Part 40 (2/2)

”All right,” says the Man, and up they got and went tramping up the stairs right over our heads.

”N-n-now,” whispered Mark, and out he ducked and headed for the back of the house. I was right on his heels, you can bet, and if the hall had been wide enough I'll bet I'd have beat him. I was anxious enough to get somewheres else than where I was. Any change looked like a big improvement to me.

We got into the kitchen, and because we didn't know the house very well inside, which Mark said was our fault and we ought to suffer for it, we had to prowl around a lot to find the cellar door. That took some time, because it was dark and we da.s.sent make a light, and there were a dozen doors out of that big kitchen, and we had to open every one; we opened slow and cautious so it wouldn't squeak or anything.

At last we found steps going down. It was as black down there as a lump of charcoal, darker even than it was in the kitchen. But we had to go it blind. One step, two steps, we went, and then Mark Tidd says something startled-like, and all at once I heard the loudest, clangiest, bangiest kind of a noise and then another. Right in front of us! I like to have jumped clean out of my stockings.

_Bang! Bang-bang! Clangety-dang-whang-bang!_ something went, rolling and b.u.mping downstairs ahead of us.

”What's that?” says I.

”It l-l-looks,” says Mark, ”like our f-finish.” That was him all over.

He could joke even when we were in a fix like that, and keep as cool as if nothing had happened at all.

”Did you kick somethin' over?” says I.

”Oh no,” says he. ”It j-just went for an evenin' stroll all by itself.

Calc'late it was the sheet-iron wash-tub settin' here g-gossipin' with the boiler,” says he.

”And Jethro'll be here in a second gossipin' with us,” says I.

We lighted a match then. It was time to hustle about as fast as we could hustle, and you can't do that when it's so dark you can't pinch your own nose and feel it, even if you could find your nose to pinch.

When the light flared up we found we were half-way down the stairs, and that the stairs went between two brick walls and didn't go right into the big cellar, but into a kind of little hall, and that there was a door about six feet from the bottom step. That led into the cellar.

We scooted for the door.

”G-good heavy door,” says Mark. ”Slam her s-shut.”

I did, not worrying much about noise now, and then we both lighted matches to see what chances was standing around offering themselves to a couple of boys who wished they was off in Africa or at the North Pole instead of in Mr. Wigglesworth's cellar.

The room we were in was a big one, the whole width of the house. Toward the front of the house was a brick wall, with doors in it that led to other parts of the cellar. The door we came through was the only one into the room from the back.

”B-b-barricade the door,” says Mark, and we set to work piling things against it. There were quite a few heavy things there, which was our first piece of luck that night, and the way we pulled and hauled and jerked them in front of that door would have done your heart good. In three minutes it would have taken an elephant to push it open.

”There,” says Mark, ”n-now we got to see if there's another stairway down here.”

We scurried into the other parts of the cellar, but there wasn't another stairs. Anybody that got us now would have to come the way we did, or through a window, and the cellar windows were little, narrow ones that neither Jethro nor the Man With the Black Gloves could have got through to save their lives.

We were safe for a while, anyhow.

”Here's a lamp,” says I; ”let's light her up. Somehow I feel easier in my mind when it hain't pitch dark.”

”Go ahead,” says Mark, so I lighted up, and just then somebody came pounding down the stairs and stumbled over the tin things that had given us away, and banged against the door.

Of course the door wouldn't open.

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