“Out. I—I must see what’s happened!”
“You stay here!” ordered Sid, half fiercely. “You’ll be nabbed in a minute. Proc. Zane has his scouts out, waiting to corral everybody. Here, Snail, you go. You know how to keep out of sight.”
“Sure,” agreed Sam, who liked nothing better than to prowl around in the dark. “Wait here and I’ll sneak back.”
“Be careful,” cautioned Ford.
The Snail slowly winked his half-shut eyes, but did not speak. Then he closed the door softly and they heard him tiptoeing down the corridor.
“The Snail will find out,” almost whispered Sid. Somehow they all appeared to be under a strain. Tom was pacing back and forth in the room. Ford stood with his back to the mantel, his hands clasped behind him. Sid tried to look at a book, but he took no sense of the words. Finally, with an exclamation, he threw it on the sofa. Ford quietly left the room and a little later Phil Clinton came in. Sid and Tom saw that he had heard all.
Tom ceased his nervous walk and went over to the sofa. He sat down on it, the ancient piece of furniture creaking with his weight. But he was not there half a minute before he arose and began pacing up and down again. Then he tried an easy chair, whence there floated up a little cloud of dust from the old cushions. There was silence in the apartment, broken only by the ticking of a fussy little alarm clock. It seemed to double up on the number of seconds allotted to a minute. The three could hear each other’s breathing. They were under some strain, though, for the life of them, neither Sid nor Phil could tell what it was.
“Why doesn’t some one say something?” asked Phil at length, and it was as if some one had broken the silence in a church.
Sid picked up the book he had cast aside. Then he threw it down again, for there sounded the noise of a person coming along the corridor. The Snail came in.
“Well?” gasped Tom, and it was as if he had shouted it, though he spoke in a low, tense voice.