“Open up here!”

CHAPTER VI

THE BOMB

Archie bounded silently out into the other room and stood listening tensely.  He was not a naturally querulous man, but he did feel at this point that Fate was picking on him with a somewhat undue severity.

“In th’ name av th’ Law!”

There are times when the best of us lose our heads.  At this juncture Archie should undoubtedly have gone to the door, opened it, explained his presence in a few well-chosen words, and generally have passed the whole thing off with ready tact.  But the thought of confronting a posse of police in his present costume caused him to look earnestly about him for a hiding-place.

Up against the farther wall was a settee with a high, arching back, which might have been put there for that special purpose.  He inserted himself behind this, just as a splintering crash announced that the Law, having gone through the formality of knocking with its knuckles, was now getting busy with an axe.  A moment later the door had given way, and the room was full of trampling feet.  Archie wedged himself against the wall with the quiet concentration of a clam nestling in its shell, and hoped for the best.

It seemed to him that his immediate future depended for better or for worse entirely on the native intelligence of the Force.  If they were the bright, alert men he hoped they were, they would see all that junk in the bedroom and, deducing from it that their quarry had stood not upon the order of his going but had hopped it, would not waste time in searching a presumably empty apartment.  If, on the other hand, they were the obtuse, flat-footed persons who occasionally find their way into the ranks of even the most enlightened constabularies, they would undoubtedly shift the settee and drag him into a publicity from which his modest soul shrank.  He was enchanted, therefore, a few moments later, to hear a gruff voice state that th’ mutt had beaten it down th’ fire-escape.  His opinion of the detective abilities of the New York police force rose with a bound.

There followed a brief council of war, which, as it took place in the bedroom, was inaudible to Archie except as a distant growling noise.  He could distinguish no words, but, as it was succeeded by a general trampling of large boots in the direction of the door and then by silence, he gathered that the pack, having drawn the studio and found it empty, had decided to return to other and more profitable duties.  He gave them a reasonable interval for removing themselves, and then poked his head cautiously over the settee.

All was peace.  The place was empty.  No sound disturbed the stillness.

Archie emerged.  For the first time in this morning of disturbing occurrences he began to feel that God was in his heaven and all right with the world.  At last things were beginning to brighten up a bit, and life might be said to have taken on some of the aspects of a good egg.  He stretched himself, for it is cramping work lying under settees, and, proceeding to the bedroom, picked up the tweed trousers again.