The brute took the situation in at a glance,
saw his pal in trouble, and, sneaking treacherously behind Locke, dealt
him a terrific blow with the butt of a revolver. Locke dropped to the
floor as if pole-axed and lay still.
One of the thugs kicked him as he lay defenseless, and then, spying a
row of coat-hooks in an inner hallway, with fiendish ingenuity directed
the others who had joined him. They strung Locke up by his thumbs so
that he hung, half suspended, with his toes just off the floor.
As one of them searched him Locke was still unconscious. They found
nothing but a few bank-notes and the automatic revolver that Locke
always carried.
Slowly Locke regained his senses. The agony of his strained thumbs was
almost unbearable. But he was not the man to give up.
By this time two of the emissaries had gone, leaving one, who seated
himself quite close to Locke, where he was examining the revolver. With
the stoicism of an Indian, Locke manfully tried to evolve a plan by
which he might escape. Like a flash it came to him, but it was a plan so
fraught with the possibility of failure that he would not have decided
on it except for the agony of the strain on his thumbs.
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