“Two or three of you get into that blamed thing and come down, and you examine the walls every inch of the way. Keep your torches going and have your guns ready. I tell you they’ve got to be in the shaft somewhere!”
Then he stepped back and waited. The cable moved, and by glancing into the shaft the chief and his men could see that the box was descending slowly. The chief turned to send a captain outside to warn the men who surrounded the block that closer watch was to be kept.
“They’re in this block—and they can’t get out without being nabbed!” he declared.
And then the box struck the bottom of the shaft, and with a sigh of relief a lieutenant and two men crawled out.
“Not a thing!” he reported. “We examined every foot of the walls, and there isn’t a crack nor a hole a mouse could get through. The top of the shaft is solid wall, and so is the bottom. The Black Star and three of his men went in there and took Verbeck with them, and they’ve gone up in smoke or something!”
“You’re a fool!” the chief retorted.
He got in the box himself with two men, and went up and came down again, and confessed himself bewildered. Reports came in from the streets that not a person had left the block. The Black Star and the others, it seemed, had melted into thin air and drifted out and away.
The Black Star at that moment was chuckling softly and assuring himself that his prisoner was not regaining consciousness. He had used the vapor gun in the box before reaching this hole in the wall, because he didn’t want his prisoner to know where he had been. For the Black Star intended having his little joke.
He and his three men had held their sides to keep from laughing aloud as the police went up and down the shaft, so close to them at times that they could hear the muttered curses of the officers.
“The entrance to this little room was the best job of all,” he said. “They could look right at it and not see it, and, if they did see it, they couldn’t get in.”