“We’ll put them in the cellar for the time being,” Grace ordered. “They won’t be able to overhear us from down there. And they won’t,” he added with a faint smile, “be overheard themselves if they decided to do a little yelling. The buildings on both sides of us are empty until eight o’clock in the morning—and there’s a heavy stone wall on the street side.”
He opened a door in the side wall as he spoke, and gestured to Barrack to lead the way down a flight of stairs visible below. Barrack lighted the way with a flashlight.
Ken and Sandy were prodded after him down the rough uneven stairs into a damp, dank-smelling basement. Old boxes littered the floor and cobwebs hung from the beams like tattered gray curtains. For a moment, in one corner, a pair of small bright eyes caught the light from Barrack’s flash, and then there was a scampering sound as the rat burrowed into the safety of a pile of rubbish.
At Grace’s order Barrack swung open a heavy door.
“In there,” Grace told the boys.
Cal’s heavy hands thrust at their shoulder blades and they half fell into an empty coalbin.
The door swung shut behind them. They could hear it being jammed into place as one of the men drove a piece of timber against it from the outside.
Then the footsteps of the departing men resounded on the stairs.
Almost immediately a faint scurrying began somewhere near by in the heavy darkness.
“More rats,” Sandy said between clenched teeth.