itement and the uncertainty
made him sleepless. Again he heard a low mutter of subdued voices, then
he sat straight up in his blanket.

Since he could not sleep, he felt that he might as well be busying
himself about something, so drawing a blanket over to a corner of the
room, he laid down flat upon it, and with the drill punch on his scout
knife, began to bore a hole in the floor. He remembered that the
ceiling of the restaurant was made of boards and not of plaster, and he
decided that this was probably the case all through the rest of the
house. There was probably a double thickness of boards, and the longer
he drilled the more certain he became of this.

Finishing, he could feel that he was within the merest fraction of an
inch of piercing the double thickness of boards, through which he had
carefully bored his way. Instead of piercing his knife blade straight
through the thin bit of board that was left, he began to enlarge the
hole that he had already made. When he had done this to his
satisfaction, he blew out the candle, for he wanted no stray gleam of
light to betray to whoever was in the room below him his course of
action.

Having extinguished the light, very carefully and slowly, he dug away
tiny splinters of the thin bit of board that separated him from hearing,
and perhaps seeing, what was taking place in the room below. As he made
the hole, the murmur of voices became more and more distinct. At last,
the sharp point of the knife pierced the board, and then working as
carefully as though he were handling the most deadly explosive, he began
to enlarge the little chink that he had made.

Having completed his peep hole, he glued his eye to it, but was unable
to make out anyone in the room below him. Evidently, the occupants of
the room were outside of his field of vision. Giving up trying to see
what was going on, he lay on his side with his ear pressed closely to
the aperture that he had made. He could distinguish LeBlanc's voice,
also that of the French restaurant proprietor. There seemed to be two
other men in the room, for he could make out the difference in voices,
but they were strangers to him. Evidently, the two strangers could not
speak French, for LeBlanc and the proprietor were talking in English.

Phil could hear the conversation as plainly as though he were sitting in
the room with them. As soon as he discovered what they were talking
about, he became very much excited, for they were discuss