He scratched the match on his sole. The first precious moment of light he permitted himself to look at her, fixing her face in his mind as though he were never to see it again. It rejoiced him to find that in that instant her eyes also turned to his.
The interchange of looks was hard for him to break. Only half the match was gone before he turned from her, but in that time he had asked and answered so many unspoken questions—questions which at the moment were still little more than hopes and yearnings. His heart was beating rapidly. If she had doubted him, she did not doubt him now. If she had not understood his feeling for her, she must understand it now. And the look in her own eyes—could he question that it was more than friendly? But the necessity of making the most of the light forced him to forget for the moment the tender presence of the girl who filled his heart. He therefore employed himself with a quick study of their surroundings.
The chamber was about ten feet square, and lined smoothly with white tiling. It was designed to show the sanitary construction of the Wallingham refrigerator. Orme remembered how Tom had explained it all to him on a previous visit to Chicago.
This was merely a storage chamber. There was no connection with an ice-chamber, and there were none of the hooks and shelves which would make it complete for its purpose. The only appliance was the thermometer, the coils of which were fitted in flush with the tiling, near the door, and protected by a close metal grating. As for the door itself, its outline was a fine seam. There was a handle.
As the match burned close to his fingers, Orme pulled out his watch. It was twenty-nine minutes past five.
Darkness again.
Orme groped his way to the door and tugged at the handle. The door would not open; built with air-tight nicety, it did not budge in the least.
This was as Orme had expected. He knew that Alcatrante would have shot the bolt. He knew, too, that Alcatrante would be waiting in the corridor, to assure himself that the last clerk left the office without freeing the prisoner—that all the lights were out and the office locked for the night. Then he would depart, exulting that the papers could not be delivered; and in the morning Orme would be released.
But had Alcatrante realized that the chamber was air-tight? Surely he had not known that the girl was already there. The air that might barely suffice to keep one alive until relief came would not suffice for two.
There was not the least opening to admit of ventilation. Even the places where, in a practical refrigerator, connection would be made with the ice-chamber, were blocked up; for that matter, they were on that side of the chamber which was built close into the corner of the office.