There was no mistake about it—a noise was audible in the cellar of the
Corner House. It was not an insistent noise, rather it was a subdued
one, as though the cause of it, whether man or beast, was desirous of
concealing something.
“Do you suppose it could be them?” whispered Agnes.
“Who?” asked Neale, though he could guess.
“Those men Hop Wong told about. Are they coming back to have another
search for the buried gold?”
“We’ll soon find out!” declared Hal, who stood with Nalbro and the
others in the hall, where the leave-taking had been going on. “Us for
the cellar, boys!” and he looked at Neale and Luke.
“Wait a minute!” begged Ruth. “Let’s be sure of them this time! Don’t
let them get away—provided it’s those men!”
“It’s somebody all right,” declared Nalbro, with a little shiver which
brought her closer to Hal. “And they seem to be digging. Listen! Don’t
you hear a thudding sound?”
In the silence that followed the whispers they were all aware of a
distinct thudding sound as if picks were being wielded on the soft
bottom of the Corner House cellar.
“I think they have nerve to come and dig under our very noses!” declared
Agnes. “When we’re entertaining company, too!”
“It’s because of the company that they came, I fancy,” replied Ruth.
“They figured that so much noise would be going on that they wouldn’t be
heard. They probably have been watching their chance to sneak in when
the house was busy.”
“This is terrible!” complained Agnes. “We are being spied upon the whole
time! Something must be done! Neale, what are you going to do?”
“Is there a gun or anything like it around the house?” Neale asked, by
way of answer to Agnes’ appeal.
“Oh, don’t have any shooting!” pleaded Nalbro.
“It isn’t pleasant, but it may come to that,” said Neale.
“Oh, Luke—” began Ruth, appealing to him.
“I think it would be better if we had some sort of weapon,” was Luke’s
reply. “It would be rather foolish, to say nothing else, for us to go up
against these men, who may be desperate, if we have nothing to force
them to surrender in case we corner them. If there is a gun or a
revolver——”
“I have put Uncle Peter’s old revolver away,” Ruth said. “Come and we’ll
get it.”
“Better be a bit lively,” suggested Agnes. “They may skip out with the
gold any minute.”
“If they don’t find it any quicker than we did they’re not likely to,”
chuckled Hal.
“It might not be a bad scheme for us to lay low and let them locate the
treasure for you, girls, and then take it away from them,” suggested
Neale.
“Oh, why don’t you?” asked Agnes. “They must know just where to search
for it, white star and all!”
“The only trouble is,” answered Neale, “that they might skip out with it
before we could stop them. No, on second thought, I’d say let’s tackle
them at once, capture them, and make them tell the secret.”
Luke and Ruth came back into the hall, Luke carrying the revolver.
“This is more like it!” declared Hal. “Now we can talk business to them.
They’re still at it down there.”
Some sort of noise was still audible in the cellar. Whether it was what
the young folks supposed it to be—men digging after treasure—or
something else, who could say?
“Maybe it’s only Sandyface making a new home for her family,” suggested
Ruth, with a smile.
“She wouldn’t make all that noise,” declared Neale. “Well, shall we go?”
he asked the other two young men.
“Better make up a plan of campaign first,” suggested Ruth. “The other
time these fellows got away—the time they struck Luke on the head. We
don’t want that to happen again.”
“Perhaps you’re right, Ruth,” said Luke. “We’d better divide forces. Two
of us——”
“We’re only three altogether,” objected Hal. “You can’t divide three
evenly and——”
“We can call Uncle Rufus,” decided Ruth. “He is old and not very strong,
but he’ll add to our numbers. I’ll get him.”
“It wouldn’t be a bad idea,” agreed Luke. “At least he can be posted at
one vantage point to give an alarm if the men try to escape.”
“Provided, of course, that it is men and not a cat,” put in Agnes
flippantly.
“Oh, I think it will prove to be those fellows all right,” was Luke’s
opinion.
Uncle Rufus was eager and ready for the coming battle, or whatever it
should resolve itself into. It was planned that Luke and Hal should go
down the inside cellar stairs, while Neale and Uncle Rufus stood at the
outside cellar door to capture the men if they came out that way.
“We haven’t a gun,” objected Neale, when his part was assigned.
“Bang ’em on de haid wif a club,” suggested Uncle Rufus. “We kin hit ’em
w’en dey comes up de cellar steps.”
“That’s a good idea, Neale,” said Agnes.
“A club it shall be, then,” replied Neale.
He and the colored man thus armed themselves and took their places.
Meanwhile, Mrs. MacCall and Linda had been roused to remain with the
girls; though Agnes, in order not to miss any of the excitement,
followed Neale and stationed herself not far from him and Uncle Rufus
where she could see all that went on, if, indeed, anything did happen.
Ruth stood near the telephone to send at once the alarm in to the
police, once the supposed visitors should be captured. It had been
ascertained by a cautious test that the telephone was in working order.
At last all was in readiness. Luke and Hal, with the former carrying the
revolver ready for quick aim, and Hal with a flashlight, started down
the inner stairway to the cellar. They had drawn on, over their shoes,
at the suggestion of Ruth, old stockings to make their footfalls softer.
Neale and Uncle Rufus, each armed with a stout stick of wood, went out
the back kitchen door and took their places at the back cellar entrance,
followed by Agnes. It was here that Neale made a discovery that struck
him as being curious.
