“Did I what?”
“Step on that skunk box?”
He knew what she meant. “I guess I did,” he admitted. “I didn’t want anyone else to trip over it the way you did. I guess I stepped on it too hard. It would take a crowbar to pry it up.”
He tried working around the edge of it with his jackknife. The drain cover was slippery now that it was wet. Judy helped, prying and pushing as the water splashed down from the fountain above, getting deeper and deeper all the time. It was up to her ankles before Horace remembered having seen some lumber stacked up against the wall somewhere above the tunnel.
“If we could work a plank under the edge of that drain cover to give us leverage—” he began, but Judy had another idea.
“Why not the door? If we rammed the door to that locked room with a beam we could get in there and turn off the water before it gets any deeper. Then we could try opening the drain.”
“Good idea!” agreed Horace.
First they called to the prisoner. “The drain is covered! The tunnel will be flooded if you don’t turn off the fountain.”
There was no answer.
Suddenly they both realized that they didn’t know for sure that the man beyond the locked door had turned on the fountain. It had been a guess and they could have guessed wrong. Why didn’t the man answer? Already the water was seeping in under the door. Judy banged on it, calling and shouting.