Paul nodded. Together they approached the table and looked at the money bills. There were two fives, two tens and a twenty dollar bill. “Counterfeit,” whispered Paul.
Jack picked one up and slipped it into his pocket. They returned to the end of the room and began a thorough search, working from one end of the room to the other. There were several pieces of clothing, many rags, various packages, and other things, such as tools and machinery about which they knew nothing. They paused to examine the printing press very carefully. They moved on. Jack whispered, “Let’s try to find the secret door.”
Paul nodded. “It must be over the other way,” he whispered back.
They proceeded to the other end of the cellar. A beam of light moved back and forth over the wall, but no sign of a door. They tapped and groped at the wall but with no success. Suddenly their hearts fell. The faint noise of footsteps on the other side of the wall came to them. Their minds were in a whirl. What were they to do? Were they to be captured? If so what would happen to them? They already had a taste of what the gang did to anyone spying on them. What would they do now? All these thoughts flashed through their minds in an instant. Paul whispered, “Hide.”
Paul dived behind a bunch of rags and pulled several of the rags over him. But Jack was not so quick. At his corner, there was no ready hiding place for him to run to. And he was still looking for one as the electric light flashed on and part of the middle of the wall was pushed open. In a flash, he noticed how the door worked; the handle of the door was pushed through on the other side, and thus a means was left for an exit; but on leaving, if the handle was pulled in, whoever was in the cellar was either imprisoned or had to use the trap door in the empty house.
As the door was thrown open, the two gangsters whom Paul had noticed with the fat fellow and the grocery man, stepped forth. Seeing Jack, one of them whipped a revolver out of his hip pocket. The second one, however, grabbed his mate by the arm and exclaimed, “Don’t shoot. He is only a kid.”
Advancing to Jack, the second one demanded, “What are you doing here?”
Jack held his breath and tried not to look in the direction where his chum was hiding. “Just happen to be here,” he answered, his heart in his mouth, wondering what they would do to him.
The gangster became angry and boisterous. “I know you happen to be here,” he cried as he gave the boy a shove that sent him sprawling. “But how do you happen to be here, that’s what I want to know.”
Jack picked himself up. The first man, with his gun still in his hand, mumbled to his companion, “Wait a minute, Pete, somebody else may be here. Let’s look around.”