We could now talk above a whisper for we had the bedroom to ourselves. We even put our heads out of our stuffy hiding place to get a breath of cooler air.
“Jerry, the rope’s gone!”
I let out my neck and took a squint at the window.
“The piano fellow must have taken it downstairs,” Scoop added, groaning in despair.
I told myself that I wouldn’t give up.
“We can make another rope,” I hung on doggedly. [[170]]
“I’m not so sure about that. For if we give the least sound of our presence up here we’re done for.”
There was truth in that, all right. And depression descended upon me in spite of all that I could do to ward it off.
Night came. But if I had had any remaining small hope of being able to make another bed-sheet rope, to escape through the window after the manner of Red and Peg, I was doomed to disappointment. For the lock tender and his over-night guest never left the room below us. As a result we had to lay motionless under the bed. For a single suspicious creak of the floor could very easily have led to our undoing.
Our former jailer—I had quit regarding him as our jailer in fact, now that he had no knowledge of our presence in the house—had tried earlier in the day to get a telephone connection with his brother in Ashton. Failing, he had left word for the other to call back. So about eight o’clock the telephone bell rang. There was considerable excited conversation between the two brothers, chiefly to the point that we had escaped.