“It’s a fake—we’ve been done!” Muggs declared.
“’Tis no fake!” Riley protested. “Here’s the wire, and we was told to follow it, wasn’t we? Into the sewer!”
“Off with that cover!” Verbeck shouted, stepping forward and taking command. “You’ve forgotten something, Riley. This is the old sewer, and has been used for two or three years as a conduit for gas pipes and electric wires. There’s no sewage in it.”
Riley’s exclamation of relief showed that he had forgotten. Like madmen they worked at the covering of the manhole, smashing the ice around it, tearing at it with their hands until they were raw and bleeding. Presently they hurled it to one side.
“In we go!” Verbeck said. “And let’s try to make better time!”
“Easy there! We go—but we go prepared!” Riley said. “I’ll go first, if you don’t mind, Roger. Some of the Black Star’s gentlemen friends might be waiting in this old sewer with implements of destruction to greet us.”
He flashed his torch, and lowered himself. A moment later they heard his call, and one by one they slipped from the alley into the big bore in the earth, the last man letting the manhole covering fall into place.
Straight ahead they went now, bending low, dodging elbows of big gas mains, on the alert for uninsulated electric wires. The cement walls were covered with frost, the air was like that of a refrigerator.
They made a turning, and went on, always following the little wire that had been looped along the joints of the gas main. And always they were on the alert, flashing their torches ahead, expecting to be greeted any instant by some show of hostility. They knew the reputation of the Black Star—these men. Perhaps, after all, this was his trick. Perhaps they would find themselves prisoners underground, or face some new peril the master criminal had invented for their discomfiture.
Another curve in the big bore, with Riley stopping them and creeping ahead to peer around the bend, and be sure no danger waited! They made their way along as swiftly as they could now, their teeth chattering, their hands numb with the cold. And now the wire ran to the roof again, along a smaller gas main, and so to another manhole.