Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/278

 sitting. He lay there for a second or two, with his ear pressed flat against the heavy boards. Then he raised his head, listened, and snaked his body slowly forward, stopping again to press an ear against the planking before continuing that silent and erratic advance.

He was nosing about one particular plank, by this time, like a French hound in quest of its underground truffles, moving back and forth and listening and again and again quietly cupping his ear against the rough wood.

He could now hear the sound quite distinctly, a continuous muffled rasp, as faint as the slide of a blacksnake over dead leaves. He kept passing the tips of his fingers delicately along the surface of the plank over which he leaned, questioningly, as though the oak were inscribed with the raised lettering of an alphabet for the blind and he were intent on spelling out some answer to the enigma.

He was rewarded by the sudden small sounds of splintering wood, no louder than the crack of a strained match-stalk. Moving forward a few inches, he again fell to fingering the floor-surface. For the second time an involuntary thrill sped through his body. His hand had fallen on the revolving sharp steel-point of an auger boring up through the wharf-floor.

He knew then, in a flash, that his plans had gone astray, that Whitey McKensic and his men had in some manner evaded Romano, that they were there with their boat, and that in less than half an hour's time they would have a passage-way cut up through the