“By tomorrow we’ll know a lot more than we do today,” Judy encouraged him. “We’ll know who that prisoner is, and why he’s down here. Horace, do you think he really is Dick Hartwell? Do you suppose he still wants us to go away?”
“Ask him,” Horace suggested. “He should be willing to tell us who he is.”
Again Judy rapped on the locked door only to hear nothing but the echo of her tapping and that unearthly rushing sound overhead.
“There is a leak,” Horace told her, squinting upwards. “I knew there must be. The water would be up to our necks by now if we hadn’t succeeded in opening that drain.”
“Cheerful thought!” commented Judy.
She rapped on the door again—gently at first and then a little louder.
“Please answer us,” she and Horace both begged.
A long, gasping moan finally came from behind the locked door.
“Are you hurt?” asked Judy. “Are you Dick Hartwell, Roger Banning’s friend?”
“He’s—no friend. He did it,” was the confused reply.