Before Phil, now out of the car and heading for the porch could answer, there came the muffled sound of something inside the inn being moved. At the sound Billy seized a heavy walking stick from the driver’s seat, which no one ever used, but which was carried simply because it might some time come handy. Giving this to Phil, he himself took a short thick rubber tube used at times when gasoline was transferred from a tank to the machine reservoir.
“I’m going with you, Phil,” he whispered. “No use to say no!”
CHAPTER XV
AT THE OLD TAVERN
Phil offered no objection, but took the walking stick and at once entered the porch, making as little noise as possible. Billy came close behind, feeling the rubber tube to make sure that it could stun, if not kill, when handled with due precision and force.
As has been stated before, portions of the porch floor had been previously broken in, where the elements had too heavily tested the wood. Phil finally passed into the office without making any noise but Billy was not so lucky. Despite his care, he misjudged where he trod when he was near the doorway, when there was an ominous crackling sound under his last footstep.
“Cr-r-r-r—a-c-c-k!” Down went his leg, clear above his knee. In the effort to rise, down went the other leg with a similar crunching crumble, and there was Billy submerged, so to speak, to the waist. Nor did it stop there, for under the porch was a cellar that extended pretty well under the fore part of the ancient building.
For half a moment Billy’s form remained waist deep under the porch, when from below there came another crackling, crunching sound, and Billy began to descend at first slowly, as the rafters over the cellar began to collapse. Then down he went amid a cloud of dust from the rotting woodwork, as with a feverish exclamation he vanished from sight. Just at this instant Phil wheeled, startled by the noise Worth was making and started to whisper a cautionary “Silence!”
At this juncture Billy vanished from sight, though Phil heard him, as he struck the earth of the partially filled cellar, give voice as follows: