“It’s all right. I am here.”
“Who?” demanded the poor prisoner in a feeble voice.
“The little fraud who tried to knock you out of another tenner.”
Even as our hero uttered the words he mentally added: “I said I’d get those words back on him.”
Ike got into the place and soon released young Burlein, who had been bound and strapped to a stake driven far down in the soil.
Burlein attempted to ask questions, but Ike said:
“No time to explain now. We’ve got to get you out of here.”
The lad made an examination of the surroundings and finally reached the conclusion that it was an old cistern, an old ice house, or possibly an old vault. Evidently it had been closed from without and Herman had made the entrance through which Ike had come.
“How did he get you in here?” asked Ike. “He never carried you through that entrance.”
“No, he let me down from the top and then closed the entrance over.”