Brent dropped into a chair near the door and listened as the clatter inside increased. The rats scrambled about with a multiplicity of light gnawing sounds and the clicking of some trifles unstably balanced. Then slowly the clicking ceased to be random.
It differed from the other little noises only to the practiced ears of Brent himself. That was not because his ears were keener than the other pairs, but because to others there was no comprehensible connection between a faint tapping and the sequence of raps that spells words in the Morse code.
It was strange that from rats at play should issue the coherent sense of consecutive telegraphy.
Brent had been on the qui-vive, steadied against any self-betrayal, yet now he struggled against the impulse to tremble with excitement. His fingers gripping the chair arms threatened to betray him by their tautness and he could feel cold perspiration dripping down his body.
He crossed his legs and slouched more indolently into his chair in the attitude of a bored and vacant-minded man—but as he sat his brain was focussed on the clicking.
"Am tied … up … here," spelled out the dots and dashes from the baggage-room. "If you understand, scrape chair on floor." Brent shifted his seat noisily.
"She … is … caught.…" There was a pause there.
"In God's name, how is he doing it?" Brent questioned himself, while inside, bound to his chair, with cuffed wrists, Halloway went on sending—rapping with a pipe stem between parted rows of strong teeth.
"She is held … in mine-shaft … back of Gap.…"
The pressure of concentrating on that faint, but infinitely important sound, and the need of maintaining a semblance of weary dullness was trying Brent's soul. He thanked Heaven for the taciturnity of his companions.