“Why,” he whispered, “they didn’t leave this door open after they went
in this way.”
“Eh? Why should dey leave it open?” asked Uncle Rufus.
“So they could get out again in a hurry if they had to—and they may have
to. I never heard of such stupid fellows. They close their way of
escape. Hum! That makes me think!”
“What’s dat?” asked Uncle Rufus, whose hearing was not of the best.
“I was just thinking,” went on Neale, “that perhaps they didn’t get into
the cellar this way after all. If they didn’t—and if there is some other
way out and in than the inside stairs—it may explain a lot of things.
But never mind that now. We won’t open this door, Uncle Rufus. In fact
we’ll just sit down on it.”
“Sit down on it?”
“Yes, that will make it all the harder for the fellows to lift it up and
get out. Come, let’s take it easy.”
Uncle Rufus laughed and Agnes giggled. This drew Neale’s attention to
the girl.
“Aggie!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing here? Go back into the
house!”
“I’ll not, so there! I want to see all that’s to be seen. And then you
don’t think for a minute, do you, that I’m going to let you be all
pounded up or something, Neale O’Neil, and not be near to help you?”
“Oh, come, Agnes. You’re my faithful chum, I know. But please go in now.
Uncle Rufus and I are safer than you would be, for if the fellows saw
us, they would run away from us, probably right in your direction. Then,
for you, it would be good-night.”
After some further talk, in which Uncle Rufus joined, Agnes consented to
return to the house. Neale and Uncle Rufus took their seats on the
slanting cellar door as soon as Agnes disappeared.
Meanwhile Luke and Hal were going softly down the inner stairs. Hal held
the flashlight in readiness for instant use, but he and his companion
had no sooner started to descend the stairs than they became aware of a
dim light in the cellar and they knew, since the regular electric lights
were not switched on, that it came from the intruders.
“We’ll keep ours dim,” whispered Luke. “That will give us an advantage.
It’s always best to be in the dark when you’re hunting a burglar.”
“Better be careful,” whispered Agnes, who, banished from the outside
door, had taken her place in the kitchen, to be as near the excitement
as possible.
“We will,” promised Luke.
Step by step he and Hal descended, their stocking-covered shoes making
no sound. It was nervous work and they were under a strain. But they
wanted to see the outcome of it all.
They reached the cellar bottom and started away from the foot of the
stairs. The dim light was growing brighter, the light used by some
intruders in their search.
A few seconds later Luke and Hal caught sight of two men bending over a
hole they had dug in the cellar bottom. They were near one of the walls,
and on the ground beside them was an electric flashlight turned on. The
forms of the men were plainly visible, though their faces were in the
shadow.
“They’re the same ones!” whispered Luke, meaning the same twain who had
been in the cellar before and the same men Luke had heard talking in the
railroad train.
Suddenly the silence of the cellar was broken as one of the men
remarked:
“Nothing here!”
“No,” agreed the other, “we’ll have to——”
At that instant one of them either caught sight of Luke and Hal or else
heard some noise made by the lads, for the man who had first spoken
cried:
“Look out! We’re caught! Come on!”
In an instant the two intruders leaped up, and one picked the light from
the floor. Then, to the surprise of Luke and Hal, the men, instead of
dashing toward the outer door of the cellar, sprang toward the front,
inner wall.
“Come on!” cried Luke, for further concealment was useless. “They can’t
get out that way. It’s a solid stone wall! We’ll have them!”
“Go on!” yelled Hal.
At the same time he switched on his own flashlight, since it was
necessary to show a gleam on the path he and Luke were to take, and the
men were now using their own little torch.
It was now an open pursuit, with the intruders speeding toward the front
wall of the cellar and Luke and Hal after them.
But Luke was mistaken when he cried out that the men could not get out
the way they were going. Piled up in the front of the cellar of the
Corner House were some old boxes. Dodging in around and among these the
two men were lost to sight for a moment.
Daringly Hal and Luke followed and, to their surprise, they saw where
the boxes had been pulled away from the wall, showing an old door, the
existence of which was unknown, at least to the present owners of the
Corner House.
It was out of this door that the men fled. Evidently it was by this way
they came in, rather than the back door, and they seemed to be familiar
with the egress.
Undaunted, Luke and Hal followed. Outside the newly disclosed door was a
short flight of stone steps. They led up beneath what Luke recognized as
the front porch, and the situation was now clear to him.
In years past there had been a front areaway entrance to the cellar.
This had gone out of use and the porch had been built over it, a lattice
work around the lower part of the porch concealing the door leading into
the cellar.
Up the steps ran the two men. A quick motion served to throw down part
of the lattice work, which, doubtless, had been previously loosened by
the intruders, and in a few seconds they were out in the open, speeding
away in the moonlight.
But Luke and Hal were close behind them, for they, too, ran up the steps
and scrambled out beneath the front porch.
“Hold on there! Stop! We want you!” cried Luke.
“Neale! Uncle Rufus! Come around to the front!” cried Hal, realizing
that the two on guard would know nothing of this frontal escape.
“Stop, or I’ll shoot!” ordered Luke.
For a few seconds more the midnight visitors sped on. Hal was racing
after them, and around the house could be heard coming Neale and Uncle
Rufus.
Then the three boys and Uncle Rufus sprang upon the midnight intruders
and bore them to the ground.