to a meeting between unarmed men and wild beasts.

The power of the human eye has been held up as an example, and surely here is a chance to try it--the stake, his life.