Rusty saw the wide open window—and his chance. Out he went and disappeared, leaving the man cussing at him.
A moment’s argument followed, then they wrapped Elaine in the blankets alone, still bound and gagged, and carried her out.
In the secret den, the Clutching Hand was waiting, gazing now and then at his watch, and then at the wounded man before him. In a chair his first assistant sat, watching Dr. Morton.
A knock at the door caused them to turn their heads. The crook opened it and in walked the other crooks who had carried off Elaine in the suit of armor.
Elaine was now almost conscious, as they sat her down in a chair and partly loosed her bonds and the gag. She gazed about, frightened.
“Oh—help! help!” she screamed as she caught sight of the now familiar mask of the Clutching Hand.
“Call all you want—here, young lady,” he laughed unnaturally. “No one can hear. These walls are soundproof!”
Elaine shrank back.
“Now, doc.,” he added harshly to Dr. Morton. “It was she who shot him. Her blood must save him.”
Dr. Morton recoiled at the thought of torturing the beautiful young girl before him.
“Are—you willing—to have your blood transfused?” he parleyed.
“No—no—no!” she cried in horror,
Dr. Morton turned to the desperate criminal. “I cannot do it.”
“The deuce you can’t!” A cold steel revolver pressed down on Dr. Morton’s stomach. In the other hand the master crook held his watch.
“You have just one minute to make up your mind.”
Dr. Morton shrank back. The revolver followed. The pressure of a fly’s foot meant eternity for him.
“I—I’ll try!”
The other crooks next carried Elaine, struggling, and threw her down beside the wounded man. Together they arranged another couch beside him.
Dr. Morton, still covered by the gun, bent over the two, the hardened criminal and the delicate, beautiful girl. Clutching Hand glared fiendishly, insanely.
From his bag he took a little piece of something that shone like silver. It was in the form of a minute, hollow cylinder, with two grooves on it, a cylinder so tiny that it would scarcely have slipped over the point of a pencil.
“A cannulla,” he explained, as he prepared to make an incision in Elaine’s arm and in the arm of the wounded rogue.
He cuffed it over the severed end of the artery, so cleverly that the inner linings of the vein and artery, the endothelium as it is called, were in complete contact with each other.
Clutching Hand watched eagerly, as though he had found some new, scientific engine of death in the little hollow cylinder.
A moment and the blood that was, perhaps, to save the life of the wounded felon was coursing into his veins from Elaine.
A moment later, Dr. Morton looked up at the Clutching Hand and nodded, “Well, it’s working!”
At Elaine’s head, Clutching Hand himself was administering just enough ether to keep her under and prevent a struggle that would wreck all. The wounded man had not been anesthetized and seemed feebly conscious of what was being done to save him.
All were now bending over the two.
Dr. Morton bent closest over Elaine. He looked at her anxiously, felt her pulse, watched her breathing, then pursed up his lips.
“This is—dangerous,” he ventured, gazing askance at the grim Clutching Hand.
“Can’t help it,” came back laconically and relentlessly.
The doctor shuddered.
The man was a veritable vampire!
Outside the deserted house, Kennedy and I were looking helplessly about.
Suddenly Kennedy dashed back and reappeared a minute later with a couple of pieces of armor. He held them down to Rusty and the dog sniffed at them.
But Rusty stood still.
Kennedy pointed to the ground.
Nothing doing. In leading us where he had been before, Rusty had reached the end of his canine ability.
Everything we could do to make Rusty understand that we wanted him to follow a trail was unavailing. He simply could not do it. Kennedy coaxed and scolded. Rusty merely sat up on his hind legs and begged with those irresistible brown eyes.
“You can’t make a bloodhound out of a collie,” despaired Craig, looking about again helplessly.
Then he reached into his pocket and pulled out a police whistle. He blew three sharp blasts.
Would it bring help?
While we were thus despairing, the continued absence of Dr. Morton from home had alarmed his family and had set in motion another train of events.
When he did not return, and could not be located at the place to which he was supposed to have gone, several policemen had been summoned to his house, and they had come, finally, with real bloodhounds from a suburban station.
There were the tracks of his car. That the police themselves could follow, while two men came along holding in leash the pack, leaders of which were “Searchlight” and “Bob.”
It had not been long before the party came across the deserted runabout beside the road. There they had stopped, for a moment.
It was just then that they heard Kennedy’s call, and one of them had been detailed to answer it.
“Well, what do you want?” asked the officer, eyeing Kennedy suspiciously as he stood there with the armor. “What’s them pieces of tin—hey?”
Kennedy quickly flashed his own special badge. “I want to trail a girl,” he exclaimed hurriedly. “Can I find a bloodhound about here?”
“A hound? Why, we have a pack—over there.”
“Bring them—quick!” ordered Craig.
The policeman, who was an intelligent fellow, saw at once that, as Kennedy said, the two trails probably crossed. He shouted and in a few seconds the others, with the pack, came.
A brief parley resulted in our joining forces.
Kennedy held the armor down to the dogs. “Searchlight” gave a low whine, then, followed by “Bob” and the others, was off, all with noses close to the ground. We followed.
The armor was, after all, the missing link.
Through woods and fields the dogs led us.
Would we be in time to rescue Elaine?
In the mysterious haunt of the Clutching Hand, all were still standing around Elaine and the wounded Pitts Slim.
Just then a cry from one of the group startled the rest. One of them, less hardened than the Clutching Hand, had turned away from the sight, had gone to the window, and had been attracted by something outside.
“Look!” he cried.
From the absolute stillness of death, there was now wild excitement among the crooks.
“Police! Police!” they shouted to each other as they fled by a doorway to a secret passage.
Clutching Hand turned to his first assistant.
“You—go—too,” he ordered.
The dogs had led us to a strange looking house, and were now baying and leaping up against the door. We did not stop to knock, but began to break through, for inside we could hear faintly sounds of excitement and cries of “Police—police!”
The door