Clear out.  Will join you later.

He tied this missive on his cord, together with the cigar clipper, and lowered them from the window.  There was a signaling tug at the cord; Pete dropped it.

Pete dressed himself; he placed a chair under the window; then he extinguished the lamp, took the saw, and prepared to saw out the bars.  But it was destined to be otherwise.  Even as he raised the saw, he stiffened in his tracks, listening; his blood tingled to his finger tips.  He heard a footstep on the stair, faint, guarded, but unmistakable.  It came on, slowly, stealthily.

Pete thrust saw and rope under his mattress and flung himself upon it, all dressed as he was, face to the wall, with one careless arm under his head, just as if he had dropped asleep unawares.

A few seconds later came a little click, startling to tense nerves, at the cell door; a slender shaft of light lanced the darkness, spreading to a mellow cone of radiance.  It searched and probed; it rested upon the silent figure on the bed.

“Sh-h-h!” said a sibilant whisper.

Peter muttered, rolled over uneasily, opened his eyes and leaped up, springing aside from that golden circle of light in well-simulated alarm.

“Hush-h!” said the whisper.  “I’m going to let you out.  Be quiet!”

Keys jingled softly in the dark; the lock turned gently and the door opened.  In that brief flash of time Pete Johnson noted that there had been no hesitation about which key to use.  His thought flew to the kindly undersheriff.  His hand swept swiftly over the table; a match crackled.

“Smoke?” said Pete, extending the box with graceful courtesy.

“Fool!” snarled the visitor, and struck out the match.

But Pete had seen.  The undersheriff was a man of medium stature; this large masked person was about the size of the larger of his lately made acquaintances, the brothers Poole.

“Come on!” whispered the rescuer huskily.  “Mitchell sent me.  He’ll take you away in his car.”

“Wait a minute!  We’d just as well take these cigars,” answered Pete in the same slinking tone.  “Here; take a handful.  How’d you get in?”

“Held the jailer up with a gun.  Got him tied and gagged.  Shut up, will you?  You can talk when you get safe out of this.”  He tip-toed away, Pete following.  The quivering searchlight crept along the hall; it picked out the stairs.  Halfway down, Pete touched his guide on the shoulder.

“Wait!” Standing on the higher stair, he whispered in the larger man’s ear:  “You got all the keys?”

“Yes.”

“Give ’em to me.  I’ll let all the prisoners go.  If there’s an alarm, it’ll make our chances for a get-away just so much better.”

The Samaritan hesitated.

“Aw, I’d like to, all right!  But I guess we’d better not.”

He started on; the stair creaked horribly.  In the hall below Pete overtook him and halted him again.