THE SUBTERRANEAN AVENUE.
For more than half an hour Mr. Stanlock waited upstairs nervously,
eagerly, expectantly, apprehensively, for a report from Lieut. Larkin
and the four men who remained in the cellar of the Buchholz house to
move the pile of scrap lumber, under which it was suspected might be
found a clew as to the whereabouts of the missing twelve girls.
Interest in the search within the building had suspended other
activities in the neighborhood, as it was felt that further progress
must depend upon results at this point.
So the score or more of uniformed and citizen policemen waited as
patiently as they could in or around the house of mystery, becoming
more and more impatient as the minutes grew into the twenties and then
the thirties, and still nobody came upstairs to announce indications
of success or failure. The noise of the striking pieces of lumber
against one another had not been heard for more than twenty minutes.
In fact, no sound of any kind came up the cellarway following the
first quarter of an hour of rapid labor on the part of the five active
searchers below.
At last one of the men, more nervously eager for information than the
rest, shouted down the cellarway to the lieutenant, inquiring how he
and his helpers were getting on. There was no answer.
He shouted again. Still no reply. Then he announced his intention to
descend into the cellar to investigate.
"Wait," said Mr. Stanlock. "There are some tracks in the dust on the
steps, and Lieut. Larkin doesn't want them disturbed. Let me go."
Although his apprehensions had not diminished, the mine owner's nerve
was considerably strengthened by this time, perhaps as a result of his
return from a stuffy basement atmosphere into a region of better
ventilation. As he started down the steps with the flashlight of one
of the policemen in his hand, he was surprised to feel a strong
current of wind blowing upward into his face.
"They must have opened one of the windows," he surmised; but he
quickly dismissed the suggestion after flashing his light around the
cellar. The pile of lumber had been moved to the opposite side and in
the section of the floor it had formerly occupied was a hole three
feet in diameter.
"That's where the wind comes from," Mr. Stanlock decided. "It's the
mouth of the old mine we used to hear about years ago. But where's the
other opening? Funny nobody knows about that. This end has been
covered up with that old heavy door and concealed with a layer of
earth. When our men moved the pile of lumber, they observed that the
earth had been disturbed recently and shoveled it away and found this
hole."
Mr. Stanlock directed the rays of light into the hole and discovered a
flight of steps cut in the hard clay.
"The lieutenant and his men are down in there," he concluded. "I think
I'll follow them."
He descended cautiously into the hole. Half a dozen irregularly formed
steps brought him to a slope leading downward on an inclined plane of
six or seven degrees. He was astonished at the degree of preservation
of the walls, ceiling, and supports, considering the years that had
elapsed since the mine was last worked. The passage continued as a
downward slope for about fifty yards and then became almost level for
a like distance. Only in two places had the walls or ceiling fallen in
to any considerable extent, and in neither of those places was the
obstruction so great as to constitute an impassable barrier.
As he proceeded, Mr. Stanlock peered ahead anxiously, in the hope that
he would discover the lights of Lieutenant Larkin and his companions.
But he walked nearly 100 yards through an irregular and
characteristically jagged passage before he caught sight of anything
indicating that there was anybody besides himself in the abandoned
mine. Then suddenly, rounding a sharp point he came upon the advance
party of searchers approaching him.
"What did you find?" the mine owner inquired before any surprise
greetings could be exchanged. "There's another outlet to this place
somewhere, isn't there?"
"Yes, there is," was the reply of the officer in charge. "This gallery
runs on for another hundred yards, piercing Holly Hill right through
the center. You know the bluff and the rocky slope behind the old
mill. Well, it seems that this mine was cut right through at that
point, but there was a cave-in that filled up that opening. These
rascals that kidnapped the girls evidently were associated with the
people that rented the Buchholz place and cut the passage through. The
girls have been here all right, but they're gone. They've been taken
out of this end of the mine and spirited away in some manner. This
means that the scoundrels have a larger and more effective
organization than we have ever suspected. Such a case of wholesale
kidnapping was never heard of before."
"How can you tell they passed through here?" Mr. Stanlock asked.
"By this principally," the lieutenant answered, holding up a woman's
handkerchief that he had picked up; "and by the fact that there is a
trail in the snow from the opening of the mine to the alley behind the
old mill."
Mr. Stanlock's face shone deathly pale in the glare of the flash
lights. The new element of suspense had brought him again to the
danger-point of a collapse that had compelled him to withdraw from
the active search nearly an hour before.
His voice reflected the distressing strain under which he was laboring
as he put his next question:
"What became of them then?"
"That's the problem we've got to solve," Larkin replied. "Apparently
they were loaded in automobiles and rushed off to some retreat of the
scoundrels."
"How in the world could they do it without somebody's seeing or
hearing what was going on?"
"Oh," said the lieutenant without a suggestion of doubt in his voice;
"that wasn't very difficult if there were enough of them working
together. The evidence of cleverness and skill is not nearly so much
in the handling of this affair at the mill end of the mine as at the
house end. That was a mighty smooth piece of work, getting all of
those girls into that old house, however it was done. Mark my word,
you'll find that a very clever trap was set for them. But come on,
we've got to get busy before the snow makes it impossible to follow
them."
* * * * *