CHAPTER XI

THE DOORS CLOSE

During all this time what had been happening to the air pilot, Curlie Carson, Johnny’s one time pal?

We left him forty feet below the city’s streets in a narrow tunnel with fumes of sulphur filling in behind him, and steel doors closing before him.

Curlie Carson could not remember the time that he was not conscious of some all-pervading presence hovering over and protecting him. Call it what you will, this feeling gave him calm confidence.

With all the remaining strength that was in him, he threw himself forward and through the door.

Scarcely had he passed than the doors closed with a sickening thud, and he dropped to the floor, exhausted.

He was soon on his feet, however. There was work to be done. The package that meant so much of honor or disgrace to him was still in the hands of the mysterious stranger.

Turning, he raced down the narrow tunnel. Coming to an intersection, he paused to listen. The trainman had disappeared. For a time the echoing tunnels were still. As he placed his ear to the ground he caught the sound of receding footsteps.

“Off to the left,” he told himself, “and he is not running. He thinks I am no longer on his trail!”

On tiptoe, not making the least sound, he went speeding down the tunnel.

The man had gone farther than he thought. In such a place sound travels far. The tunnel here, too, was strange. He covered the distance of a long city block, yet came to no intersection. He doubled the distance; still no track crossing this one. The place grew strangely still. The very stillness of it frightened him.

“Like a tomb.” He shuddered.

Once more he dropped upon the track to apply his ear. To his consternation he caught no sound of footsteps. Despair seized him. What could have happened? Had he gone in the wrong direction? Had he lost his man?

The thing was unthinkable. The package must be recovered at any cost.

“No,” he told himself, “I have not lost him. He is still here.”

He began to grow suspicious. A cold chill ran up his spine. Perhaps the man was lurking in the shadows waiting to strike him down. Seeing a two foot length of strap iron lying beside the track, he grasped it firmly in his good right hand and pressed on.

He had not gone a hundred paces when suddenly the passage broadened and came to an abrupt end.

He had entered what appeared to be a blind alley in the tunnel. And here there was no one.

A quick look about him showed a large freight elevator, used, no doubt, for lifting cars to a level some twenty feet above him.

He examined the walls. Bars and braces made them easy to scale.

“He went up there,” Curlie told himself.

But had he? Doubts assailed him.

“Perhaps he did, and perhaps not,” he thought, calming a little. “At least it is the only way out, and I shall find myself out of this hateful place which has so nearly cost me my life.”

Gripping a bar, he began to climb. A lusty pull here, three steps up, a swing, a final struggle, and he lay for a moment on a cement floor.

“And now,” he thought, as he glanced about him, “where am I?”

Where indeed? All about him in the large room were packing cases. Some were small, some quite large. Many of them bore freight labels.

“Will mysteries never end?”

He passed out into a larger room. The place was quite dark, and that in spite of the fact that it must now be morning.

Approaching a narrow packing case that had been pried open, he threw the light of his electric torch into it. Then he started back in horror.

“A skeleton!” he cried aloud.

One circle of his light told him where he was.

“The basement of the Museum,” he thought, and instantly felt better.

A narrow flight of stairs brought him to a dimly lighted floor above.

There was no one there. The place was still as death.

Hastily tiptoeing down the aisle, he came at last to an open window. This window was a scant ten feet above the ground.

“He went out here,” he assured himself.

Clambering out he fell to the grass, then took a survey of the grounds about him. On every side was an open park. Except in one direction the view was unobstructed.

“He could have disappeared only by hiding in that clump of trees,” he told himself. “He’ll wait there until he thinks I’m gone.

“I’ll go around the corner out of sight, and wait for him.”

Three minutes later he found himself crouching against a stone wall, waiting in the stillness of the morning.

But even as he waited, doubt assailed him. Had the man truly left the tunnel?

“That window may have been opened by a caretaker,” he told himself. “And after all, what an ideal hiding place that labyrinth of tunnels would make! Why, a man might hide there for weeks and even a regiment of soldiers might fail to come upon him.”

So now assailed by doubts, now filled with hope, he waited in the dawn.