"You noisy fool, Wright!" he said, still holding me in his iron grip. "I heard you ranting in the street outside." Then, "Am I hurting you, Mr. Rissler?" he asked. Foolishly I opened my mouth to reply, but hardly had I done so before a handkerchief was thrust between my lips, and stuffed the next instant half-way down my throat. "Now, Wright," he said, "you can tie his hands and feet while I hold him. Do it so that the knot won't give, but carefully, so as not to hurt him. Come along, my good man! You are very slow! Do as I bid you, and be quick about it!" Somewhat to my surprise, and more so, evidently, to the Dumpling's, Wright refused point-blank. "I won't," he said, not budging from where he stood. "The gentleman's been kind to me and mine, and lift a hand against him I won't." "Do as I bid you!" was the answer, in a voice that was almost a hiss. "I won't," was the dogged reply. The next jiffey I was lifted off my feet by the Dumpling's powerful arms, and, before I knew what he was about, I was lying upon my back on the floor, bewildered but unharmed. Putting a knee upon my chest, and holding me down meanwhile with both hands, he raised his head and looked Wright straight in the eyes. For the space of a few seconds the fellow stood gaping at the Dumpling as if fascinated. Then his eyes dulled to a fixed, foolish stare, and finally the lids of them drooped and closed. He was mesmerised--that fact was evident. "Open your eyes," the Dumpling commanded. Wright did so. "Put your hand in my right-side pocket, and you'll find a strap." Automatically the other obeyed. "Strap his ankles securely. No; it is no use your struggling, Rissler," he went on, as, getting my feet against the wainscot for leverage, I put all my strength into an effort to throw him off. Then, looking over his shoulder, he inquired: "Have you got that strap, Wright?" "I have got the strap," the other replied mechanically. "Then be ready to use it," said the Dumpling. "Slip it around his ankles when I say 'Now'!" Still holding me down with both hands, he suddenly straddled his powerful knees open, as if they had been a pair of nut-crackers, and the two legs of me--outside which his own legs now lay--the two halves of a walnut. Then he closed his knees, clipping mine together within them, as the pair of crackers might clip the shell; and though I struggled with all my strength, for I was furious at finding myself proved to be not only as a child in his hands, but as an infant upon his knees--or between them--I knew, when I heard him say 'Now,' that I was as neatly hobbled as any horse. "It's a pity you put us and yourself to all this unnecessary trouble," he said philosophically. "Now, then, Wright, look in his pockets for a handkerchief, and lash his wrists while I hold them together." As he spoke, the five fingers of his right hand closed on my left hand, as the talons of a pouncing hawk close upon a field-mouse.