SAVED BY THE WIRES.
Finding himself trapped, Frank threw himself on the door and wrenched
at the knob with all his strength. It held firm. Again and again he
drove his shoulder against the panels, but the door, though old, was
stout, and resisted his savage attacks. Soon he gave up in despair
the attempt to escape that way.
"I'm kidnapped for sure," he said aloud, and his voice sounded
strangely hollow in that empty hallway. He shivered, for, although
the night outside was mild and warm, inside there was a deadly chill
in the air as if the sunlight had never touched it. A half moon was
hanging in the sky and lit the countryside faintly, but in here was
the deepest gloom. Tiny slits of light came through the chinks here
and there in the boarded windows and cast long knife-like bars across
the floor, but instead of lighting the place they actually made it
seem blacker because of the contrast.
Frank was not a coward, but he would have given a good deal to be
safely out of the place. The whole house seemed full of noises. He
turned his back to the door and faced the stairway, which, now that
his eyes were becoming accustomed to the gloom, he could make out
dimly. He could trace it about half way up to the floor above, where
it disappeared into utter blackness. As he strained his eyes and
ears a board creaked near him, as if a human foot had trod on it.
He recoiled as if shot and turned his eyes in the direction of the
noise. But there was no repetition of the sound. Away down the hall
where his vision could not penetrate came a rustle as of silk, and
then what appeared to be a few stealthy steps; then silence, broken
only by the sighing of the night wind around the corners of the house.
It was all Frank could do to keep from yelling with fright, for the
noises of the old house had gripped his nerve. But by degrees, as he
stood there with his back to the door, he gained control of himself.
There was nothing to hurt him, he argued with himself; the noises
were only natural ones; the rustlings were perhaps made by the wings
of birds that had made their nests in the old house, finding entrance
through the chimney, maybe, or through a broken upper window.
"Oh, what a dummy I am," said Frank to himself, "to allow myself to
be caught this way! I have been spirited off here and locked up for a
while so that Gamma may have its own way up at the Library meeting.
But David and Jimmy and the Codfish can carry it through as well
or better than I could. They can present the scheme and read the
constitution--the constitution," he gasped aloud; "I have it in my
pocket!" His hand flew to his pocket. There it was, sure enough, a
bulky bundle of papers.
"That settles it. I've got to get out of this hole somehow." There
was a determined ring to his voice as it echoed from the bare walls.
He left his place by the outer door and turned into the room on the
right, the door of which stood partly open. Guided by the chinks
of light he examined the windows one after the other. Two of them
were broken, but they were securely boarded up from the outside. The
window at the side of the room had not even a sash. Raising his foot
he drove it here with all his might against the barricading boards,
but they did not budge to his repeated blows. He gave up this room
as a bad job, and felt his way into the hall once more and across it
to the opposite front room. Here he had no better luck. The windows
were securely shut and boarded like the windows in the other room.
At one of them, where there was an opening of several inches between
the boards and where the light came through more strongly than at
any other of the windows, he smashed the glass with his foot and,
getting hold of the edge of the board, tried to wrench it loose with
his hands. He might as well have tried to shake down the door post.
The nails, driven in years before, had probably rusted, and the
boards would have had to be split to fragments before the nails would
release them.
Nothing daunted, Frank kept on. He pushed open doors that squeaked on
rusty hinges and battered at the barriers across the windows. Once
in his rounds he caught his toe on some obstruction on the floor and
fell headlong. The crash woke the echoes in the old house and set in
motion scores of mice and rats that went scurrying, squeaking and
chattering across the floors.
Retracing his steps, Frank once more found himself, without further
mishap, in the hall where he had started his futile round. "I'll try
it upstairs," he said, and advanced boldly toward the upper regions
of the house. The stairs creaked and groaned horribly as he ascended,
and he heard the patter of the feet of rats as they scurried before
him. It was none too pleasant a sound. Two of the rooms he tried on
the second floor brought no better result, but in the third, at the
back of the house, he found a displaced board and a broken sash.
"So this is where our friends, the birds, get in," he said. "The
question is, can I get out?"
He stuck his head through the opening and looked down. Below there
was nothing but blackness. "I don't dare risk it. I might break my
neck in a cellarway if I dropped." He drew in his head, refreshed by
the breath of free night air, and continued his search. Stumbling
through the gloom of the upper hall, his hand came in contact with a
ladder. He gave it a jerk, but it was nailed securely to the floor.
"The attic!" he exclaimed aloud; "if there's a skylight and I can get
out on the roof perhaps I can make some one hear."
