CHAPTER XXIII
THE CAPTURE
There was no mistake about it—a noise was audible in the cellar of the Corner House. It was not an insistent noise, rather it was a subdued one, as though the cause of it, whether man or beast, was desirous of concealing something.
“Do you suppose it could be them?” whispered Agnes.
“Who?” asked Neale, though he could guess.
“Those men Hop Wong told about. Are they coming back to have another search for the buried gold?”
“We’ll soon find out!” declared Hal, who stood with Nalbro and the others in the hall, where the leave-taking had been going on. “Us for the cellar, boys!” and he looked at Neale and Luke.
“Wait a minute!” begged Ruth. “Let’s be sure of them this time! Don’t let them get away—provided it’s those men!”
“It’s somebody all right,” declared Nalbro, with a little shiver which brought her closer to Hal. “And they seem to be digging. Listen! Don’t you hear a thudding sound?”
In the silence that followed the whispers they were all aware of a distinct thudding sound as if picks were being wielded on the soft bottom of the Corner House cellar.
“I think they have nerve to come and dig under our very noses!” declared Agnes. “When we’re entertaining company, too!”
“It’s because of the company that they came, I fancy,” replied Ruth. “They figured that so much noise would be going on that they wouldn’t be heard. They probably have been watching their chance to sneak in when the house was busy.”
“This is terrible!” complained Agnes. “We are being spied upon the whole time! Something must be done! Neale, what are you going to do?”
“Is there a gun or anything like it around the house?” Neale asked, by way of answer to Agnes’ appeal.
“Oh, don’t have any shooting!” pleaded Nalbro.
“It isn’t pleasant, but it may come to that,” said Neale.
“Oh, Luke—” began Ruth, appealing to him.
“I think it would be better if we had some sort of weapon,” was Luke’s reply. “It would be rather foolish, to say nothing else, for us to go up against these men, who may be desperate, if we have nothing to force them to surrender in case we corner them. If there is a gun or a revolver——”
“I have put Uncle Peter’s old revolver away,” Ruth said. “Come and we’ll get it.”
“Better be a bit lively,” suggested Agnes. “They may skip out with the gold any minute.”
“If they don’t find it any quicker than we did they’re not likely to,” chuckled Hal.
“It might not be a bad scheme for us to lay low and let them locate the treasure for you, girls, and then take it away from them,” suggested Neale.
“Oh, why don’t you?” asked Agnes. “They must know just where to search for it, white star and all!”
“The only trouble is,” answered Neale, “that they might skip out with it before we could stop them. No, on second thought, I’d say let’s tackle them at once, capture them, and make them tell the secret.”
Luke and Ruth came back into the hall, Luke carrying the revolver.
“This is more like it!” declared Hal. “Now we can talk business to them. They’re still at it down there.”
Some sort of noise was still audible in the cellar. Whether it was what the young folks supposed it to be—men digging after treasure—or something else, who could say?
“Maybe it’s only Sandyface making a new home for her family,” suggested Ruth, with a smile.
“She wouldn’t make all that noise,” declared Neale. “Well, shall we go?” he asked the other two young men.
“Better make up a plan of campaign first,” suggested Ruth. “The other time these fellows got away—the time they struck Luke on the head. We don’t want that to happen again.”
“Perhaps you’re right, Ruth,” said Luke. “We’d better divide forces. Two of us——”
“We’re only three altogether,” objected Hal. “You can’t divide three evenly and——”
“We can call Uncle Rufus,” decided Ruth. “He is old and not very strong, but he’ll add to our numbers. I’ll get him.”
“It wouldn’t be a bad idea,” agreed Luke. “At least he can be posted at one vantage point to give an alarm if the men try to escape.”
“Provided, of course, that it is men and not a cat,” put in Agnes flippantly.
“Oh, I think it will prove to be those fellows all right,” was Luke’s opinion.
Uncle Rufus was eager and ready for the coming battle, or whatever it should resolve itself into. It was planned that Luke and Hal should go down the inside cellar stairs, while Neale and Uncle Rufus stood at the outside cellar door to capture the men if they came out that way.
“We haven’t a gun,” objected Neale, when his part was assigned.
“Bang ’em on de haid wif a club,” suggested Uncle Rufus. “We kin hit ’em w’en dey comes up de cellar steps.”
“That’s a good idea, Neale,” said Agnes.
“A club it shall be, then,” replied Neale.
He and the colored man thus armed themselves and took their places.
Meanwhile, Mrs. MacCall and Linda had been roused to remain with the girls; though Agnes, in order not to miss any of the excitement, followed Neale and stationed herself not far from him and Uncle Rufus where she could see all that went on, if, indeed, anything did happen.
Ruth stood near the telephone to send at once the alarm in to the police, once the supposed visitors should be captured. It had been ascertained by a cautious test that the telephone was in working order.
At last all was in readiness. Luke and Hal, with the former carrying the revolver ready for quick aim, and Hal with a flashlight, started down the inner stairway to the cellar. They had drawn on, over their shoes, at the suggestion of Ruth, old stockings to make their footfalls softer.
Neale and Uncle Rufus, each armed with a stout stick of wood, went out the back kitchen door and took their places at the back cellar entrance, followed by Agnes. It was here that Neale made a discovery that struck him as being curious.
