This fact showed Roy that the plot had been carefully concocted, and that the trap was all ready to be sprung much earlier in the day.  Only a brain like Mortlake’s, he reasoned, could have thought out such an intricate plan.  And yet, what could be Mortlake’s object?

“Now, then,” announced Joey, when he had lighted the tin kerosene lamp, “I’ll show you to your quarters, Master Prescott.”

A chill ran through Roy at the words.  What could be coming now?  With his pistol in his hand, Joey gently urged Roy into a rear room, his companion following with the lamp.  Once in the room, Joey stepped forward, and, stooping down, raised a trap door in the centre of the floor.  A rank, musty smell rushed up as he opened it.

“Thar’s your abode for the next three or four hours,” he said with a grin to Roy and pointing downward.

The boy shuddered.

“Not in there?” he said.

“Them’s our orders,” said Joey shortly.  “There’s a ladder there now.  You can climb down on that.  Don’t be scared.  It’s only a cellar, and guaranteed snake-proof.  When the time comes, we’ll lower the ladder to you again, an’ git you out.”

Roy looked desperately about him.  Unarmed, he knew that he did not stand a chance against his burly captives, but had it not been for the fact that one of them had a pistol, he would have, even then, attempted to make a break for liberty.  But as it was—­hopeless!

He nodded as Joey pointed downward into the dark, rank hole, and, with an inward prayer, he slowly descended the ladder.  The instant his feet touched the ground, Joey, who had been holding the lamp above the trapdoor, ordered his companion to pull up the ladder.

The next moment it was gone, and the trapdoor was slammed to with an ominous crash.

Roy was enveloped in pitchy darkness.  Suddenly, through the gloom, he heard a sound.  It was the rasp of a padlock being inserted in the door above him.  Then came a sharp click, and the boy knew that hope of escape from above had been cut off.  If the men kept their promise, they would release him in their own good time, and that was all he had to buoy him up in that black pit.

But Roy, as those who have followed his and Peggy’s adventures know, was not the boy to weakly give way to despair before he had exhausted every possible hope, and not even then.

But in the darkness he did bitterly reproach himself for falling into the rascals’ trap so blindly.

“Well, of all the prize idiots in the world,” he broke forth under his breath in the blackness, “commend me to you, Roy Prescott.  If you’d thought it over before you started—­looked before you leaped—­this would never have happened.  Anybody but a chump could have seen that, on the face of it, the whole thing was a scheme to entice you away.  Oh, you bonehead!  You ninny!”

The boy felt better after this outbreak.  He even smiled as he thought how neatly he had walked into the spider’s web.  Then he shifted his position and prepared to think.  But, as he moved his foot struck something.  A wallet, it felt like; he reached down, and, by dint of feeling about, managed to get his fingers on it.