Like a rat for its hole, Marty Dean followed. Malone, farther away, dropped the plate on the floor, and rushed, with Moulton beside him, after the others--but he never reached the trapdoor.
Over the crashing blows, raining now in quick succession on the door of the room, over a startled commotion as lodgers, roomers, and tenants on the floor above awoke into frightened activity with shouts and cries, came the louder crash of a pile of packing boxes hurled to the floor. And over them, vaulting those scattered in his way, Jimmie Dale sprang at Malone. The man reeled back, with a cry. Moulton dashed through the trapdoor and disappeared. The short, ugly barrel of Jimmie Dale's automatic was between Malone's eyes.
“You make a move,” said Jimmie Dale, in a low sibilant way, “and I'll drop you where you stand! Put your hands behind your back--palms together!”
Malone, dazed, cowed, obeyed. A panel of the door split and rent down its length--the hinges were sagging. Jimmie Dale worked like lightning. The cord with the slip noose from his pocket went around Malone's wrists, jerked tight, and knotted; the placard, his lips grim, with no sign of humour, Jimmie Dale dangled around the man's neck.
“An introduction for you to Mr. Kline out there--that you seem so fond of!” gritted Jimmie Dale. Then, working as he talked: “I've got no time to tell you what I think of you, you pitiful hound”--he snatched up the plate from the floor and put it in his pocket--“Twenty years, I think you said, didn't you?”--his hand shot into Malone's pocket-book, and extracted the five-dollar note--“If you can open this with your toes maybe you can get a way”--he wrenched the trapdoor over and slammed it shut--“good-night, Malone”--and he leaped for the window.
The door tottered inward from the top, ripping, tearing, smashing hinges, panels, and jamb. Jimmie Dale got a blurred vision of brass buttons, blue coats, and helmets, and, in the forefront, of a stocky, gray-mustached, gray-haired man in plain clothes.
Jimmie Dale threw up the window, swung out, as with a rush the officers burst through into the room and a revolver bullet hummed viciously past his ear, and dropped to the ground--into encircling arms!