“Some sick guy,” guessed Chub.
“No. They haven’t used this hospital for a long time,” Joan said.
“Well, there’s some one in there, now,” insisted the other. “But maybe it’s only an animal, caught in a trap. We might hunt, anyway.”
Around the building they went, but all the doors were securely locked and all the windows, too. Chub climbed up to examine a window higher up than the rest, through which they hoped to gain entrance. “Locked!” he said, with his jaws set like a real detective. How serious he looked in the moonlight, almost nice-looking, too, for his freckles didn’t show.
He jumped to the ground with a soft thud. “I wish the feller’d moan again, so we could tell where he is.”
Then, it did come again. It sounded in a different place. Not in the house at all, as it had the first time, but—underneath the ground!
“Spooks!” Chub’s plump face was sober. “I heard it sort of muffled, from right over there, underneath the earth.”
“So did I,” affirmed the girl. “But it’d be no use telling the Journalites. They’d only laugh, and call us sentimental. Besides, I don’t see how it could come from the ground.”
“Neither do I.” Chub shook his head. “Unless it’s an animal or—maybe a feller buried alive.”
Joan shuddered. “But we must get into the house, some way. I think it’s some one awful sick, and they must be in the house.”