At that moment another guard, attracted by the loud talking, entered the stone room, and as he was armed with a rifle the odds were too great to risk a fight.
"Better not try anything!" snarled Cunningham, putting in his pocket the black handkerchief Tom had pulled from his face. "Yes, Swift, you made a wrong move! We might have let you go, but, now that you made me show myself, it is impossible!"
"So you're going to keep us here?" inquired Tom.
"Yes!"
"It can't be for very long," said the young inventor. "We'll be missed. My House on Wheels will be traced. It was known we were coming to Dismal Mountain and searching parties will soon be on our trail."
"They won't find you!" snapped Cunningham. "You've made your own bed and now you can sleep in it. Take 'em out!" he ordered another guard who had joined the one with the rifle. "As for you—drunken fool that you are—clear out!" and his eyes blazed as he kicked the man who had blurted out the news of the approaching marriage of Floyd Barton and Mary Nestor. "Take 'em out!"
"Where, Boss?" asked one of the sober guards.
"To the dungeon, of course! Where else?"
Tom and Ned did not think it wise to put up a fight for, so they feared, Cunningham, in his rage, might order them shot. So they accompanied their captors along the corridor and down a flight of steps to what was evidently the cellar of the castle. A little later they were shut in another stone room, but smaller and much less desirable than their former prison. They were, indeed, in a dungeon.
"Now maybe you'll wish you hadn't been so fresh!" sneered one of the guards as he departed, locking the door.