“Why,” he whispered, “they didn’t leave this door open after they went in this way.”
“Eh? Why should dey leave it open?” asked Uncle Rufus.
“So they could get out again in a hurry if they had to—and they may have to. I never heard of such stupid fellows. They close their way of escape. Hum! That makes me think!”
“What’s dat?” asked Uncle Rufus, whose hearing was not of the best.
“I was just thinking,” went on Neale, “that perhaps they didn’t get into the cellar this way after all. If they didn’t—and if there is some other way out and in than the inside stairs—it may explain a lot of things. But never mind that now. We won’t open this door, Uncle Rufus. In fact we’ll just sit down on it.”
“Sit down on it?”
“Yes, that will make it all the harder for the fellows to lift it up and get out. Come, let’s take it easy.”
Uncle Rufus laughed and Agnes giggled. This drew Neale’s attention to the girl.
“Aggie!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing here? Go back into the house!”
“I’ll not, so there! I want to see all that’s to be seen. And then you don’t think for a minute, do you, that I’m going to let you be all pounded up or something, Neale O’Neil, and not be near to help you?”
“Oh, come, Agnes. You’re my faithful chum, I know. But please go in now. Uncle Rufus and I are safer than you would be, for if the fellows saw us, they would run away from us, probably right in your direction. Then, for you, it would be good-night.”
After some further talk, in which Uncle Rufus joined, Agnes consented to return to the house. Neale and Uncle Rufus took their seats on the slanting cellar door as soon as Agnes disappeared.
Meanwhile Luke and Hal were going softly down the inner stairs. Hal held the flashlight in readiness for instant use, but he and his companion had no sooner started to descend the stairs than they became aware of a dim light in the cellar and they knew, since the regular electric lights were not switched on, that it came from the intruders.
“We’ll keep ours dim,” whispered Luke. “That will give us an advantage. It’s always best to be in the dark when you’re hunting a burglar.”
“Better be careful,” whispered Agnes, who, banished from the outside door, had taken her place in the kitchen, to be as near the excitement as possible.
“We will,” promised Luke.
Step by step he and Hal descended, their stocking-covered shoes making no sound. It was nervous work and they were under a strain. But they wanted to see the outcome of it all.
They reached the cellar bottom and started away from the foot of the stairs. The dim light was growing brighter, the light used by some intruders in their search.
A few seconds later Luke and Hal caught sight of two men bending over a hole they had dug in the cellar bottom. They were near one of the walls, and on the ground beside them was an electric flashlight turned on. The forms of the men were plainly visible, though their faces were in the shadow.
“They’re the same ones!” whispered Luke, meaning the same twain who had been in the cellar before and the same men Luke had heard talking in the railroad train.
Suddenly the silence of the cellar was broken as one of the men remarked:
“Nothing here!”
“No,” agreed the other, “we’ll have to——”
At that instant one of them either caught sight of Luke and Hal or else heard some noise made by the lads, for the man who had first spoken cried:
“Look out! We’re caught! Come on!”
In an instant the two intruders leaped up, and one picked the light from the floor. Then, to the surprise of Luke and Hal, the men, instead of dashing toward the outer door of the cellar, sprang toward the front, inner wall.
“Come on!” cried Luke, for further concealment was useless. “They can’t get out that way. It’s a solid stone wall! We’ll have them!”
“Go on!” yelled Hal.
At the same time he switched on his own flashlight, since it was necessary to show a gleam on the path he and Luke were to take, and the men were now using their own little torch.
It was now an open pursuit, with the intruders speeding toward the front wall of the cellar and Luke and Hal after them.
But Luke was mistaken when he cried out that the men could not get out the way they were going. Piled up in the front of the cellar of the Corner House were some old boxes. Dodging in around and among these the two men were lost to sight for a moment.
Daringly Hal and Luke followed and, to their surprise, they saw where the boxes had been pulled away from the wall, showing an old door, the existence of which was unknown, at least to the present owners of the Corner House.
It was out of this door that the men fled. Evidently it was by this way they came in, rather than the back door, and they seemed to be familiar with the egress.
Undaunted, Luke and Hal followed. Outside the newly disclosed door was a short flight of stone steps. They led up beneath what Luke recognized as the front porch, and the situation was now clear to him.
In years past there had been a front areaway entrance to the cellar. This had gone out of use and the porch had been built over it, a lattice work around the lower part of the porch concealing the door leading into the cellar.
Up the steps ran the two men. A quick motion served to throw down part of the lattice work, which, doubtless, had been previously loosened by the intruders, and in a few seconds they were out in the open, speeding away in the moonlight.
But Luke and Hal were close behind them, for they, too, ran up the steps and scrambled out beneath the front porch.
“Hold on there! Stop! We want you!” cried Luke.
“Neale! Uncle Rufus! Come around to the front!” cried Hal, realizing that the two on guard would know nothing of this frontal escape.
“Stop, or I’ll shoot!” ordered Luke.
For a few seconds more the midnight visitors sped on. Hal was racing after them, and around the house could be heard coming Neale and Uncle Rufus.
Then the three boys and Uncle Rufus sprang upon the midnight intruders and bore them to the ground.