"Yes, there is," was the reply of the officer in charge. "This gallery runs on for another hundred yards, piercing Holly Hill right through the center. You know the bluff and the rocky slope behind the old mill. Well, it seems that this mine was cut right through at that point, but there was a cave-in that filled up that opening. These rascals that kidnapped the girls evidently were associated with the people that rented the Buchholz place and cut the passage through. The girls have been here all right, but they're gone. They've been taken out of this end of the mine and spirited away in some manner. This means that the scoundrels have a larger and more effective organization than we have ever suspected. Such a case of wholesale kidnapping was never heard of before."
"How can you tell they passed through here?" Mr. Stanlock asked.
"By this principally," the lieutenant answered, holding up a woman's handkerchief that he had picked up; "and by the fact that there is a trail in the snow from the opening of the mine to the alley behind the old mill."
Mr. Stanlock's face shone deathly pale in the glare of the flash lights. The new element of suspense had brought him again to the danger-point of a collapse that had compelled him to withdraw from the active search nearly an hour before.
His voice reflected the distressing strain under which he was laboring as he put his next question:
"What became of them then?"
"That's the problem we've got to solve," Larkin replied. "Apparently they were loaded in automobiles and rushed off to some retreat of the scoundrels."
"How in the world could they do it without somebody's seeing or hearing what was going on?"
"Oh," said the lieutenant without a suggestion of doubt in his voice; "that wasn't very difficult if there were enough of them working together. The evidence of cleverness and skill is not nearly so much in the handling of this affair at the mill end of the mine as at the house end. That was a mighty smooth piece of work, getting all of those girls into that old house, however it was done. Mark my word, you'll find that a very clever trap was set for them. But come on, we've got to get busy before the snow makes it impossible to follow them."