“Are you Dick Hartwell? Please, whoever you are, answer! We want to get out of here and bring help. Do you know how to turn off the fountain?”
There was a little pause. Then came the answer.
“Outside ... the tower!”
“Oh, no!” exclaimed Judy. “Then we are trapped unless— Is there some way to get outside from in there?” she called.
“No ... no way.” The man was evidently growing weaker. “If you really ... want to ... help me,” he began and then broke off with a moan.
“We do want to help. Oh, Horace! We have to,” cried Judy. “All three of us will be drowned if we don’t get out of here!”
Horace’s reply was reassuring. “Not if we succeed in opening that drain.”
Another moan from behind the door spurred them to action. Horace brought a beam to push against one side of the drain cover while Judy pried up the other edge with a plank. At last it yielded to their tugging, and the water rushed and gurgled down the open drain.
The sound cheered Judy less than she had thought it would. “We’re no longer in immediate danger of being drowned,” she told Horace, “but you can still hear that running water in the pipes overhead. What are we supposed to do? Just wait here until they turn it off?”
“I don’t like waiting any better than you do,” her brother replied, “but I don’t know what else we can do. It gives me the chills just to listen to that water. I don’t trust those rusty pipes.”