Up the ladder he went. If it was black below, it was still blacker
where he was now penetrating, for not even a ray of moonlight
entered. The air was close and stifling, and in the attic of the old
house, where he found himself in a few moments, he could scarcely
breathe. His entrance there disturbed some night birds that had taken
possession of the place, and they flew about uttering angry cries and
dashing so close to him that he could feel the fanning of air from
their wings. With his arm across his face, he felt for a ladder which
must lead to the skylight, if indeed there was a skylight in the roof
above. After traversing half the length of the house and colliding
with the corner of the chimney, his hand touched wood. It was another
ladder, and his heart jumped with joy at the touch. The rounds were
covered with a thick layer of dust, deposited there through many
years of disuse. Up its short length Frank went cautiously till his
head touched the roof. He felt around carefully till his hand touched
a hasp. With a sudden jerk he pulled it aside and with his head
pressing against the skylight, bored upward. To his great joy the
heavy skylight moved and swung up on its rusty hinges, and in another
moment he was out on the roof of the house with the stars above his
head.
What a relief it was to be out of that dismal house! The horrors of
it lay below him, but was he any better off? Could he make any one
hear him, and, if they did hear him, would any one be likely to come
to such a place? Wasn't he in as bad a fix as before? These questions
jumped into his brain in rapid succession.
"Help! Help!" Frank raised his voice and shouted. Again and again he
shouted, but there was no answering hail. Off to the left he could
plainly see the lights of Queen's School. As a bird flies, it was not
more than half a mile from his perch to the Library where his friends
were holding their meeting and no doubt wondering where he was. What
were they thinking of him? He began hitching along on the roof toward
the front of the house, his intention being to attempt a descent,
hand over hand, along the roof's edge to the eaves, where, if he
could see the ground, he might risk a drop.
Hitching along laboriously, Frank encountered an obstruction when
he was halfway to the end of his journey. He felt of it. It was an
insulator, and stretching away from it on both sides was a wire of
small diameter. "Telephone," said Frank to himself. "How I wish I
had an instrument." He climbed over it and went on. Suddenly he
stopped: "By Jove, I wonder if that is our wire to Queen's Station?
It certainly comes down this way." He was thinking hard.
"It _is_ the wire!" he shouted joyfully. "I remember now Murphy said
he put an insulator on this old house because there were no trees
near to take the span."
Instantly he turned back to the wire. On one side of the insulator
the wire was stretched tightly, but the other side hung sagging. He
reached out and pulled on the slack side and found that he could draw
it up a foot or more.
"Just the thing!" he exclaimed joyfully. "Now we'll see what happens!"
Straddling the roof, Frank again took hold of the slack loop of the
wire and pulled with all his strength. When he had hauled it as tight
as possible, he reached down and put a coil around his foot, and was
overjoyed to find that he could hold the wire in position that way,
although the strain almost pulled him apart. Then, taking his knife,
he began to saw at the wire. When he had made a little notch in it he
worked it back and forth, bending it this way and that, and suddenly
it fell apart.
"Hurrah!" shouted Frank. "Now we'll see if any one hears me."
Taking a broken end of wire in each hand he began tapping them
together. Carefully he called: _F-F-F-F-F-F_; _JC-JC-JC-JC_. These
were the calls of his own room and of Jimmy's. He was using the ends
of the broken wire to send Morse signals. After each attempt, with
fingers moistened to accentuate their sensitiveness to any return
signal, he waited. Thus calling and waiting he kept on for several
minutes. "They're probably all in the Library, but Murphy ought to
hear me if the wire is cut in at the Station."
Varying the call of _Q_, which was the Station, with calls of _F_ and
_JC_, Frank kept on, but with the strain of the wire pulling on his
foot and cutting into the flesh he was nearly exhausted.
Suddenly in response to his call of _F-F-F_ came a shock which made
him jump. Some one had opened a telegraph key somewhere on the line.
The current had been broken and closed. He tapped slowly, making the
letters very plain so that no one could misunderstand, "_C-o-m-e
q-u-i-c-k h-a-u-n-t-e-d h-o-u-s-e F-r-a-n-k_." Over and over he
repeated his message. Suddenly there came a succession of electric
thrills along the wire as if a key had been rattled rapidly, and
Frank received the signals plainly through his moistened fingers
"_O-K._" He had been heard and understood. With a sigh of relief, he
let go of the loose end of the wire and shook it free of his foot.
The released wire went swishing down the roof and the connection was
broken for good.
Carefully Frank made his way back to the skylight and backed down the
ladder into the darkness beneath. "I'll be ready for them--if they
come," he added dubiously. "And the back room where the board is off
is more comfortable in spite of the rats than this sharp roof." Down
among the startled birds that beat madly around the attic he went
again, down the second ladder to the floor, and then made his way to
the back room, where he settled himself on the window ledge waiting
for his rescue, if rescue it was to be.
Frank found himself in comfort compared to his position on the roof,
but he soon began to wonder whether he had not better, after all,
take a chance of a drop in the darkness. He got up, examined the
opening, found it too small to squeeze through, and was preparing to
make the best of it on his ledge, when his ear caught the sound of
a step in the lower part of the house. He stood up with body bent
forward listening intently.
