“But we’re due for quite a rest here,” one of his men complained.
“Don’t get nervous,” the master criminal warned. “We are due to get out of here before daylight, and don’t you forget that. Don’t think that I intend to stay here all day to-morrow, waiting for to-morrow night. If we did we might find that the stupid police had sealed up the bottom and top of the shaft. That’d be lovely, wouldn’t it?”
He chuckled again as his three men shuddered at the thought of being interred alive. He went to the wall and pressed against it, and the panel slid back three or four inches. Leaning forward carefully, the Black Star glanced down.
He could see the flashes of the police torches at the bottom of the shaft, and he could hear Muggs and the chief in a lively argument. Glancing up, he saw the flash of a torch at the top. He reached out, knowing that his hand could not be seen unless several torches were flashed down the shaft at the same time, and pulled at the cable. The box began to ascend.
It was halfway to the hole in the wall before the chief noticed it, and then, thinking the men above were raising it, he shouted for them to lower it again. While they conversed by shrieks and yells, the Black Star brought the box opposite the sliding panel and gripped the cable there.
The men below and the men above tugged at the cable, but the box remained in place. The Black Star, still chuckling, took pencil and paper from his pocket and scribbled a note, and pinned it to the breast of the unconscious man before him. Then he tumbled his prisoner into the box.
“Go down to your friend, the chief, and mystify him, my dear Mr. Verbeck,” the Black Star said. “You have not indulged in much action this evening. I trust the chief will unbind you, and that when you regain consciousness you’ll join in the chase.”
He chuckled again, tugged at the cable, and sent the box downward, and then closed the panel and sat down beside his men.
“Listen now, and you’ll hear a roar!” he exclaimed.
“But how are we goin’ to get out, sir?” one of the crooks asked.