Like a flash it came to him that this bit of night drama had been staged in advance of his coming.
There was a sound of hurrying footsteps. He followed at top speed. The man before him dashed through a door. He followed.
His mind was in a whirl. The package! It must be retrieved at any cost. His position, his reputation, perhaps his very freedom depended upon that.
The man had gone dashing along a steel track like a narrow gauge railway. He now passed through a door and lost himself in the very depths of the earth.
Once more Curlie followed. This was, he thought, to be the strangest experience of his whole life. Down a stairway, narrow and steep, which ran through a cement tunnel scarcely four feet across, they went down, down, down into, it seemed, the very heart of the earth.
“Like entering a mine,” he told himself. “But beneath this city there are no mines.”
He paused to listen. A low rumble came to his waiting ears. It grew louder, still louder. It became a thundering, crashing confusion of sound. Then it grew fainter and fainter until it was once more a mere rumble.
“I don’t know where I am,” he told himself, “but I must go on.”
CHAPTER VII
A SURPRISE PARTY
It is strange how like the sea this world of human beings is. On the sea a great ship meets a little ship and greets it. They pass from one another’s view. They travel the world over. Five years, ten, fifteen pass, then they meet again. The same ships. New sails, fresh paint, new spars, but the same old ships. It is so with human lives. Men meet, become acquainted, are associated in work for a time. Then on the sea of life they part. In time the great circle of living that regulates all men’s doings brings them together again.