It was strange how his brain worked on ceaselessly, seemingly oblivious to his immediate surroundings, seemingly concerned with things extraneous to his present danger! And yet that was not altogether true. One thing had a bearing on another; and one thing led to another. It was like the cogs of wheels fitting into each other as they turned around and around. This tenure of the Rat’s rôle, that was no less dangerous, was apposite. Where was the Rat? While he, Billy Kane, fought to free himself from the stigma of David Ellsworth’s murder, while he fought for his own good name and his own life on that score, this rôle of the Rat, while it afforded temporary sanctuary from the police, forced him into perils that——
His lips compressed tightly. He had stumbled over something soft and yielding. His outstretched hand, though it saved him, slipped along the wall and came up against another wall, again at right angles, but this time where, obviously, the walls made a corner. He stooped down, and felt over the obstruction that his foot had encountered. It was a man’s body. It moved now, and writhed a little at his touch. It was the Wop almost certainly, the Wop “flung into a corner” out of the way like a sack of meal. But the man was still alive. Thank God for that! He had been afraid that the initiatory stage of the work might have been only too well accomplished.
His hands felt upward along the bound body, and touched the other’s face, and felt the cloth gag twisted and knotted around the man’s mouth. His hands felt still a little higher up—to the close-cropped prison hair. It was the Wop beyond question. He took a knife from his pocket.
“Don’t make a sound!” he breathed, as he removed the gag, and cut away the cords from around the other’s feet and hands. “You’re the Wop, aren’t you?”
The man’s affirmation was almost inarticulate. Billy Kane slipped his arm around the other’s shoulders and lifted the man into a sitting posture. He had a flask of brandy in his pocket, brought purposely for the Wop’s benefit, and he held the flask now to the other’s lips. The stimulant seemed to inject new life and strength into the man.
“Don’t talk!” Billy Kane cautioned. “The one thing to do is to get out of here now. Do you think you can walk at all?”