Page:Guy Boothby--A Bid for Fortune.djvu/156

146 where are we, do you think? In the second, is there any possible chance of escape?"

"To the first my answer is, 'don't know;' to the second, 'can't say.' I have discovered one thing, however, and that is that the street does not lie outside that window, but runs along on the other side of this wall behind me. The window, I suspect, looks out on to some sort of a courtyard. But unfortunately that information is not much good to us, as we can neither of us move away from where we are placed."

"Is there no other way?"

"Not one, as far as I can see. Can you see anything on your side?"

"Nothing at all, unless we could get at the door. But what's that sticking out of the wall near your feet?"

I stooped as much as I was able to get a better view of it.

"It looks like a pipe."

The end of a pipe it certainly was, and sticking out into the room, but where it led to and why it had been cut off in this peculiar fashion were two questions I could no more answer than I could fly.

"Does it run out into the street, do you think?" was Beckenham's immediate query. "If so, you might manage to call through it to some passer-by, and ask him to obtain assistance for us!"

"A splendid notion if I could get my mouth anywhere within a foot of it, but as this chain will not permit me to do that, it might as well be a hundred miles off. It's as much as I can do to touch it with my fingers."

"Do you think if you had a stick you could push a piece of paper through? We might write a message on it."