“More ifs!” Judy interrupted. “Don’t look so cheerful about it just because it’s news. If we drowned in here that would be news, too, but we wouldn’t be around to read the paper. We’ll just have to find out how to shut off the water. That man must be able to control the fountain from in there. There’s nothing out here that we can turn.”
“There may be,” Horace said. “We haven’t examined the pipes.”
“There isn’t time!” Judy was panicky now. “You’ll have to remove that drain cover before the tunnel is flooded. You should have left it open—”
“I know. I made a mistake,” Horace admitted. “Now it’s stuck, and I can’t budge it. There’s nothing to hold on to. Help me, Judy! We’ve got to get it off!”
CHAPTER XIV
A Forced Entrance
Horace was right. There was no ring, no notch, nothing on the drain cover except a few crisscross ridges and the name of the manufacturer in an oblong box. It was what Judy used to call a skunk box when she was a little girl in Roulsville before the flood. If you stepped on one of them you were a skunk. But now the skunk box was no longer funny. Someone, evidently, had stepped on the drain cover.
“Did you, Horace?” Judy asked.