“Well, this is pretty punk!” he exclaimed. “To think that they got ahead of me this way! I wonder where I am, anyhow? And I wonder how I can get away, and back—Great muskmelons! If I don’t show up at the game—”
The thought was too much for Bill. He resolved on bold tactics. Considering that his promise not to make an outcry ended with the leaving of his captors, he raised his voice in a shout.
“Help! Come here, somebody! Let me out! Police!”
Bill didn’t particularly want the police, for he knew that his captivity was the result of some school prank, and the boys never called on the officers of the law if they could help it. But “Police!” was an easy word to say, and it carried well. Therefore the captive yelled it again and again.
But there was no answer to his cries, and after straining his throat until it ached, the pitcher decided that he had better save his breath and try other means to escape.
“First to see if I can’t get rid of some of these ropes on my arms and legs,” he murmured. He tugged and strained at them, after wiggling to a sitting position, but the knots had been made with care, and held. Bill tried to pull his hands from the loops but it was useless, and his feet were equally secure. He could not gnaw through the ropes as he had sometimes read of prisoners doing, for his hands were tied behind his back.
“I certainly am up against it,” he said aloud. Then, for the first time, he took note of his prison. He was in a vacant room, evidently in some old fashioned house, to judge by the character of the woodwork and the wall paper. There were two windows, and a door, the latter apparently quite solid.
“Let’s have a look outside,” suggested Bill to himself. He struggled to his feet, and, by a series of hops, gained the windows. He was in the third story of a house, set in the midst of a neglected garden, and the scene that met the lad’s gaze was unfamiliar to him.
“I might be a hundred miles from nowhere, for all I can tell,” he concluded dubiously. “Well, now for a try at the door.”
Hopping over to the portal Bill turned around with his back to it, and managed to reach the knob with his hands. It turned, but the door was locked.