"Sam's about right," growled Reuben Tisdale. "I tell you, boys, this is a serious snap. We've doctored this spy with a leaden pill, but who can tell how many more of the same kind of cattle there is in hiding in that room overhead? Who lives up there, anyway? Does any one know? Why were we not told of that stovepipe hole?"
"Blest if I know," said Callister. "Cutts, you ought to be able to tell—these are your rooms."
"Tell! I don't know no more about them what lives in the house than the dead. I reckon it would pay to have some on us slip up and see."
"No, no!" whispered Callister, breathlessly. "What's done is done, and can't be helped. It is my opinion the whole scheme has been overheard through that confounded hole in the floor."
"Hold on, you fellows," put in Billy Cutts. "I'll go up-stairs and reconnoiter. I'm a detective, don't you know, and if I catch on to anything in the shape of the police I'll knock with my heel once hard upon the floor. If you hear the signal light out, every mother's son of you. Of course they won't think anything strange at seeing me come snooping round."
Silently unbolting the door, he crept up the stairs, the others listening breathlessly for the signal he proposed to give.
Through their own door—open on the crack—they could hear Cutts open the door of the room above.
Evidently he had met with no opposition, for the sound of his footsteps could be heard overhead walking about the room.
"Blame me if I don't think it was this cuss that was up there alone, and no one else," muttered the elder Cutts, indicating the detective, who lay white and still, dead to all appearance, in the midst of the little group.
"He's wrong, Lije," whispered Tisdale to the stock-broker, who stood by his side, a little apart from the rest. "I heard the footsteps of two persons, at least, overhead there before that iron thing came down. Luck has deserted us since my—my—you know what. I'm doomed to be the Jonah of the gang."