Unconsciously Merriwell clenched one hand tightly and his teeth came together with a click.
“Randolph has shut Holton into the air-tight room,” he said slowly.
“What!” gasped the Texan, as though unable to believe his ears. “Deliberately left him there, you mean?”
“Yes,” Dick said in a hard, dry voice. “Listen.”
He bent over the notebook, barely able to distinguish the scrawling words, in the failing light.
“‘He caught me by a trick,’” the Yale man read slowly. “‘Says he’s going to shut me in a room where the air will last two hours and no longer. If anybody finds this, for God’s sake get me out. I’ve only a minute to write this and throw it out of the window. Don’t waste a minute, but hurry. I can’t die like a rat in a trap.
Hol——’”
The note ended in an irregular line as though the writer had been suddenly interrupted.
The Texan’s ruddy face was pale as death and in his eyes there came a look of horror.
“Two hours,” he exclaimed in a strange voice—“two hours to live!”
Dick threw out one hand in a gesture of despair.