Either through inadvertence or by intention, Connie Myers had
passed up an almost childishly simple means of entrance into the house!
One side of the trapdoor was lifted up silently--and silently closed.
Jimmie Dale was in the cellar. The hammering, much more distinct now,
heavy, thudding blows, came from a room in the front--the connection
between the cellar and the house, as shown on the Tocsin's plan, was
through another trapdoor in the floor of the kitchen.
Jimmie Dale's flashlight played on a short, ladderlike stairway, and
in an instant he was climbing upward. The sounds from the front of the
house continued now without interruption; there was little fear that
Connie Myers would hear anything else--even the protesting squeak of
the hinges as Jimmie Dale cautiously pushed back the trapdoor in the
flooring above his head. An inch, two inches he lifted it; and, his eyes
on a level with the opening now, he peered into the room. The kitchen
itself was intensely dark; but through an open doorway, well to one
side so that he could not see into the room beyond, there struggled
a curiously faint, dim glimmer of light. And then Jimmie Dale's form
straightened rigidly on the stairs. The blows stopped, and a voice, in a
low growl, presumably Connie Myers', reached him.
"Here, take a drive at it from the lower edge!"
There was no answer--save that the blows were resumed again.
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