“No; it’s all right,” declared Watts confidently. “We’ll have supper first.” And to Jack’s unspeakable relief they passed out and closed the barn door. Listening until from the house had come the slamming of a door, Jack once more freed the fastenings within the box, slipped the board aside, again listened a moment, and crawled forth.
As he stood stretching his cramped limbs, he glanced about. A tier of what looked like bolts of cloth in the moonlight beneath one of the barn windows caught his eye. He stepped over.
It was silk—silk such as he had seen in the warehouse at Claxton!
Instantly there came to Jack a startling suggestion. As quickly he decided to act upon it. “They may never ‘catch on,’” he told himself delightedly, “and in any case it will give me a good start back for the railroad, for help.”
Glancing from the barn window, to make sure all was quiet in the direction of the house, he drew his box into the moonlight, took out the parcel containing the telegraph instruments, and proceeded to remove the hooks and buttons, and all other signs of the “door.” Then quickly he filled the box with bolts of silk from the pile beneath the window.
That done, he found a hammer and nails, and muffling the hammer with his handkerchief, as quietly as possible nailed the boards into place. Triumphantly he slid the box to its former position on the floor.
“I think that will fool you, Mr. Watts,” he said with a smile, and catching up the telegraph instruments he turned to the door.
On the threshold he started back. The two men, and two others, were returning from the house.
In alarm Jack looked about for a way of escape. Across the barn was a smaller door. He ran for it on tiptoe, darted through, and found himself in the stable. Passing quietly on to the outer door, which the cracks and moonlight revealed, he waited until the four men had entered the main barn, then slipped forth, and keeping in the shadows, ran toward the house.