A Bid for Fortune, Guy Boothby [top 10 novels .txt] 📗

No! It must be to the beggar who passed the house every morning that we must appeal.

"This letter concerns you more than me," I said to my fellow-prisoner. "Have you a lead pencil in your pocket?"

He had, and immediately threw it across to me. Then, taking a small piece of paper from my pocket, I set myself to compose the following in French and English, assisted by my companion:--

"If this should meet the eye of the individual to whom a young Englishman gave half a sovereign in charity three weeks ago, he is implored to assist one who assisted him, and who has been imprisoned ever since that day in the room with the blank wall facing the street and the boarded-up window on the right-hand side. To do this he must obtain a small file and discover a way to convey it into the room by means of the small pipe leading through the blank wall into the street; perhaps if this could be dislodged it might be pushed in through the aperture thus made. On receipt of the file an English five-pound note will be conveyed to him in the same way as this letter, and another if secrecy is observed and those in the house escape."

This important epistle had hardly been concocted before the door was unlocked and our dusky servitor entered with the evening meal. He had long since abandoned his first habit of bringing us our food in separate receptacles, but conveyed it to us now in the saucepan in which it was cooked, dividing it thence into our basins. These latter, it may be interesting to state, had not been washed since our arrival.

All the time that our jailer was in the room I held my trembling prisoner in my hand, clinging to him as to the one thing which connected us with liberty. But the door had no sooner closed upon him than I had tilted out my food upon the floor and converted my basin into a trap.

It may be guessed how long that night seemed to us, and with what trembling eagerness we awaited the first signs of breaking day. Directly it was light I took off and unravelled one of my socks. The thread thus obtained I doubled, and having done this, secured one end of it to the note, which I had rolled into a small compass, attaching the other to my captive mouse's hind leg. Then we set ourselves to wait for six o'clock. The hour came; and minute after minute went by before we heard in the distance the tapping of the crutches on the stones. Little by little the sound grew louder, and then fainter, and when I judged he was nearly at my back, I stooped and thrust our curious messenger into the pipe. Then we sat down to await the result.

As the mouse, only too glad to escape, ran into the aperture, the thread, on which our very lives depended, swiftly followed, dragging its message after it. Minutes went by; half an hour; an hour; and then the remainder of the day; and still nothing came to tell us that our appeal had been successful.

That night I caught another mouse, wrote the letter again, and at six o'clock next morning once more despatched it on its journey. Another day went by without reply. That night we caught another, and at six-o'clock next morning sent it off; a third, and even a fourth, followed, but still without success. By this time the mice were almost impossible to catch, but our wits were sharpened by despair, and we managed to hit upon a method that eventually secured for us a plentiful supply. For the sixth time the letter was written and despatched at the moment the footsteps were coming down the street. Once more the tiny animal crawled into the pipe, and once more the message disappeared upon its journey.

Another day was spent in anxious waiting, but this time we were not destined to be disappointed. About eight o'clock that night, just as we were giving up hope, I detected a faint noise near my feet; it was for all the world as if some one were forcing a stick through a hole in a brick wall. I informed Beckenham of the fact in a whisper, and then put my head down to listen. Yes, there was the sound again. Oh, if only I had a match! But it was no use wishing for what was impossible, so I put my hand down to the pipe. It was moving! It turned in my hand, moved to and fro for a brief space and then disappeared from my grasp entirely; next moment it had left the room. A few seconds later something cold was thrust into my hand, and from its rough edge I knew it to be a file. I drew it out as if it were made of gold and thrust it into my pocket. A piece of string was attached to it, and the reason of this I was at first at some loss to account for. But a moment's reflection told me that it was to assist in the fulfilment of our share of the bargain. So, taking a five-pound note from the secret pocket in which I carried my paper money, I tied the string to it, and it was instantly withdrawn. A minute could not have elapsed before I was at work upon the staple of my collar, and in less than half an hour it was filed through and the iron was off my neck.

If I tried for a year I could not make you understand what a relief it was to me to stand upright. I stretched myself again and again, and then crossed the room on tip-toe in the dark to where the Marquis lay.

