I plugged away valiantly with what shots I had left, then leaving just one more in the chamber of each gun, I hurried around in the shadow, my blood up, to help them.

With the aid of the officer, they had just forced the light door and Searchlight had been allowed to leap in ahead of them, as I came up.

“Here,” I said to Lockwood, handing him back his gun, “take it, there is just one shot left.”

I, at least, had expected to find one, perhaps two desperate men waiting for us.  Evidently our ruse had worked.  The room was dark, but there seemed to be no one in it, though we could hear sounds as though some one were hastily barricading the door that led from the front to the room at which I had been firing.

Lockwood struck a match.

“Confound it, don’t!” muttered Craig, knocking it from his hand.  “They can see us well enough without helping them.”

“Chester!”

We stood transfixed.  It was a woman’s voice.  Where did it come from?  Could she be in the room?

“Chester—­is that you?”

“Yes, Inez.  Where are you?”

“I ran up here—­in this attic—­when I heard the shots.”

“Come down, then.  All is right, now.”

She came down a half ladder, half flight of steps.  At the foot she paused just a moment and hesitated.  Then, like a frightened bird, she flew to the safety of Lockwood’s arms.

“Mr. Whitney,” she sobbed, “called me up and told me that he had something very important to say, a message from you.  He said that he had the dagger, in his safe, up in the country.  He told me you’d be there and that you expected me to come up with him in his car.  I went.  We had some trouble with the engine.  And then that other car—­the one that followed us, came up behind and forced us off the bank.  Mr. Whitney and I were both stunned.  I don’t remember a thing after that, until I woke up here.  Where is it?”

I listened, with one eye on that door that had been barricaded.  Was Lockwood really innocent, after all?  I could not think that Inez Mendoza could make such a mistake, if he were not.

Lockwood clenched his fists.  “Some one shall pay for this,” he exclaimed.

There was the problem—­the inner room.  Who would go in?  We looked at each other a moment.

The room in which we were was a living room, and perhaps, when there were visitors in the little house, was a guest-room.  At any rate, on one side was a huge davenport by day which could be transformed into a folding bed at night.

Lockwood looked about hastily and his eye fell on the door, then on this folding bed.

With a wrench, he opened it and seized the cotton mattress from the inside.  With his gun ready he advanced toward the barricaded door, holding the mattress as a shield, for his experience in wild countries had taught him that a cotton mattress is about as good a thing to stop bullets as one could find on the spur of the moment.