When Dick had tried crouching¹, sitting on his heels, walking and every other device he could think of to end the interminable difficulties of trying to pass time with nothing to do and nothing under him but the hard cement hangar floor, he began to wish he had never met Jeff or gotten into the adventure at all.

He resolved, then and there, never to become a detective.

Countless² times his nerves had been pulled by sounds which turned out on second thought to be only the contracting of the hot metal, subjected to the sun all day, as the evening breeze robbed it of its warmth.

No wonder that he failed to react to a slight clinking, hardly more than would be made by the scratch of wire in a lock.

But the shrinking of metal had made intermittent³ noises, sharp and not repeated.
246

This sound, so insistent⁴, so prolonged, began, at last, to make an impression. “Now what can that be?” he wondered, becoming strained in his effort to make his ears serve him to the fullest degree.

“It can’t be a rat’s claws,” he decided⁵. “There aren’t any rats. There’s nothing to draw them, here.”

At the emission⁶ of a sharper click from some unlocated point he felt his spine⁷ chill, his nerves grew tense and a queer, uneasy feeling ran over his muscles, an involuntary tremble.

“What could make such a sound?” he pondered.

Then he drew his legs in under him as he sat with his back against the metal sheathing⁸ of a corner.

The small, side door, toward the Sound shore, was opening!

That was a complication for which nothing had been planned. Larry and Mr. Whiteside, Dick knew, were lying in the shadow of the hedge behind the hangar, watching the cleverly devised back entry way.

分享到：