THE ESCAPE
INSTINCTIVELY Ned Newton, who had pretty well recovered from the harsh
treatment accorded him while bound and gagged, started to Tom’s side.
The young inventor, seeing that a fight was imminent, also prepared for
it. Though he still felt the effects of the shock and injuries attendant
upon the attempt to blow him up, he was in a fighting mood and did not
shrink from it.
“I’ll make you tell what I want to know!” snarled Janner. “You haven’t
anybody here to help you now, Tom Swift. You’ll either give up that
secret and give the plans to me or you’ll wish you’d never fallen into
my hands.”
“I wish that now,” replied Tom coolly. “Not that I’m afraid of your
hands,” he added, bracing himself for the struggle he felt sure was
coming, “but I don’t like your company nor that of your gang. So you
have my regrets already, though as for any secrets I may have, or any
new inventions, they remain my exclusive property!”
“Oh, they do, do they?” sneered the man. “Well, we’ll see——”
He was about to rush upon Tom and Ned, who stood side by side ready to
ward off the assault, when there came a call from the hall outside.
“Hey, Janner! Hop to it!”
“What’s the matter?” asked the big ruffian. “Don’t bother me!”
“The Chief is on the wire!” came the answer, and Tom and Ned recognized
Snogg’s voice. “He wants to talk to you. Step on it—the Chief’s in a
hurry!”
“In that case your affair can wait,” said the big fellow, with a
threatening gesture toward the two young men. “Don’t think you’re going
to get away,” he added. “I’ll be back!”
He walked to the door, still facing the two, tapped on it without
turning about and, when it was opened from the hall, evidently by Snogg,
the big plotter stepped outside and quickly locked the door again before
Tom and Ned had a chance to rush him, which Janner evidently expected
would happen.
“There was a chance we missed!” exclaimed Ned, when he heard the lock
click. “We might have bowled them over, Tom, and gotten away.”
“Yes, that idea occurred to me. But it was too risky. These fellows may
not intend to kill us, but even if they only shot at us to cripple us
something might go wrong and we’d get a bullet where it would do a lot
of damage. I think we can get the best of them in another way.”
“How?”
“We’ll have a look around this place and see if we can’t escape—perhaps
not now, but after dark. It will soon be night. This room looks strong,
but from the outside the house didn’t look either strongly built or in
good repair. We’ll have a go at it.”
“I’m with you, Tom. But what do you think’s going on now? What was that
talk about the Chief being on the wire?”
“It bears out what I have been thinking for some time,” replied the
young inventor. “These fellows who have kidnapped us are not the
principals in this matter. They are an organized gang, but they are
working at the behest of others. I could tell, from the way Janner asked
questions about my inventions, that he had no real, scientific
knowledge. He had been told to ask those questions by some one who did
know, however. He made several breaks that I passed over. I wanted to
see how far he would go.”
“What’s the game, Tom? They went to a good deal of preliminary
trouble—I mean kidnapping me for you.”
“Admittedly on their part, that was a mistake,” said Tom. “It was me
they were after all the time, only you happened to leave the laboratory
first and they pounced on you. Then came the explosion. Whether that was
set to go off and destroy my laboratory after I was supposed to be out
of it or whether they really wanted to do me up, I don’t know. But
they’ve got both of us now.”
“Any idea who they may be, Tom—I mean these men?”
“They might be the Hussy and Kilborn crowd.”
“You mean that bunch of the _Red Arrow_ who tried to stop us from
circling the globe?”
“That’s who I mean. However, it’s only a guess. It may turn out to be an
entirely different gang. But now that we have a little time to
ourselves, let’s look around and see what the chances are for getting
away.”
It was dusk, but by the last rays of the setting sun which shone through
the window, the young men began a tour of the apartment, seeking any
possible means of exit. Naturally, they first gave their attention to
the window and door. As stated before, the former was screened not only
with a wire mesh, but also with strong iron bars. A search through the
pockets of Tom and Ned revealed, in the way of tools, only two knives.
Tom’s knife contained a small screw driver, and at first he thought he
might be able to loosen the fastenings of the screen and window bars.
But it did not take long to demonstrate that a much more powerful
instrument would be needed for this work.
“Anyhow, if we did get the bars off we’d have a big drop to the ground,”
said Ned. “We’re higher up than I thought.”
“We could improvise a rope from the bed-clothes,” suggested Tom,
indicating them. “That would be the easiest part of it. But those bars
were put there to stay.”
“Maybe we can whittle away the wood enough to loosen the screws,”
suggested Ned. They tried this, but the space to work in was cramped,
the wood was tough, and when Ned broke the largest blade of his knife
and cut his hand rather severely in so doing, Tom insisted that they
give up this attempt.
“Let’s try the door,” he said.
It was now dark in the room, but both young men had matches, Tom’s being
in a waterproof case which had kept dry during his sudden bath, and with
these they made as good an examination of the door and its frame as was
possible.
