"Round in front, men!" I cried, motioning my followers to sally through
the door. "Bring him back!" And an instant later I leaped through the
window after the flying enemy.
There was a fall of six feet, and as I landed on a pile of broken
glass, a bit shaken, with the rain beating on my head, it was a few
seconds before I recovered my wits. When I looked, no one was in sight.
I heard the men running on the porch of the hotel, so the enemy was not
to be sought that way. I set off full speed for the other corner, fifty
yards away, half suspecting an ambush. But at the turn I stopped. The
rain-soaked street was empty for a block before me. Far down the next
block a plodding figure under an umbrella bent to the gusts of the wind
and tried to ward off the driving spray of the storm. But Darby Meeker
had disappeared as though the earth had swallowed him up.
"Where is he?" cried Porter, the first of my men to reach my side.
I shrugged my shoulders. "I haven't seen him."
"He didn't come our way--that I'll swear," panted Fitzhugh.
"He was out of sight before I got my feet," said I. "They must have a
hiding-place close by."
"He must have jumped the fence here," said Wilson, pointing to a
cottage just beyond the hotel's back yard. "I'll see about it." And he
vaulted the pickets and looked about the place.
He was back in a minute with a shake of the head.
"Well, it's no great matter," I said. "We can get along without another
guest for the afternoon.
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