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Show The Black Box of Silence "I didn't look for It The night was so ntlll and plcasnnt that I sat In orre of the porch clinlrs to enjoy It Wally'i car hadn't been out of sight more than five minutes when another car drove up. The man who got out of It had on a white uniform and said he wns one of the nurses at the railroad hospital, and that daddy hnd Just been brought In from the fossil beds bndly Injured. I didn't stop to think, Just flew down the walk and Jumped Into the car. The man got In with me. "In Just a few minutes the man clapped a bandage over my eyes and told me to keep still. Of course I knew then the story about daddy was Just a made-up lie to get me away from the house and Into the car. I tried to get the door open so I could Jump out. It didn't do any good, and when It was over he had me tied and blindfolded and was threatening me with a pistol." "And after that?" "I don't think we'd been going more than fifteen minutes before the car stopped and I was made to get out and walk. In a little while I could tell we were somewhere underground. When i they finally let me stop, they put me Into that wooden bucket thing, untied my hands so I could hold on, and lowered low-ered me down here. What does it all mean, Owen?" "It seems to mean (hat somebody, or may be a bunch of somebodies, wanted to get you and Wally and me out of the way, for some reason." "Of course. But why?" "You know how we Wally and I drove through from Carthage. There were some startling things happened on the way. We seemed to be close behind a gang of safe blowers. Since we were right behind them all the time, Wally and I began to make Inquiries In-quiries along the road. We soon learned that there were three men driving a few hours ahead of us, business busi-ness men from Louisville, they called themselves; and from some suspicious circumstances we began to wonder If they might not be the bank wreckers. "At a little town In Kansas Wally'g car was stolen and run out In the country coun-try and smashed. We then went by train as far as Colby, where Wally bought another car. Nothing more happened until we were this side of Denver, when he found that we were Just behind the three men. They were driving a Fleetwing car. Just before we reached Copah we passed a stopped car on the mountain road; and as we were running down the next loop below, be-low, a big rock came tumbling down and barely missed us." "Mercy how horrible!" she shuddered. shud-dered. "Did anything else happen?" "Yes; we went on from Copah that night, and again the Fleetwing was ahead of us all the way across the Red desert At a little village called . Atropia, we had a flat tire; and after we had changed to the spare, we found we were out of gas. We were delayed for some time, and when we finally went on up the mountain we ran Into another of the mysterious robberies. The commissary at a mine had been looted and set on fire, and two men who were guarding the safe and the payroll money were murdered. Of course, there was no evidence that the three men In the Fleetwing had done it; but we knew that their car had passed through Atropia Just before be-fore we got there." He felt her shudder as she said,' "It tied out. Next, he was led up a steep path or road on what seemed to be the slope of a mountain. At the summit sum-mit of the ascent the forced march was continued on a level. After the first few steps he realized that he was no longer In the open. The air was dank, and his footsteps, and those of his captors, echoed hollowly hol-lowly ns If In a cavern. Landls counted count-ed his stops, to one hundred, two hundred, three and still more before he was halted. There was a click of a lock and a creaking of rusty hinges. Then the man who had hold of- him gave him a shove that made hlrn stumble and fall headlong, the rusty hinges creaked again, and he was nlone. Satisfied, after a moment or two, that he was no longer In danger of being knifed, he rolled over and began to work at his knotted wrists. Ills fingers, trained to the manipulation of delicate mechanisms, soon got the twisted bandanna manacle untied. Then he tore the bandage from his eyes only to find that he was still sightless; plunged In darkness almost thick enough to be felt. Getting upon his feet, he began to explore his surroundings by the sense of touch. Cautious gropings proved that he was In an underground passage pas-sage of some sort. Before he had gone very far his fingers told him that he was not In a natural cavern. The wall at his left was shattered and broken, and once his touch fell upon a smooth half groove in the stone, marking the path of a drill. This Identified the passage as a drift In a mine; an abandoned mine, he assumed, since the silence was not broken by any sound of activity. Stumbling on, he found the passage beginning to ascend, as-cend, and seventy-nine counted paces up the incline brought him to a place where the drift forked. Taking the left-hand passage, he was stopped within a hundred paces by a wall of rock extending all across the passage. Turning back, he tried the right-hand drift. This