"I very nearly fainted," she said hysterically. "I might have been
murdered, and no one would have cared. I wish they would stop that
chopping, I'm so nervous I could scream."
Jim took the Burgundy from her with one hand and pointed the police to
the barricaded door with the other.
"That is the door to the dumb-waiter shaft," he said. "The lower one
is fastened on the inside, in some manner. The noises commenced about
eleven o'clock, while Mr. Brown was on guard. There were scraping sounds
first, and later the sound of a falling body. He roused Mr. Reed and
myself, but when we examined the shaft everything was quiet, and dark.
We tried lowering a candle on a string, but--it was extinguished from
below."
The reporters were busily removing the table and chairs from the door.
"If you have a rope handy," one of them said, "I will go down the
shaft."
(Dal says that all reporters should have been policemen, and that all
policemen are natural newsgatherers.) "The cage appears to be stuck, half-way between the floors," Jim said.
"They are cutting through the door in the kitchen below."
They opened the door then and cautiously peered down, but there was
nothing to be seen. I touched Jim gingerly on the arm.
"Is it--is it Flannigan," I asked, "shut in there?"
"No--yes--I don't know," he returned absently. "Run along and don't
bother, Kit. He may take to shooting any minute."
Anne and I went out then and shut the door, and went into the dining
room and sat on our feet, for of course the bullets might come up
through the floor. Aunt Selina joined us there, and Bella, and the
Mercer girls, and we sat around and talked in whispers, and Leila Mercer
told of the time her grandfather had had a struggle with an escaped
lunatic.
In the midst of the excitement Tom appeared in a bathrobe, looking
very pale, with a bandage around his head, and the nurse at his heels
threatening to leave and carrying a bottle of medicine and a spoon. He
went immediately to the pantry, and soon we could hear him giving orders
and the rest hurrying around to obey them. The hammering ceased, and the
silence was even worse. It was more suggestive.
In about fifteen minutes there was a thud, as if the cage had fallen,
and the sound of feet rushing down the cellar stairs. Then there were
groans and loud oaths, and everybody talking at once, below, and the
sound of a struggle. In the dining room we all sat bent forward, with
straining ears and quickened breath, until we distinctly heard someone
laugh. Then we knew that, whatever it was, it was over, and nobody was
killed.
The sounds came closer, were coming up the stairs and into the pantry.
Then the door swung open, and Tom and a policeman appeared in the
doorway, with the others crowding behind. Between them they supported
a grimy, unshaven object, covered with whitewash from the wall of the
shaft, an object that had its hands fastened together with handcuffs,
and that leered at us with a pair of the most villainously crossed eyes
I have ever seen.