"Voices—men talking—the jailer."
Philip nodded.
"The jailer and that fellow who often visited us with him. They're in that room to the left, the door of which is ajar, and the sooner we pass it the better."
Stealing forward again they were soon opposite a massive iron door, similar to the one which had closed their cell, and, halting for a moment, listened to the conversation of the two men within it. Listened long enough to assure themselves that they were right, and that within the cell their jailer and his friend were certainly seated. Then they moved on again, and, traversing a long corridor and turning to their right, found themselves in a different part of the prison. They had reached, in fact, an entrance-hall, as it were, out of which a heavy, barred door led, probably to the open.
"Locked and barred," said Geoff, inspecting it rapidly and as well as the dusk would allow; "no way out for us there, I think. Now, what happens?"
"S—sh! Someone coming," whispered Phil, "someone coming down the stairs, I think. From the sounds he is making he is coming towards us."
For a moment or two they stared in the direction from which the noise of feet descending the stairway had come to them, and then looked desperately about them, for not even the dusk in that big entrance-hall would prevent them from being discovered once an individual was within some yards of them. What were they to do? Bolt back towards the cell they had so recently vacated? Stand still and chance discovery and recognition? Or advance and throw themselves upon the individual who was approaching? Geoff threw out a hand and caught Philip by the sleeve, pulling him towards his left, towards the door which he had been so recently examining, pulled him in fact into the angle the door made with the heavy stone pillar which supported it. No one in his wildest thoughts could have described it as a safe hiding-place, no one in fact in similar circumstances would have willingly entrusted his chances of liberty to it, or would have leapt at the scanty security it barely offered. Yet it was a chance, a chance in a hundred, the only chance the occasion could produce, the only spot possible for Geoff and Philip. And there together they crouched against the stone pillar, wishing that the dusk might grow rapidly deeper, and that some friendly shadow would cast itself about them and hide them from the eyes of the intruder.
Those seconds which followed were long-drawn-out, agonizing seconds, seconds during which the slow, plodding, heavy footsteps which they had heard descending the stairway drew nearer, and nearer, and nearer. Then a figure came into view, a figure but dimly illuminated, which, reaching the centre of the hall, came to a halt, while the man—for undoubtedly it was a man—peered about him inquisitively, as if seeking for something, as if he too had heard sounds, sounds which had roused his curiosity and perhaps his suspicion. It gave the two young subalterns hiding in that shady corner quite an unpleasant start, sent quite a chill through their frames when they first cast their eyes on that figure.
"Von Hildemaller!" said Geoff under his breath, speaking to himself in fact. "Now, how——?"
Philip moved and nudged his comrade.