led him into a maze of branchings and cross drifts In which he soon lost every vestige of the sense of direction. Weary, and with his head still aching ach-ing from the blow given him by the assaulting auto, he was about to sit down on a pile of broken stone to rest when his guiding hand on the wall came in contact with a smooth, cylindrical cylin-drical object wedged in a crevice. Fingertips answering for eyes, he knew at once that what he had found was a miner's candle, and with shaking shak-ing hands he searched his pockets for matches. He found a familiar little card of safety matches, and the reaction reac-tion from despair to hope renewed made him dizzy. There were only seven, and with miserly care he struck one and held the flame to the candle wick. With the candle held high he surveyed sur-veyed his surroundings. Two other passages came into the one In which he was standing. On every side there was ample evidence that the workings were very ancient, and that they had been long abandoned. No longer obliged to grope in darkness, dark-ness, he Dlunsed hanhazard into one By Francis Lyndc Illustration! by O. Irwin Myeri (WOT Sorvloe) (Copyright by WUUsvm Gerard Chapman.) CHAPTER XI Continued 14 "I had," said Markhnm shortly. "Early this morning we tried the Smiths' phone again nnd Mrs. Smith said thnt you and .Miss Betty drove In between eight and nine o'clock last night. That rang the fire alarm right, and I've been haunting the hotel ever since, trying to get track of you or Mr. Landls. Have you anything at all to offer?" "Only this : that Owen disappeared last night at about the same time; and that, a little later, I was sent to the northern part of the Tlmanyoni on a framed-up story which was Intended to efface me for an Indefinite time." "What was the framed-up story?" Markham told It succinctly, beginning begin-ning with the telephone message which had presumably caused Landls to go across the street to the Little Alice offices, and bringing his own experience experi-ence down to date. "Why, that would mean that you three were the victims of some extended ex-tended criminal organization," said the lawyer, half Incredulously. "How couid that be?" "You've said it," Markham snapped; "If I tell you that this 'organization' has made at least two determined attempts at-tempts to murder Landis and me, you will understand how serious the situation sit-uation is." "Good Lord! Who are these gangsters?" gang-sters?" ' "I wish I could tell you, but I can't. Of the four principals I can name only one; and we have nothing to in- -volve him directly. He's a former citizen citi-zen of yours whom you know very well Herbert Canby." Stillings frowned. "Indeed, we do know him to our cost Lord! I wish Starbuck were here. He's the one man in Brewster who could take this thing by the neck and choke the mysteries out of it 1" And at that moment, as if Stillings' fervent wish had evoked him, the ex-cowboy ex-cowboy mine owner pushed his way through the revolving doors and stood before them. CHAPTER XII Kidnaped Following the brief phone talk with Markham at Hillcrest Landis had cut the dinner interval short in order to return to the lobby to mark the advent ad-vent of new arrivals. As the evening waned, he had strolled over to the desk to ask some questions of the clerk. "Those three Louisville men Mr. Markham and I were inquiring about the day we arrived. Have you heard anything more from them?" "We have. There was a wire this morning. They will be in on the Nevada Ne-vada Flyer this evening." "Is that so? We understood they were driving." makes cold chills run up and down my back ! Is there any more of It?" . "A little more. We came on, and as we were driving down the mountain moun-tain road above Lake Topaz, we saw something on fire in a deep gulch, and wondered what it could be. The next day we made inquiries in Brewster to find out if the Fleetwing had come In the night before. So far as we could learn, it hadn't. "We spent that evening with Mr. Starbuck, and on our way back to the hotel we were set upon by three men. I was sandbagged and knocked out, but Wally beat them oft and helped me to the hotel. The next day we thought we'd see if we couldn't find out what had become of the missing Fleetwing, and drove up to the place where we had seen the fire in the gulch. We left our car and climbed down to see what had burned. It was a big car, so badly wrecked that we could hardly tell what it was; but I guess it was tha Fleetwing." "Another mystery! Is that all?" "Not quite. While we were looking at the wreck somebody began shooting at us from the road on the other side of the gulch. We ducked and climbed up through the woods to where the shots had come from. There wera two men, and the shooter said they had been told there were bears In tha mountains, and he'd taken us for one. There was nothing to be done about it, so we let them go." "Can you put it all together and make the pieces fit?" she asked. "After a fashion. Those three men we followed all the way from Indiana are the bank robbers, and they think we've got something on them. That accounts for what'g been happening to Wally and