“Great heavens!” he gasped. “I am in a fearful trap, as sure as I’m alive!”
He gripped his revolver in his hand, turned, and once more crept back into his own room to wait. However, he found that everything there was as silent as before, and after some little meditation over the problem he removed several more pages from his notebook and set out for another exploration.
He had noticed on the other side of that tiny cell another door, exactly like the first. “I wonder where that leads?” he thought; and this time he twisted his tiny taper so as to make it last longer, and then again crept forward.
He darted across the stone floor and paused before the other iron door. There was a keyhole there through which he could see a light shining, but he could make out nothing by peering through. After pausing and listening for several seconds and hearing absolutely no sound of any kind, he determined upon a bold expedient.
“I am here,” he thought, “probably for good. I am likely to have a fight whenever I try to get out, so it might as well be now as any time, for it will be an advantage to take the other people unawares.”
And his mind once made up on that point Roberts softly turned the knob of the door. As he did so he pushed against it; but it did not yield.
There was another effect, however, one which caused him to give a start of alarm. The sound he had made had evidently been heard, for on the other side he heard a soft exclamation and then a footstep in the room.
“That settles it!” Roberts murmured. “They have heard me!”
He pushed at the door still harder and then gave a savage lunge; but the barrier remained firm, and he knew that it was locked.
At the same instant the sound of moving became much more distinct, and Roberts, without a second’s hesitation, turned and sprang back toward his own room. “It is better to be caught there than here,” he thought in a flash.