Merry and his chums climbed to the rim of the tank and hung over it, looking downward into its black, cavernous depths. Thump, thump, thump! came the mysterious racket from below, now wilder, louder, more insistent.
Hawkins climbed to the rim of the tank, and pulled up the ladder and lowered it down on the inside. Then he took the lantern that Burke handed to him and began descending into the gloom. A little pool of light went with him, and brought the interior of the tank slowly into view.
As the deputy reached the foot of the ladder and flashed the lantern about him, a cry of wonder burst from his bearded lips. The cry was echoed by all those who were hanging to the rim of the wooden reservoir and peering downward.
Jode Lenning was found!
Bound hand and foot, and with a cloth tied tightly over his lips, he was lying on the bottom of the vat, close up against its rounded side. His head was turned so that his eyes, glimmering weirdly, looked upward into the faces overhead. As he lay there, he brought his bound heels against the wooden staves, beating out a sort of tempo which the mill hand, Sim, had been first to hear.
“By thunder,” gasped Clancy, “it’s Lenning!”
“Sure as you’re a foot high!” echoed Burke.
“Those two thieves must have tied him and dropped him into the tank,” said Ballard. “Gee, but that was rough on him!”
“It would have been rougher still,” went on the super, with a black frown, “if he had stayed there until morning, when the solution in the sump tank was to be pumped back into the reservoir. It’s a deadly poison.”
A shudder ran through Merriwell.