Watkins retired, grumbling.
"If you'll permit me," I said uneasily, "I'm inclined to think you are mad. Personally, I don't hanker for Toutou's attentions. We may lose this opportunity if—"
"We won't lose this opportunity," answered Hugh, "and I hope we won't lose the more valuable opportunity I'm looking for in the future. Help me break down the door."
Then I appreciated his plan. We worked the crowbar under the sill and between the jamb and the lintel, and with very little difficulty forced the door from its hinges. It was old, and although heavy, had warped and was poorly hung. As it came free, we caught it, and let it down gently on the floor. I crept out into the corridor and around a turn where a flight of stairs began. Nobody was in sight, but I heard a distant murmur of conversation. To the left of the stairs a passage trended at right angles, with a slight upward grade, and I followed it until I came to a clumsy door of planks. I listened at its crack, but heard nothing, so I applied my crowbar and forced the rickety lock. Beyond this door stretched a vast cellar which underlay the structure of the House of the Married.
I waited only to make sure that it was unoccupied, and then returned to the dungeon. Hugh had pushed the stone grating into position on the edge of the opening, leaving a space barely wide enough for us to slip through. We dropped down, and found that when we stood on the empty packing-box which Watty had fetched—for no special reason, as he afterwards admitted, except that he "thought he might want to reach up like"—with him we could exert the necessary strength, with the help of the crowbar, to pry the grating into its bed.
We crept away after Nikka and Watkins, feeling light-hearted for the first time in twenty-four hours. Ahead of us Watkins' electric torch shone palely on the slimy, moss-grown walls. We splashed in water over our ankles. Big black rats scuttled around us. But we were at liberty, and we licked our puffy lips with our swollen tongues at the thought of the dismay that our enemies would feel when they reëntered the dungeon.
CHAPTER XXII
HILMI'S FRIEND
Nikka fainted as we reached the mouth of the drain, which was fortunate for him, as it saved him the agony of the slippery climb over the rocks of the beach and the ruined jetty to the Curlew. At its exit the drain or sewer was blocked by a heap of stones about four feet high across which it was difficult for men unhindered to pass in silence, let alone men carrying an inert body. But we achieved it finally, and stumbled as best we could on to the precarious footing of the jetty, The Curlew was simply a black shadow nestling against the rocks.
As we approached, two figures jumped from the deck, and the slighter of them ran towards us.