With the interruption, however, his hand closed quickly on the wooden lever, which moved like a flash to one side under the swift action of his powerful arm.
Instantly a section of the floor under the detective’s chair fell straight downward, swinging on hinges like a trapdoor.
It was like having the earth itself drop from under[Pg 28] him. Coming without the slightest warning, finding him utterly unprepared for such a trick, Nick had neither time nor means by which to collect himself, or to avoid the inevitable fall.
Like a flash, together with the chair on which he was seated, Nick vanished through the floor and sped downward through empty space.
The trapdoor swung upward like a pendulum, and Ardley, venting a roar of mingled triumph and derision, jerked it back in its former position and secured it with the lever.
CHAPTER VII.
THE GANG AND THE GAME.
Nick Carter did not fall far, yet far enough to jar him from head to foot and smash to fragments the chair on which he was seated.
Nick landed in about a foot of water, moreover, drenching him to the skin, yet the chill of which served instantly to revive him.
He found himself in almost total darkness. The only light came through a chink a foot or more above his head. It served to reveal four bare, wet walls of planking, however, also the floor through which he had been precipitated, with the trapdoor now grimly closed.
Nick had heard the crash of it when Ardley closed and secured it, also the mocking roar of the monstrous rascal, and it took Nick only a moment to determine in what sort of a trap he was confined.