At last, however, the tumult of the multitude subsided, and I could hear the shouting of my pursuers at a distance, and then at a farther distance, and then die out entirely ... so that I knew, to my enormous relief, that they had gone off on the wrong scent.
Even so, it did not seem safe to lift the iron lid as yet—who knew what member of the mob might not be lurking about? And so I remained crouched there in the darkness, waiting, waiting....
But I had delayed too long. After a while, I again heard the sound of voices, of voices lifted in loud excitement. Were my pursuers returning? Not so! As I held my breath and listened, I recognized that these were different voices. "The ventilation! What's happened to the ventilation?" I could hear one of the newcomers crying. "Something must have blocked it! It's not been working right!"
"Been out of gear half an hour, at least!" returned another. "They say the disturbance centers somewhere up this way!"
"Hard to tell where the trouble is!" grumbled a third. "Complaints coming in for miles around!"
"Well, if anything got into one of those pipes," declared the first, "it would stop the air currents over the whole district!"
As I listened to this conversation, a thrill of horror and a sense of guilt shot over me. All too well I understood what was blocking the ventilation!
"Remember that last time!" continued one of the men. "Some big rats got caught in one of the tubes! We had to shoot in some Mulflar, and blow them to cinders!"
By this time the men were almost directly above me, and I was fervently praying for them to pass on without suspecting my presence. But such, alas!—was not to be. Just as the heavy feet of the foremost rattled on the iron lid above my head, I was overwhelmed by the desire to sneeze. The impulse came so suddenly that it was impossible to check; the best I could do was to muffle it, so that it had a stifled sound not at all like a sneeze—though still, unfortunately, all too audible.
I could hear the men pausing just above my head, with surprised exclamations. I knew that they were listening, waiting; I could almost feel their attention focused in my direction.