Then Eve was speeding down the hall. Across the kitchen, and pounding on the closed door. “Mr. Bangs!” she called. “Oh, I say, wait—wait!”
But there was no answer and no sound from without. Our jailer’s retreating footsteps were already deadened in the thick grass outside!
IV
Prisoners
Eve looked at me and I looked at Eve. “The front windows,” I whispered. “Maybe——” I raced back down the hall as I spoke, back to the big front parlor. The only place from which the outside world was visible was the broken front blind I have mentioned. I applied my eyes to the hole. But what I saw only made my heart sink several fathoms deeper: it was the round-shouldered back of Mr. Bangs already making good progress down the road. “He’s g-gone!” I faltered, my voice ragged.
Eve didn’t answer for a minute. I guessed she was getting hold of herself. “I disliked that man the moment I set eyes on him,” she said at last.
“But wh-what,” I demanded weakly, “are we going to do?”
“Get out, of course. There’s always some way, a cellar window or something.”
“But suppose there isn’t? S’pose they’re all nailed fast like these? Suppose we have to—to spend the night here!”
Eve did not seem to have heard me. She was now hurrying back down the hall to the cellar door. I listened with my heart in my throat—if that was locked too! Then with a scraping noise, I heard it open.