"Yes, Madge, I sent him down there to fasten the young fellow up, so that there would be no chance of his getting loose. You see, he was senseless when we chucked him in there, and I forgot to make him fast, as a sailor would say, but there are staples in the wall down there, and there are chains fastened to those staples, and there are nice little steel bracelets at the end of those chains, that fit beautifully around a man's ankles. I sent Phil down to lock them fast."
"I thought nobody knew where that place was except yourself," said Madge quickly.
"Oh, Phil's all right. I have to have some confidence in my men here, or I couldn't run the place."
"All the same," the detective heard her murmur, "I'd rather you had left Chick to me. They're a slippery lot, those detectives, and I shall be uneasy——"
The detective heard no more of what was said, for at that instant he was greatly startled by hearing a sound behind him, and evidently beneath him, the consequence being that he paid no further attention to the conversation beyond the door.
Indeed, he drew back away from it, and softly rose to his feet, in order that he might be thoroughly prepared for anything that should happen; and while he stood there he was conscious of a cold, damp draught of air blown into his face—air that smelled as if it might come from the cellar—and he was somehow conscious that a trapdoor had been lifted, while the next moment he was aware that somebody was climbing through it into that narrow hallway—somebody who was not more than ten or twelve feet away from him. How he had wished for his little flash light then.
Once he imagined that he could hear a faint whisper, and a sharp, warning hiss for silence immediately following it.
Then it came back to him suddenly, all that he had heard Mike Grinnel say to Madge about the dungeon in the house, and the bartender's errand to it.
He thought then that the people who had raised themselves through the trap—and he was sure that there were two of them—must be Phil and Chick, the latter having been liberated by the former; and, acting upon the impulse of the moment, he struck a match and held it into the faces of the two men. The glare of the match shone directly into the face of Chick.