The lock defied picking with the poor tools at their disposal, and when
this had been proved Tom said:
“We can cut a hole through the door near the lock, big enough for a hand
to get through, and maybe we can turn the lock that way.”
“It’s worth trying,” Ned declared. “We’ll work at it in shifts.”
Their captors seemed to have made up their minds to leave the prisoners
alone, though voices and movements in the rooms below indicated that the
three men were still on guard. Perhaps orders had come from the
mysterious “Chief” not to attempt violence.
There was more than enough food in the supply which had been brought to
provide a late supper and even breakfast for the captives, and there was
a large jug of water.
Throughout the hours of the night, Tom Swift and Ned Newton toiled
desperately to cut a hole through the door. With only pocket knives to
work with, it was tremendously difficult labor.
It was long past midnight when Tom, whose turn it was at the task,
uttered an exclamation of dismay.
“What’s the matter?” asked Ned, who had thrown himself on the bed to
rest. “Break your knife or cut yourself?”
“Neither,” Tom replied. “But we’ll have to give this up.”
“Why?”
“There’s an iron plate outside this door. I’ve cut through the wood and
come to the iron. It’s all off.”
It was a bitter disappointment.
“We’ll try something else in the morning,” decided Tom after a moment,
closing his knife with a snap. “Meanwhile, I’m going to get some rest.”
“Yes, we both need it,” admitted Ned, with a weary sigh. “But when they
come in here in the morning and see what we’ve done in the way of
spoiling their door, they may take us to another room.”
“No use crossing a bridge until we come to it,” Tom responded. “I’m
going to get some sleep.”
They ate a little of the food, and then, bracing a chair under the knob
of the door to prevent an entrance without causing noise enough to
arouse them, the two threw themselves on the bed and slept the sleep of
exhaustion.
Faint daylight was struggling through the barred window next morning
when Tom awoke and sat up. There was a peculiar noise for which at first
he could not account. He looked toward the casement and then recognized
the dash of rain against the glass and heard the roar of wind. It was
this that caused the racket.
“What’s the matter?” asked Ned, turning over.
“Big storm,” Tom answered. He jumped out of bed and walked to the
window. A moment later he uttered an exclamation.
“What’s doing?” asked Ned, stretching lazily.
“Those three fellows are down on the shore doing something to their
motorboat,” reported Tom. “Looks as if it had been damaged in the storm,
which is a fierce one, let me tell you. They seem to be making repairs.”
“Maybe they’re going away and leave us alone,” suggested Ned.
“They may be going away,” assented Tom. “But they won’t leave us, I’m
thinking. They’ll take us with them. But something evidently has
happened.”
In his eagerness to see what was going on at the shore of the lake
within view of the barred window, Ned jumped out of bed. In doing so he
overbalanced himself and in order not to fall he had to do a hop, skip
and a jump across the room. He brought up hard against the opposite
wall, fairly jarring the place. As he stopped his somewhat mad and
erratic career he uttered a cry.
“Hurt yourself?” asked Tom anxiously.
“No! But look! Man dear, look!”
Ned’s voice was excited, and no wonder! It was evident that in his
collision against the wall he had struck a hidden spring which operated
the mechanism of a secret sliding door. For there, before the eyes of
the two captives, was an opening, large enough for them to pass through,
in a stooping position, and leading to the top of a flight of stairs.
“A secret door!” cried Tom. “How’d you discover it?”
“I didn’t,” Ned answered. “It just happened. I bumped against the wall
and must have struck the spring. What’s it for, Tom?”
Into the eyes of the young inventor shone a new and hopeful light.
“I don’t know what its original use was,” he said slowly. “But for us it
offers a way of escape. Come on, Ned! We’ll light out while those
fellows are busy down at the boat. Grab up some food and come on.”
Tom began stuffing some bread and meat into his pockets after hastily
dressing, which was a short operation, as the young men had not removed
all of their clothes the night before. Then Tom took another look
through the window.
“They’re still tinkering over the motor,” he reported. “It’s now or
never, Ned! This storm came just at the right time. Come on!”
“But we don’t know where that secret staircase leads,” objected Ned
Newton as he followed his chum’s example about the food.
“And it doesn’t make much difference, either. It leads out of this room.
That’s all we have to know now. I think it must have been put in to
allow the secret removal of smuggled or stolen goods—possibly bootleg
liquor. Probably the stairway ends in one of the rooms below. But as
those three scoundrels are out of the way we can leave.”
“Maybe we’ll be trapped at the bottom, Tom. There must be a door there,
too.”
“Probably there is; but it’s likely to be a sliding, secret door, and,
consequently, won’t be very strong. We can burst it out, maybe. Anyhow
it’s worth trying. Come on!”
Then, as the storm rose to new heights of fury, the two prisoners
slipped into the secret opening and began descending the dark stairs on
their way to escape.