The leather was still warm, and Roy realized that it must have been dropped into the cellar from the bearded man’s pocket when he leaned over to see if Roy had reached the bottom of the ladder.

“Queer find,” thought the boy.  “I’ll keep it.  Maybe there’s something in it that may result in bringing those rascals to justice.”

He thrust it into his pocket and thought no more of it.  His mind was busy on other things just then.  If only he had a match!  He felt in all his pockets without result, and was about giving up in despair, when, in the lining of his coat, he felt several lucifers.  They had slipped through a hole in his pocket.

“Gee whiz!  How lucky that Aunt Sally forgot to mend that pocket,” thought the boy, eagerly thrusting his fingers through the aperture and drawing out a dozen or more matches.

“These may stand me in good stead, now.  But I don’t want to waste them.  Guess I’ll just light one to see what kind of a place I’m in, and then trust to the sense of touch if I see any means of escape.”

There was a scratch and a splutter, and the match flared bravely.  Its yellow rays illumined a cellar very much like any other cellar.  It was walled with stonework, well cemented, and there were two or three small windows at the sides.  But these, which at first filled Roy with a flush of hope, proved, on examination, to have been bricked up, and solidly, too.

“Nothing doing there,” he muttered, and turned his attention to the rear of the underground place where there was a flight of steps leading up to a horizontal door, which, evidently, opened on the outerworld.  But this door was secured on the under side by a rusty padlock of formidable dimensions.  Roy tried it.  It was solid as the Rock of Gibraltar, as the advertisements say.

“Stuck!” he muttered disappointedly; and yet:  “Hold on!  What about that pocket tool kit I had when I started out on the auto?  Hooray!  Those chaps forgot to search me.  Thought it was too much trouble, I guess.  Now for a sharp file!  Good! here’s one!  Now, then, if the luck holds, I’ll be free in not much more than a long jiffy!”

These thoughts shot through Roy’s brain, as he selected a file from his fortunate find, and began working away at the hasp of the padlock.  Above him he could hear the low grumbling growl of the voices of his guardians.  But they came very faintly.

“Lucky thing they are in the front room,” thought Roy, as he worked on, “otherwise, they might hear this.”

At last the file had cut far enough into the hasp for Roy’s strong fingers to be able to bend the metal apart.  With a beating heart, he replaced the little tool in its case and pulled the ring of the padlock out of the hasp.  Then he gave an upward shove, but very gently.  For all he knew, the door he was pushing upward might open in another room.  But when it gaped, an inch only, Roy saw the faint radiance of a clouded moon.  A gust of fresh, clean air blew in his face, as if welcoming him from his noisome depths.  An instant later, with throbbing pulses and flushed cheeks, Roy stood out in the open.  Above him light clouds raced across the moon, alternately obscuring and revealing the luminary of the night.