Tom Slade with the Boys Over There Part 5

"Maybe it's _ourr_ boys, hey?" Archer asked excitedly.

Tom did not answer immediately. He was thrilled at this thought of his own country speaking so that he, poor fugitive that he was, could hear it in this dark, lonesome dungeon in a hostile land, across all those miles.

"Maybe," he said, his voice catching the least bit. "They're in the Toul sector. A feller in prison told me. You don't feel so lonesome, kind of, when you hear that----"

"Gee, I hope we can get to them," said Archer.

"What you _got_ to do, you can do," Tom answered. "I wonder----"

"Sh-h. D'you hearr that?" Archer whispered, clutching Tom's shoulder.

"It was much nearerr--right close----"

They held their breaths as the reverberation of a sharp report died away.

"What was it?" Archer asked tensely.

"I don't know," Tom whispered, instinctively removing the short stick and closing the trap door tight. "Don't move--hush!"

CHAPTER VI

PRISONERS AGAIN

"Do you hear footsteps?" Archer breathed.

Tom listened, keen and alert. "No," he said at last. "There's no one coming."

"What do you s'pose it was?"

"I don't know. Sit down and don't get excited."

But Tom was trembling himself, and it was not until five or ten minutes had pa.s.sed without sound or happening that he was able to get a grip on himself.

"Push up the door a little and listen," suggested Archer.

Tom cautiously pressed upward, but the door did not budge. "It's stuck,"

he whispered.

Archer rose and together they pressed, but save for a little looseness the door did not move.

"It's caught outside, I guess," said Tom. "Maybe the iron hasp fell into the padlock when I put it down, huh?"

That, indeed, seemed to be the case, for upon pressure the door gave a little at the corners, but not midway along the side where the fastening was. Archer turned cold at the thought of their predicament, and for a moment even Tom's rather dull imagination pictured the ghastly fate made possible by imprisonment in this black hole.

"There's no use getting excited," he said. "We get some air through the cracks and after dark she'll be here, like she said. It's beginning to get dark now, I guess."

But he could not sit quietly and wait through the awful suspense, and he pressed up against the boards at intervals all the way along the four sides of the door. On the side where the hinges were it yielded not at all. On the opposite side it held fast in the center, showing that by a perverse freak of chance it had locked itself. Elsewhere it strained a little on pressure, but not enough to afford any hope of breaking it.

"If it was only lowerr," Archer said, "so we could brace our shoulderrs against it, we might forrce it."

"And make a lot of noise," said Tom. "There's no use getting rattled; we'll just have to wait till she comes."

"Yes, but it gives you the w.i.l.l.i.e.s thinkin' about what would happen----"

"Well, don't let's think of it, then," Tom interrupted. "We should worry." And suiting his action to the word, he seated himself, drew up his knees, and clasped his hands over them. "We'll just have to wait, that's all."

"What do you suppose that sound was?" Archer asked.

"I don't know; some kind of a gun. It ain't the first gun that's been shot off in Europe lately."

For half an hour or so they sat, trying to make talk, and each pretended to himself and to the other that he was not worrying. But Tom, who had a scout's ear, started and his heart beat faster at every trifling stir outside. Then, as they realized that darkness must have fallen, they became more alert for sounds and a little apprehensive. They knew Florette would come quietly, but Tom believed he could detect her approach.

After a while, they abandoned all their pretence of nonchalant confidence and did not talk at all. Of course, they knew Florette would come in her own good time, but the stifling atmosphere of that musty hole and the thought of what _might_ happen----

Suddenly there was a slight noise outside and then, to their great relief, the unmistakable sound of footfalls on the planks above them, softened by the thick carpet of matted vine.

"Sh-h, don't speak!" Tom whispered, his heart beating rapidly. "Wait till she unfastens it or says something."

For a few seconds--a minute--they waited in breathless suspense. Then came a slight rustle as from some disturbance of the vine, then footfalls, again, modulated and stealthy they seemed, on the door just above them. A speck of dirt, or an infinitesimal pebble, maybe, fell upon Archer's head from the slight jarring of some crack in the rough door. Then silence.

Breathlessly they waited, Archer nervously clutching Tom's arm.

"Don't speak," Tom warned in the faintest whisper.

Still they waited. But no other sound broke upon the deathlike solitude and darkness....

CHAPTER VII

WHERE THERE'S A WILL----

"They're hunting for us," whispered Tom hoa.r.s.ely. "It's good it was shut."

"I'd ratherr have them catch us," shivered Archer, "than die in herre."

"We haven't died yet," said Tom, "and they haven't caught us either.

Don't lose your nerves. She'll come as soon as she can."

For a few minutes they did not speak nor stir, only listened eagerly for any further sound.

"What do you s'pose that shot was?" Archer whispered, after a few minutes more of keen suspense.