me; but It leaves you out." "Maybe," she said ; but she added nothing to that single word. "But see here," Owen went on, "we're wasting time sitting here talking about 'has-been.' This kidnaping can mean only one thing that the scoundrels are going to pull off another of their robbing stunts and want to make sure of having a clear field. We must get out of this and block their game, whatever what-ever it may be." "Do you know where this dungeon place is, or what it is?" she asked. (TO EE CONTINUED.) of the four passages and was again involved in-volved in a maze that seemed to have no end and offered no outlet. Leg-weary Leg-weary finally, he was about to stop and rest when he heard sounds that he could compare to nothing but the sobs of a human being in distress. Unable to determine from which of the confusing passages the sounds were coming, he found it at last by the trail-and-error method. At the foot of the steep incline down which he slid, digging his heels in and clutching clutch-ing for hand-holds, the flickering light of the candle revealed the figure of a woman. She was sitting on the floor of tlje passage with her back to the wall, and she was crying. Quickly he recognized her and ran to kneel beside be-side her. "Betty 1" he gasped. "What under heaven are you doing here? Tell me, what's happened? How did you get into this chaotic place?" She pointed, and, following her gesture, ges-ture, he saw a mine bucket standing at the end of the passage, with a rope attached which disappeared upward In a chimney-like shaft. "That is the way I came," she said, "I was lowered in that bucket from somewhere up above. I'm glad I couldn't see what they were doing with me." "You couldn't see? Were you blindfolded, blind-folded, too?" "Yes; were you?" "I was, indeed."' Then, "Y'ou're not afraid of the dark, are you?" "No-uot when 1 can reach out and touch somebody that I know." "All right; I'll blow the candle out and save It. It's the only one there I is." And with the return of the pitchy darkness, "Now, tell me all about it." "You'll hardly believe me when I do, Owen. Y'ou knew that Wally and I had dinner with the Smiths at Hill-crest, Hill-crest, didn't you?" "Yes; Wally got me on the phone at the hotel nnd told me." "Well, we left about nine o'clock or a little before, and were stopped on the way by two men who pulled Wally out of the car and tried to kidnap or murder him, I don't know which. Mr. Smith came up just in time. Then we drove on and when we reached the Stillings' the house was all dark and I remembered that Mrs. Stillings had told me, when I phoned to her from the Smiths', that she and Mr. Stillings might not be at home when I came back, and that if they weren't, and the servants had gone to bed, I'd find a latch key under the mat." "You didn't find the key?" The clerk smiled. "It's quite a little-launt little-launt from Louisville to Brewster. They probably had enough of the open road after a day or so. Anyway, they are coming on the Flyer. That Is what their wire said." It was at this conjuncture that the telephone switchboard girl had come up to say, "Excuse me, Mr. Landis, but Mr. Starbuck has just called up from his office across the street to ask If you would come over a few minutes." min-utes." "Certainly," Landis had said, surprised sur-prised to learn that the mine owner had returned from Copah so soon. As he had stepped out upon the eldewalk be saw that the offices of the Little Alice Mining company w"ere lighted, and standing in front of the bank building elevator and stairway entrance was a car with Its motor running, run-ning, but. with Its lights turned off. Ills first thought had been that It was Starbuck's car, but as he heard it, he had seen that it was a different make. Since it was blocking the way. he stepped aside to pass behind It. When he was in the rear of the car, and be- fore he could step up to the curb, the softly idling motor suddenly reared alive and the car leaped backward at him. There was time only for a futile effort to save himself, and then the street pavement rose up to smite him into oblivion. When he came to he found himself tied and blindfolded and jammed In between two men In the back seat of a car which was being driven somewhere some-where at reckless speed. When he stirred, the man at his left pressed something pointed against his ribs, end a grating voice at his ear said. "You've b-?en asking for it for a good while, and now you've got It I If you make a move or raise a yell, you'll get the knife!" Landis made no reply. Half dazed ns he was, he realized that he was helpless, for the time being, at least. As his brain cleared he took himself him-self savagely to task for having fallen bo easily into the trap set for him, and from that he strove to find answers an-swers to the questions that came thronging upon him. Who were his kidnapers? Where were they taking him and what were they going to do to him? These vital questions were still unanswered un-answered when the car came to a sudden stop. There were sounds as of the removing of a barricade, after which the car went forward slowly. At the next stop he was roughly hus- |