Page:Guy Boothby--A Bid for Fortune.djvu/157

Rh "Possibly, but there's another drawback to that. I haven't the necessary piece of stick."

"Here is a stiff piece of straw; try that."

He harpooned a piece of straw about eight inches long, across the room towards me, and, when I had received it, I thrust it carefully into the pipe. A disappointment, however, was in store for us.

"It's no use," I reported sorrowfully, as I threw the straw away. "It has an elbow halfway down, and that would prevent any message from being pushed through."

"Then we must try to discover some other plan. Don't lose heart!"

"Hush! I hear somebody coming."

True enough a heavy footfall was approaching down the passage. It stopped at the door of the room in which we were confined, and a key was inserted in the lock. Next moment the door swung open and a tall man entered the room. A ray of sunlight, penetrating between the boards that covered the window, fell upon him and showed me that his hair was white and that his face was deeply pitted with small-pox marks. Now where had I met or heard of a man with those peculiarities before! Ah! I remembered!

He stood for a moment in the doorway looking about him, and then strolled into the centre of the room.

"Good morning, gentlemen," he said, with an airy condescension that stung like an insult, "I trust you have no fault to find with the lodging our poor hospitality is able to afford you."

"Mr. Prendergast," I answered, determining to try him with the name of the man mentioned by my sweetheart in her letter. "What does this mean? Why have we been made prisoners like this? I demand to