There was no imagination about it this time. It was a slow step,
sometimes shuffling, then again firm and quick. Occasionally it
stopped, seemingly irresolute. Then it began again. Whatever or
whoever it was, the owner of the step appeared to be going the round
of the rooms. Now it was on the stairs ascending. Frank listened
with his heart in his mouth. Slowly the step came on, reaching
the landing, stopped, began again and came on shufflingly in his
direction. Frank stepped on the window ledge and reached for the
opening between the boards. Suddenly a light flared up, and through
the open door Frank saw a boy standing with a lighted match in his
hand. It lit the gloom only for a moment and went out in the draft.
Frank, startled by the sight, gave a yell. There was an answering
groan, the sound of a falling body and then silence. Almost at the
same moment shouts were heard outside. Frank sprang to the opening
and answered the hail with all the power of his lungs: "Here, here,
'round at the back of the house!" There was the sound of crashing
through the tangle of shrubbery and a voice from below--Jimmy's
voice--calling, "What in thunder are you doing there?"
"Taking a moonlight meditation," returned Frank flippantly; "but
hurry up, I've had enough. Rip off a board on one of the lower
windows if you can. I'm in trouble up here."
Lights flashed below and the sound of several different voices came
to Frank's ears. Reassured by the presence of his friends, Frank
groped his way to the door in front of which his visitor had fallen.
He found the huddled heap of humanity, touched the face and felt
it warm, which relieved him greatly. From below came the sound of
ripping wood and breaking glass, and, in another minute, Jimmy, with
a lantern in his hand, bounded up the stairway, followed by Lewis
and several other boys. All were astonished to see Frank, his face
streaked with dust and grime, standing by the side of a prostrate
figure. The rays of the lantern were directed to the face of the one
on the floor.
"Bronson!" all exclaimed in a breath.
"Great Scott!" cried Jimmy in amazement, "what are you fellows doing
here and what's the matter with Bronson?"
Bronson, who had fainted from fright when he heard Frank's yell in
the darkness, now opened his eyes and sat up, looking around dazedly.
Suddenly he seemed to remember: "Don't leave me! Don't leave me!" he
cried piteously, grabbing Jimmy by the legs. "I'll tell all about it,
but don't leave me here. He'll come back."
"Tell us what? Who'll come back?" ejaculated Jimmy.
And there on the floor Bronson poured out his story in broken
sentences and with hanging head. He told how the Gamma had planned
the kidnapping of Frank to break up the meeting, with the hope that
the attempt to form a new society might be checked and the absent boy
discredited. The attempt, as it proved, had been partly successful,
for, despite the eloquent words of the Codfish and David, who had
striven to hold it together until Frank could be found, the Gamma
element in the meeting had broken it up. It was on Jimmy's return to
the room that he had heard Frank's signal and gone in search of him.
"Was Dixon in this scheme?" said Frank, when Bronson finished.
"Yes," was the answer.
"And was he responsible for the affair in the bell tower?"
"No; Whitlock, Colson and I were the ones in that. But I'll make it
right with Dr. Hobart. I'll confess everything. Only don't leave me
here, please don't."
On the way back to Queen's School, Bronson freely confessed his
part in the affair of the haunted house. He had been detailed by
Dixon to see that the men who had been hired to spirit Frank away,
carried out their part of the work, and he was hidden near the path
when Frank was marched past him. Just as he started to leave, there
arose alongside of him the gigantic figure of a man, who, muttering
something about being on his property, drew him to the back of the
house and, entering by the cellarway, left him there, fastening the
door on the outside. More dead than alive from fear, Bronson had
heard Frank shuffling around on the floor above him, and then, when
the noise ceased, with a few matches he had in his pocket he started
to find his way out. During Frank's absence on the roof he had gained
the first floor, and it was he whom Frank heard when he returned
to his post by the broken window. The shock of Frank's voice when
Bronson, searching for a means of escape, had penetrated to the
second floor, was too much for his shaking nerves, and he collapsed
on the floor. The men who had kidnapped and carried off Frank were
three men from the village, one of whom was a locksmith, which
accounted for his possession of a key to the old house.
It later came out that the gigantic man who had captured and
incarcerated Bronson, was none other than a half-witted negro of the
village, who was abroad at all times of the night, and who, unknown
to any one, had a way of entering and leaving the old house by an
open cellarway. It was probably he who, by showing lights in the
house at night, had terrified the villagers into the belief that the
place was haunted.
Before Bronson was allowed to go that night, he was taken to Frank's
room, where, under the dictation of the Codfish, he wrote and signed
a full confession of the part he had played in the bell tower
incident, and of his knowledge of the kidnapping of Frank.