"You are free," he whispered, clutching and shaking my hand. "Oh, thank God!"

"Hush! Put down your head and let me get to work upon your collar before you say anything more."

As I was able this time to get at my work standing up, it was not very long before Beckenham was as free as I was. He rose to his feet with a great sigh of relief, and we shook hands warmly in the dark.

"Now," I said, leading him towards the door, "we will make our escape, and I pity the man who attempts to stop us."


CHAPTER IX


DR. NIKOLA PERMITS US A FREE PASSAGE

The old saying, "Don't count your chickens before they're hatched," is as good a warning as any I know. For if we had not been so completely occupied filing through the staples of our collars we should not have omitted to take into consideration the fact that, even when we should have removed the chains that bound us, we would still be prisoners in the room. I'm very much afraid, however, even had we remembered this point, we should only have considered it of minor importance and one to be easily overcome. As it was, the unwelcome fact remained that the door was locked, and, what was worse, that the lock itself had, for security's sake, been placed on the outside, so that there was no chance of our being able to pick it, even had our accomplishments lain in that direction.

"Try the window," whispered Beckenham, in answer to the heavy sigh which followed my last discovery.

Accordingly we crossed the room, and I put my hands upon one of the boards and pulled. But I might as well have tried to tow a troopship with a piece of cotton, for all the satisfactory result I got; the planks were trebly screwed to the window frame, and each in turn defied me. When I was tired Beckenham put his strength to it, but even our united efforts were of no avail, and, panting and exhausted, we were at length obliged to give it up as hopeless.

"This is a pretty fix we've got ourselves into," I said as soon as I had recovered sufficient breath to speak. "How on earth are we to escape?"

"I can't say, unless we manage to burst that door and fight our way out. I wonder if that could be done."

"First, let's look at the door."

We crossed the room again, and I examined the door carefully. It was not a very strong one; but I was sufficient of a carpenter to know that it would withstand a good deal of pressure before it would give way.

"I've a good mind to try it," I said; "but in that case, remember, it will probably mean a hand-to-hand fight on the other side, and, unarmed and weak as we are, we shall be pretty sure to get the worst of it."

"Never mind that," my intrepid companion replied, with a confidence in his voice that I was very far from feeling. "In for a penny, in for a pound; even if we're killed it couldn't be worse than being buried alive."

"That's so, and if fighting's your idea, I'm your man," I answered. "Let me first take my bearings, and then I'll see what I can do against it. You get out of the way, but be sure to stand by to rush the passage directly the door goes."

Again I felt the door and wall in order that I might be sure where it lay, and having done so crossed the room. My heart was beating like a Nasmyth hammer, and it was nearly a minute before I could pull myself together sufficiently for my rush. Then summoning every muscle in my body to my assistance, I dashed across and at it with all the strength my frame was capable of. Considering the darkness of the room, my steering was not so bad, for my shoulder caught the door just above its centre; there was a great crash--a noise of breaking timbers--and amid a shower of splinters and general debris I fell headlong through into the passage. By the time it would have taken me to count five, Beckenham was beside me helping me to rise.

"Now stand by for big trouble!" I said, rubbing my shoulder, and every moment expecting to see a door open and a crowd of Prendergast's ruffians come rushing out. "We shall have them on us in a minute."

But to our intense astonishment it was all dead silence. Not a sound of any single kind, save our excited breathing, greeted our ears. We might have broken into an empty house for all we knew the difference.

For nearly five minutes we stood, side by side, waiting for the battle which did not come.

"What on earth does it mean?" I asked my companion. "That crash of mine was loud enough to wake the dead. Can they have deserted the place, think you, and left us to starve?"

"I can't make it out any more than you can," he answered. "But don't you think we'd better take advantage of their not coming to find a way out?"

"Of course. One of us had better creep down the passage and discover how the land lies. As I'm the stronger, I'll go. You wait here."

I crept along the passage, treading cautiously as a cat, for I knew that both our lives depended on it. Though it could not have been more than sixty feet, it seemed of interminable length, and was as black as night. Not a glimmer of light, however faint, met my eyes.

On and on I stole, expecting every moment to be pounced upon and seized; but no such fate awaited me.