It was indeed the ambush set over the outside entrance to the dungeons. Down in the depths of the hole that yawned under the encircling bushes something was tumbled in a pitiful, distorted heap. Eagerly a half dozen men leaped down and with careful hands straightened out the two forms lying in the bloody ooze. One after the other they were lifted to the surface.
The man was quite dead but the girl still lived, though breathing feebly.
Placing her on an improvised stretcher, a couple of the men hurried away with her to the hospital while a couple more knelt beside the dead boy and searched carefully through his torn and blood-stained clothing for papers, letters—anything that could be used as clues to his identity. There was not a scrap left to guide them. The young officer's pockets had been turned inside out. Even the hems in his tunic and breeches had been slit and the soles had been torn from his shoes. If there had been papers of any sort secreted about him, they were gone—carried away by the ruthless hands that had slain him.
Leaving a guard beside the body, the others leaped boldly into the shallow pit and lifted the heavy bar which held the massive nail-studded oaken door. It opened inward, and Beany led the way through the passage into the chamber where he had sat bound, gagged and waiting for the relentless hands of the clock to reach the moment of his doom. He showed the device, and then, lighting the stubs of candles, they went into the inner room. The dungeons were dark as midnight, even in the clear morning light.
A careful search was made of the rooms. They stamped on the floors, rapped on the walls with pistol butts, ripped up the silken covers and the thick mattresses, but found nothing. The men finally stopped their search, and gathered in a group around the massive table. Beany, sitting on the edge of the table, jounced up and down and thought that he had never seen a piece of furniture quite so solid. He took out a penknife and tried to whittle the edge but the keen blade scarcely made an impression on the ironwood seasoned for ages. Porky, watching his brother, listened to the conversation.
"Somewhere down here there is a hiding place for papers or money, or perhaps both," said one of the officers, a keen-faced, thoughtful man, studying the room as he could see it in the flickering light of the two candles which, now burned down to the merest stubs, afforded a dim, uncertain light.
"We have given it a pretty thorough combing over," said another officer, frowning.
"I can't help it," stubbornly answered the other. "It is in just such places as this where valuable secrets are often hidden."
"What about the dynamite?" demanded some one else. "It does not seem as though they would hide anything of any value to themselves in a spot that they were willing to blow up."
"A bomb that size would not have wrecked this room. Did you notice the thickness of the walls?"