“Hang his guns!” Margate cut in harshly. “He’ll get no chance to use them. We’ll not need a gun.”
“How can you fix him?”
“Dead easy. We’ll attach the hose to the gas meter and run it to the trap. It will reach from the meter to the elevator shaft. We’ll bore a hole for it through the plank ceiling. Carter then can’t stop the flow of gas. We’ll suffocate him like a rat in a copper boiler.”
“That’s the stuff,” growled Baldwin approvingly. “Dead easy is right.”
“Come out to the office,” Margate added. “We’ll wait there till Nell comes in.”
“But the girl——”
“We’ll silence her later. She can’t get out. I’ve made sure of that. Come out to the office.”
Nick heard their heavy tread through the corridor and up a short flight of stairs, which convinced him that he was in the basement of some building.
“By Jove, I’ve got to make a bid for liberty, at least,” he said to himself.
Whipping out his electric searchlight, he at once began a hurried inspection of the four walls and the section[{37}] where the panel was located. He saw plainly that the trap had been constructed on a small elevator, and so made that it could be opened only from the outside. He quickly found, moreover, that the planking was of sufficient strength to preclude escape, nor could he start the panel in either direction.