"Then we shall find a means to make you."
"Well, I will not tell you one single thing about our plans, and you might as well make up your minds to that right now."
"What, you won't?"
"No, I won't."
Malvoise crouched as if he was about to spring on the boy, but old
Barr interfered.
"No violence now, Malvoise," he croaked; "we can use other means. I really think we shall have to use another method to bring this young man to his senses. First of all, however, search him, he may have papers on him that concern our project."
But a search of Billy's clothes revealed no paper that threw any light on the Boy Aviators' plans, and the baffled plotters looked their rage.
"Lock him in the inner room," ordered old Barr, "it's a nice warm place for a young man to sit and meditate on his stubbornness, and perhaps to-morrow he will have come to his senses."
Without more ado Malvoise and Sanborn picked Billy up in their arms and carried him through the door from which Barr and the Frenchman had emerged and thrust him forward into a small room without windows. It was really more like a large cupboard than a room, and most probably at one time or another had been used as a clothes closet in the days when the old house was a mansion and stood in a fashionable part of the town.
Billy heard the key click in the lock and found himself in total darkness. From outside came to him the mocking voice of old Barr.