CHAPTER XVII.

THROUGH THE TUNNEL.

For a little while, the space of a very few minutes, they were silent, looking at each other. And the hearts of the two youngest of the group beat painfully with suppressed excitement, nor were the three young aviators who clustered close in any better case, as their flushed cheeks and hurried breathing could have told. Until presently the sharp-faced young fellow next to Bob turned his uncovered blonde head and smiled through blue eyes while he muttered impatiently that waiting was too tedious to please him.

“What would you do?” whispered Bob, at random.

“Do?” said the other—young Harincourt, who had stayed a hundred hours in the air, part of it during a storm of lashing rain and wind. “Do?” he repeated. “Why, what but invade the tunnel.”

They spoke in so subdued a murmur that their whisperings were inaudible to the others. Bob stared, fascinated, into the other’s eyes. But before he could make comment on the daring suggestion, there came an interruption from an unsuspected source. The street door was flung open, and the taxicab jehu stood in the doorway. Taut nerves taking alarm, all in the room swung quickly about, and Lieutenant Bracewell strode swiftly to the other’s side.

“Man,” he said, “you took a long chance. We might have plugged you.”

“Huh.” The chauffeur blinked as if not comprehending, and without further comment burst out with: “Did yuh hear the shots?”

“Shots. What shots?” The others crowded close.

“Why, I heard two—three shots from the direction your friends took. Thought you’d be comin’ out a-runnin’ but when you didn’t I bust in to find out why.”

They glanced at each other, eyes lighting with excitement. Then young Harincourt cried breathlessly: “Let’s go.” He started to move toward the door, but Lieutenant Bracewell dropped a hand on his arm, staying him.

“Wait a minute. Captain Murray said we should come only in case he blew his whistle. Did you—” he demanded of the chauffeur—“hear the whistle?”

“Whistle? No.”

“Then we stay.”

Young Harincourt started to protest, but Lieutenant Bracewell silenced him with a wave of the hand. No, more. Gripping the chauffeur by an arm, he drew him within the room, and quickly closed the door.

“Everybody back in that corner behind the trap,” he commanded, lowering his voice to a whisper. “And no noise. If Captain Murray is forcing an entrance to the house, it’s more than likely that the fellows he’s after may try to escape through the tunnel.”

Tiptoeing, the little party, now augmented to six with the advent of the chauffeur, regained its former position. And for a moment none spoke but, instead, all strained to hear any sounds that might arise from the other side of the trap door. But no such sound was heard, nor did whistle blast or distant pistol shot come from without.

Young Harincourt stirred impatiently. Leaning close, he whispered something in Lieutenant Bracewell’s ear over which the latter seemed to ponder a moment. Then a nod of the head gave assent and Harincourt, creeping forward soundlessly, bent above the trap door.

“Great Scott,” Bob muttered voicelessly, “I’ll bet he’s persuaded Bracewell to carry out that crazy scheme. Well, if there’s any kind of battle going on in that house, it’ll be a good idea to take ’em in the rear.”

Bob’s surmise was correct. It was just such a plan which Harincourt had proposed, and to which Lieutenant Bracewell had given assent.

But even as young Harincourt bent above the trap door, there came a sound from beneath it—a fumbling, scratching sound. He fell back precipitately, and the others crowded closer. The next moment the trap began to rise. Tense with expectancy though he was, Bob smiled as the thought occurred to him that young Harincourt should have selected this of all times to launch his coup—should have waited until the very second when the enemy was preparing to emerge. For that it was the enemy, Bob had no doubt. Captain Murray and his aviators, supported by Mr. Hampton and Jack, undoubtedly had gained entrance at the front of the house. Now Ramirez and whatever men he had with him were fleeing through the underground passage. So sure of this was Bob, crouching low behind the shield afforded by the rising trap door, that he was quite prepared to see Ramirez himself climb out.

Young Harincourt and Bob, who had sprung to his side on divining the other’s intention to invade the tunnel, were the foremost members of the little party crouching with drawn weapons behind the trap door. They hardly dared to breath lest some sound escape them which would give the alarm to whoever was about to ascend. For that someone was ascending there could be no doubt. The trap door was not rising because of any supernatural agency. A man’s hand was pushing it up, and a man’s foot was scraping on the steps.

But who that man was could not be seen, for the trap door intervened. Suddenly, however, it slipped from the grasp of whoever was on the steps below and fell back on the floor, almost in the faces of Bob and Harincourt. So close did it come to them, in fact, that they swayed backward, taken by surprise.

“Hey,” cried the man on the steps, in alarm, “don’t shoot. This is your little playmate.”

And he ducked beneath the level of the floor, as he saw the leveled revolvers of the party, all pointing directly at him.

It was Captain Murray.

For a moment, the party on guard was stunned into silence. Then they all crowded forward, peering down into the tunnel and crying to Captain Murray to ascend. This he did, as soon as he noted from their cries that he had been recognized. And behind him came Jack.

“This is a pretty kettle of fish,” he cried, as he gained the floor and looked around, frowning.

“What do you mean?” asked Lieutenant Bracewell.

“Didn’t the rascals come out this way?”

“Not unless they oozed out,” said the other.

He and the others who had been on guard were bewildered at the question, and Bob interrupted with:

“Didn’t you find them in the house, Captain?”

But Captain Murray, ignoring his question, turned with decision and leaped down the steps into the tunnel.

“Come on, everybody,” he cried. “There’s no time to lose. They’re hiding out in the house somewhere.”

And he started running along the tunnel, flashing the rays of an electric pocket torch ahead of him. Not knowing what had occurred but willing to accept the fact that a chance for action lay ahead, Bracewell, Harincourt, the third young airman who had been in the group in the old ’dobe hut, and Bob, jostled each other for places in the line behind him. But Frank drew Jack aside to ask him what had occurred.

“They wouldn’t open to us,” said Jack, hurriedly, “so we fired a couple of shots through the door and then broke it down. Then we raced through the house. It’s a big place of two stories, with ten or a dozen rooms. In one of them we found Captain Cornell, bound and gagged. But no trace of the others, so Captain Murray and I went down to the cellar and found the entrance to this tunnel, without waiting to question Cornell. Come on, let’s hurry.”

And as the way being cleared by the disappearance of young Gordon, the last of the airmen to descend, the tunnel was now open to passage, Jack darted down the stairs. Frank followed at his heels. It was dark, only a faint glow, far ahead, showing where Captain Murray’s electric torch headlighted the procession. The air smelled musty. The walls were little more than a big man’s width apart, and the roof so low that the boys had to stoop in order to avoid bumping their heads as they proceeded. Ahead of them could be heard muttered exclamations as first one and then another, in his eagerness to make haste, ignored the necessary caution and suffered a bump.

“Bend down, and you’ll be all right,” advised Jack. “It’s a straight shoot to the other house, and the floor is smooth. Come on.”

Presently the two boys, who had closed up on the heels of the last of the group ahead, emerged into a cellar where they found the others waiting them.

“All here?” asked Captain Murray, flashing his spotlight from form to form. “All right, let’s go.”

But just as he was in the act of mounting an open stairway to the floor above, and had, in fact, placed a foot on the first step of the ascent, Jack halted him with a hand on his arm.

“Listen, Captain, what was that?”