t gnawing sounds and the clicking of some trifles unstably
balanced. Then slowly the clicking ceased to be random.

It differed from the other little noises only to the practiced ears of
Brent himself. That was not because his ears were keener than the
other pairs, but because to others there was no comprehensible
connection between a faint tapping and the sequence of raps that spells
words in the Morse code.

It was strange that from rats at play should issue the coherent sense
of consecutive telegraphy.

Brent had been on the _qui-vive_, steadied against any self-betrayal,
yet now he struggled against the impulse to tremble with excitement.
His fingers gripping the chair arms threatened to betray him by their
tautness and he could feel cold perspiration dripping down his body.

He crossed his legs and slouched more indolently into his chair in the
attitude of a bored and vacant-minded man--but as he sat his brain was
focussed on the clicking.

"Am tied . . . up . . . here," spelled out the dots and dashes from the
baggage-room. "If you understand, scrape chair on floor." Brent
shifted his seat noisily.

"She . . . is . . . caught. . . ." There was a pause there.

"In God's name, how is he doing it?" Brent questioned himself, while
inside, bound to his chair, with cuffed wrists, Halloway went on
sending--rapping with a pipe stem between parted rows of strong teeth.

"She is held . . . in mine-shaft . . . back of Gap. . . ."

The pressure of concentrating on that faint, but infinitely important
sound, and the need of maintaining a semblance of weary dullness was
trying Brent's soul. He thanked Heaven for the taciturnity of his
companions.

"Get there . . . with all men possible . . . as for me----"

Brent came suddenly and noisily to his feet for just then the operator
appeared in the doorway and it would not do for these sounds to
continue after his coming.

"Well, here comes the man I've been waiting for," he announced loudly,
and once more the clatter in the baggage-room became the random of rats
at play. "I wanted to ask you if you had any message for William
Brent, from a man named Halloway," he inquired, still speaking as if
against the wind, and, receiving a brief negative, he turned toward the
outer door.

An exit under such circumstances is always difficult. To curb the urge
of haste, to remain casual under lynx-like eyes, these are not untrying
tasks. Any slip now and he might be in th