"Hide me!" ejaculated Joan. "If you get three feet away I'll scream. I don't know why I should feel safer when you're here—I've been shot at, abducted and jailed since I met you—but I do."
For a moment Jaro hesitated, then he fumbled for her wrist in the dark, found it. "Come on," he said. "We'll see where this passage leads."
They crept ahead, encountered a stair, descended thirty-two steps. Again they felt their way along a passage, went down a second flight of steps.
"If this keeps up we'll come out on the under side of Mercury," he said. "Ouch!" There was a dull thud.
"What was that?" cried Joan.
"Me. I cracked my skull on this confounded ceiling." He paused. "Joan, we must be on the same level as my cell." He got down on hands and knees, crawled along the passage, running his fingers across the stones.
"Ah!" he said. His questing fingers had discovered a hole close to the floor.
"Where are you?" Joan cried.
"Here."
She moved up cautiously until she bumped into him. "Whatever are you after, groveling on the floor?" she asked greatly relieved.