  When Dick had tried crouching, sitting on his heels, walking and every other device he could think of to end the interminable difficulties of trying to pass time with nothing to do and nothing under him but the hard cement hangar floor, he began to wish he had never met Jeff or gotten into the adventure at all. He resolved, then and there, never to become a detective. Countless times his nerves had been pulled by sounds which turned out on second thought to be only the contracting of the hot metal, subjected to the sun all day, as the evening breeze robbed it of its warmth. No wonder that he failed to react to a slight clinking, hardly more than would be made by the scratch of wire in a lock. But the shrinking of metal had made intermittent noises, sharp and not repeated. This sound, so insistent, so prolonged, began, at last, to make an impression. “Now what can that be?” he wondered, becoming strained in his effort to make his ears serve him to the fullest degree. “It can’t be a rat’s claws,” he decided. “There aren’t any rats. There’s nothing to draw them, here.” At the emission of a sharper click from some unlocated point he felt his spine chill, his nerves grew tense and a queer, uneasy feeling ran over his muscles, an involuntary tremble. “What could make such a sound?” he pondered. Then he drew his legs in under him as he sat with his back against the metal sheathing of a corner. The small, side door, toward the Sound shore, was opening! That was a complication for which nothing had been planned. Larry and Mr. Whiteside, Dick knew, were lying in the shadow of the hedge behind the hangar, watching the cleverly devised back entry way. Because it had been supposed that the “ghost”—Jeff—or whoever it was, would use that means of getting in, Dick’s own position had been chosen. He had selected a place sharply diagonal in direction from it. In his corner he could not be seen in the beam of a flashlight from the small cupboard unless its user came all the way out: otherwise the sides would shape the path of the light so it would not come near him. But a man or ghost entering from the side, and playing any light around, would show Dick fully exposed. The worst of that was that there was no rear guard flanking that door! “Well,” Dick thought. “I can only wait and see what happens—and be ready to chase if I am discovered. Maybe I can catch and hold the ‘ghost’ till the others get to us.” Careful not to scrape his soles in the cement, he gathered himself into a crouching, compact, alert figure. Dim and hardly distinct to his straining eyes, there seemed to be in the slightly lighter gloom of the floor where the door opened, a shadow. It might be an illusion of his taut nerves and tense mind, Dick decided. He could not see out through the opening because he was almost in a straight line with the wall on that side. He waited, becoming shaky with the strain, for what seemed like a dragging eternity. The intruder must be scanning the landscape, judging conditions, he guessed. When it seemed that he could not stay as he was another instant, the door was slightly moved, and then softly closed. So quiet was the operation that he did not hear the latch click. He had detected no change in the color of the door itself as it hung, slantwise to his view, and he heard no sound of feet on the cement. That meant nothing fearful or horrifying to Dick. Rubber soles and a dark suit covered the logical explanation. “Still, I should have seen his face—maybe a mask, though——” At any rate, he knew that he was not alone inside the edifice, and if Dick’s common sense was too great to let him think of uncanny spirits, the sense of danger supplied chills and thrills a-plenty. A faint, glowing, bluish light broke out. It threw no beam, only a sort of dull phosphorescence; but Dick’s quick eyes ran instantly to its source—some small flashlamp covered with colored cloth, a handkerchief, perhaps. Behind that silhouette, because the light was aimed in the direction away from Dick, he saw what caused him to emit a revealing gasp. The figure silhouette between him and the glow wore a dress! “A woman!” gasped Dick, and at the same instant the figure whirled, Dick leaped up, the light went out and Dick rushed blindly forward. A hand fumbled with the catch: that located her. In his rush, Dick’s arms were carried around the shoulders he could not see. Like a serpent, sinuous, tense, powerful, the woman squirmed around in his arms. He tried to hold her with one hand as he strove to open that door with the other, while he took the beating of her furious hands on his bent face. The door catch yielded—their wrestling, struggling weight drew it inward. “Help—this way!” screamed Dick. And he clung like a terrier to a tigress! |
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