Although taken unawares, Locke was, in a measure, ready for them.  One he grabbed in a clever jiu-jitsu hold and sent him hurtling through the air to crash in a heap in a far corner of the room.  Leaping to his feet, he beat another to the floor.  The third villain was of tougher fiber.  Up and down the laboratory they battled, stumbling over broken furniture, now falling to the floor, where they rolled over and over, first one, then the other gaining the mastery, while the broken glass with which the floor was littered cut their clothing to ribbons and bit into their flesh.

Locke was slowly gaining the upper hand when the thug whom he had thrown over his head recovered.  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.

Directly opposite him and at a distance of four or five feet was a door leading to a back alley.  This door the emissary now guarding him had locked as a precaution against surprise and had carefully placed the key in his vest pocket.

Locke weighed each detail of his plan and then, bracing his feet firmly against the wall, he suddenly shot his lower limbs forward and, like the closing of a pair of giant shears, he wrapped his legs about the neck of the emissary and immediately exerted enormous pressure with his knees.

The emissary, taken totally by surprise, struggled to break the hold, and Locke’s thumbs were almost wrenched from their sockets.  But he held on grimly.  Soon the thug’s struggles subsided, Locke released him, and he slipped to the floor.

Locke was wearing a low-cut shoe.  Strange that a man’s life may hinge on such a slight detail, but this fact enabled him to work off his right shoe and his sock.  He extended his bare foot, and with his toes searched the pocket of the emissary for the key to the door.  Finally he found it.