THROUGH THE TUNNEL.
For a little while, the space of a very few minutes, they were silent,
looking at each other. And the hearts of the two youngest of the group
beat painfully with suppressed excitement, nor were the three young
aviators who clustered close in any better case, as their flushed cheeks
and hurried breathing could have told. Until presently the sharp-faced
young fellow next to Bob turned his uncovered blonde head and smiled
through blue eyes while he muttered impatiently that waiting was too
tedious to please him.
“What would you do?” whispered Bob, at random.
“Do?” said the other—young Harincourt, who had stayed a hundred hours in
the air, part of it during a storm of lashing rain and wind. “Do?” he
repeated. “Why, what but invade the tunnel.”
They spoke in so subdued a murmur that their whisperings were inaudible
to the others. Bob stared, fascinated, into the other’s eyes. But before
he could make comment on the daring suggestion, there came an
interruption from an unsuspected source. The street door was flung open,
and the taxicab jehu stood in the doorway. Taut nerves taking alarm, all
in the room swung quickly about, and Lieutenant Bracewell strode swiftly
to the other’s side.
“Man,” he said, “you took a long chance. We might have plugged you.”
“Huh.” The chauffeur blinked as if not comprehending, and without
further comment burst out with: “Did yuh hear the shots?”
“Shots. What shots?” The others crowded close.
“Why, I heard two—three shots from the direction your friends took.
Thought you’d be comin’ out a-runnin’ but when you didn’t I bust in to
find out why.”
They glanced at each other, eyes lighting with excitement. Then young
Harincourt cried breathlessly: “Let’s go.” He started to move toward the
door, but Lieutenant Bracewell dropped a hand on his arm, staying him.
“Wait a minute. Captain Murray said we should come only in case he blew
his whistle. Did you—” he demanded of the chauffeur—“hear the whistle?”
“Whistle? No.”
“Then we stay.”
Young Harincourt started to protest, but Lieutenant Bracewell silenced
him with a wave of the hand. No, more. Gripping the chauffeur by an arm,
he drew him within the room, and quickly closed the door.
“Everybody back in that corner behind the trap,” he commanded, lowering
his voice to a whisper. “And no noise. If Captain Murray is forcing an
entrance to the house, it’s more than likely that the fellows he’s after
may try to escape through the tunnel.”
Tiptoeing, the little party, now augmented to six with the advent of the
chauffeur, regained its former position. And for a moment none spoke
but, instead, all strained to hear any sounds that might arise from the
other side of the trap door. But no such sound was heard, nor did
whistle blast or distant pistol shot come from without.
Young Harincourt stirred impatiently. Leaning close, he whispered
something in Lieutenant Bracewell’s ear over which the latter seemed to
ponder a moment. Then a nod of the head gave assent and Harincourt,
creeping forward soundlessly, bent above the trap door.
“Great Scott,” Bob muttered voicelessly, “I’ll bet he’s persuaded
Bracewell to carry out that crazy scheme. Well, if there’s any kind of
battle going on in that house, it’ll be a good idea to take ’em in the
rear.”
Bob’s surmise was correct. It was just such a plan which Harincourt had
proposed, and to which Lieutenant Bracewell had given assent.
But even as young Harincourt bent above the trap door, there came a
sound from beneath it—a fumbling, scratching sound. He fell back
precipitately, and the others crowded closer. The next moment the trap
began to rise. Tense with expectancy though he was, Bob smiled as the
thought occurred to him that young Harincourt should have selected this
of all times to launch his coup—should have waited until the very second
when the enemy was preparing to emerge. For that it was the enemy, Bob
had no doubt. Captain Murray and his aviators, supported by Mr. Hampton
and Jack, undoubtedly had gained entrance at the front of the house. Now
Ramirez and whatever men he had with him were fleeing through the
underground passage. So sure of this was Bob, crouching low behind the
shield afforded by the rising trap door, that he was quite prepared to
see Ramirez himself climb out.
Young Harincourt and Bob, who had sprung to his side on divining the
other’s intention to invade the tunnel, were the foremost members of the
little party crouching with drawn weapons behind the trap door. They
hardly dared to breath lest some sound escape them which would give the
alarm to whoever was about to ascend. For that someone was ascending
there could be no doubt. The trap door was not rising because of any
supernatural agency. A man’s hand was pushing it up, and a man’s foot
was scraping on the steps.
But who that man was could not be seen, for the trap door intervened.
Suddenly, however, it slipped from the grasp of whoever was on the steps
below and fell back on the floor, almost in the faces of Bob and
Harincourt. So close did it come to them, in fact, that they swayed
backward, taken by surprise.
“Hey,” cried the man on the steps, in alarm, “don’t shoot. This is your
little playmate.”
And he ducked beneath the level of the floor, as he saw the leveled
revolvers of the party, all pointing directly at him.
It was Captain Murray.
For a moment, the party on guard was stunned into silence. Then they all
crowded forward, peering down into the tunnel and crying to Captain
Murray to ascend. This he did, as soon as he noted from their cries that
he had been recognized. And behind him came Jack.
“This is a pretty kettle of fish,” he cried, as he gained the floor and
looked around, frowning.
“What do you mean?” asked Lieutenant Bracewell.
“Didn’t the rascals come out this way?”
“Not unless they oozed out,” said the other.
He and the others who had been on guard were bewildered at the question,
and Bob interrupted with:
“Didn’t you find them in the house, Captain?”
But Captain Murray, ignoring his question, turned with decision and
leaped down the steps into the tunnel.
“Come on, everybody,” he cried. “There’s no time to lose. They’re hiding
out in the house somewhere.”
And he started running along the tunnel, flashing the rays of an
electric pocket torch ahead of him. Not knowing what had occurred but
willing to accept the fact that a chance for action lay ahead,
Bracewell, Harincourt, the third young airman who had been in the group
in the old ’dobe hut, and Bob, jostled each other for places in the line
behind him. But Frank drew Jack aside to ask him what had occurred.
“They wouldn’t open to us,” said Jack, hurriedly, “so we fired a couple
of shots through the door and then broke it down. Then we raced through
the house. It’s a big place of two stories, with ten or a dozen rooms.
In one of them we found Captain Cornell, bound and gagged. But no trace
of the others, so Captain Murray and I went down to the cellar and found
the entrance to this tunnel, without waiting to question Cornell. Come
on, let’s hurry.”
And as the way being cleared by the disappearance of young Gordon, the
last of the airmen to descend, the tunnel was now open to passage, Jack
darted down the stairs. Frank followed at his heels. It was dark, only a
faint glow, far ahead, showing where Captain Murray’s electric torch
headlighted the procession. The air smelled musty. The walls were little
more than a big man’s width apart, and the roof so low that the boys had
to stoop in order to avoid bumping their heads as they proceeded. Ahead
of them could be heard muttered exclamations as first one and then
another, in his eagerness to make haste, ignored the necessary caution
and suffered a bump.
“Bend down, and you’ll be all right,” advised Jack. “It’s a straight
shoot to the other house, and the floor is smooth. Come on.”
Presently the two boys, who had closed up on the heels of the last of
the group ahead, emerged into a cellar where they found the others
waiting them.
“All here?” asked Captain Murray, flashing his spotlight from form to
form. “All right, let’s go.”
But just as he was in the act of mounting an open stairway to the floor
above, and had, in fact, placed a foot on the first step of the ascent,
Jack halted him with a hand on his arm.
“Listen, Captain, what was that?”