“And that’s just what I propose to do,” said Phil deliberately.
There being no light in the room, nobody could see anybody else’s expression of countenance, but the chilly silence that followed this announcement indicated something of what was going on in the minds of those who heard it. One of the latter whispered into another’s ear:
“He’s gone clean daft—insane. We’d better amuse him.”
But Phil’s sharp ear caught enough of these words to enable him to understand their purport. He realized, too, that it was a very natural conclusion, although he had not intended to provoke it. Any such self-amusement as this would have been exceedingly out of place. Still, he was tempted just a little to see if someone of his prison-associates would perceive the feasibility of his plan. None of them did, however, until he supplemented his last assertion, as follows:
“It isn’t so crazy an idea after all, when you consider that we have only about fifteen feet to dig.”
“By crackey, that’s so!” exclaimed Dan Fentress excitedly. Then moderating his tone of voice in mindfulness of their recent agreement on the subject, he added: “Didn’t you fellows notice that there’s an old stonequarry or something of the kind just south o’ this house? We can dig right into that and slip down and away. It’s hardly likely we’ll find anybody watching from that quarter.”
“That’s a brilliant idea, and we’re a lot o’ mutts for not getting it sooner,” Evans declared. “Let’s get busy at once.”
“There’s just one window in the basement wall, and that’s on the south side,” Phil continued. “We’ll have to blind that up some way before we do much work. Probably there’s nobody watching on that side, but we don’t want to run any risk.”
“We’ll take off our coats and jam ’em up in the window if the frame is deep enough,” Emmet Harding proposed. “Is it?” he inquired, addressing Phil.
“Yes, it’s six or eight inches deep,” the latter replied. “I propped the candle up with several brickbats on the floor a few feet from the window. Nobody’d be likely to see a light from that side unless he were inspecting very closely for one.”