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He just jumped, spurs down, on that other man with the revolver in his hand. I could hear little grunts, and wheezes, and a thud or two against the cellar steps. Then there was silence, except for one double "click-click" which I couldn't understand. Oh, Matilda Anne, how I watched that cellar opening! And I saw a back with a red coat on it slowly rise out of the hole.
"I shall have to look in other places besides subterranean chambers for the men in charge," he thought. "These fellows are merely tools." Presently the sharp click-click of metal came no more through the heavy air of the room, and Ned, awaking Jimmie, who had fallen asleep again, moved into the small room from which the doorway gave a view of the stairs.
He took the brass-bound, ticking box from the bed, and must have adjusted the mechanism in a way Blake or Joe did not notice, for the "click-click" stopped at once, and the room seemed curiously still after it. "Some day I will show you how it works," the young Spaniard went on. "I think, myself, it is quite what you call clever."
A moment later, to the musical click-click of wheels passing over rail-joints, the little car shot through the gate-way in the stockade and sped away down the spur, the two indistinct figures bowing alternately to each other like a pair of grotesque automatons.
He came straight at me, and I stepped aside to let him pass; he stepped in the way and confronted me again. Then I saw that he had a mask on and was holding something in my face I heard a click-click and recognized a revolver in dim outline. I pushed the barrel aside with my hand and said: "Don't!" He ejaculated sharply: "Your watch! Your money!"
Manuelito had slunk down by the fire, and not a sound was to be heard except Jim's musical snore, and a little cropping noise among the horses. Yet Pike's quick ear caught, far out on the prairie to the west, the sound of hoofs coming towards him. "When those Apaches named a horse 'click-click' they must have struck one that interfered," he muttered.
Nor was it ever resumed, for at that moment, with no other announcement save such as was afforded by his quick step and the click-click of his spurs, a short, slight man entered the quadrangle from the doorway of the official wing. The adjutant, turning to look, caught his breath suddenly in an exclamation of astonishment. "Lord Wellington!" he cried, and was immediately on his feet.
A hasty search revealed no other weapons. "Now, step right along over there, Black, where you'll find two of my men," nodded Dave Fulsbee. Again Black obeyed. He saw, dimly, two men some yards further away in the darkness and joined them. Click-click! Then the scoundrel cried out in the bitterness of his rage, for the two railway detectives had handcuffed him.
Now and again the tinkle of caravan-bells breaks in upon his meditations, or the click-click of the attendant's sandals as he crosses the tiled floor with sherbet, coffee, or kalyan; but the interruption is brief. A few moments, and silence again reigns supreme the perfection of rest, the acme of Dolce far niente.
Then there was a little gurgling sound, "like the baby made when it was swallowing;" then something went "click-click" and "cluck-cluck," so that she sat up in bed. When she did so she was attracted by something else that seemed creeping from the back door toward the centre of the room.
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