When Dick had tried crouching, sitting on his heels, walking and every other device he could think of to end the interminable difficulties of trying to pass time with nothing to do and nothing under him but the hard cement hangar floor, he began to wish he had never met Jeff or gotten into the adventure at all.

He resolved, then and there, never to become a detective.

Countless times his nerves had been pulled by sounds which turned out on second thought to be only the contracting of the hot metal, subjected to the sun all day, as the evening breeze robbed it of its warmth.

No wonder that he failed to react to a slight clinking, hardly more than would be made by the scratch of wire in a lock.

But the shrinking of metal had made intermittent noises, sharp and not repeated.
246

This sound, so insistent, so prolonged, began, at last, to make an impression. “Now what can that be?” he wondered, becoming strained in his effort to make his ears serve him to the fullest degree.

“It can’t be a rat’s claws,” he decided. “There aren’t any rats. There’s nothing to draw them, here.”

At the emission of a sharper click from some unlocated point he felt his spine chill, his nerves grew tense and a queer, uneasy feeling ran over his muscles, an involuntary tremble.

“What could make such a sound?” he pondered.

Then he drew his legs in under him as he sat with his back against the metal sheathing of a corner.

The small, side door, toward the Sound shore, was opening!

That was a complication for which nothing had been planned. Larry and Mr. Whiteside, Dick knew, were lying in the shadow of the hedge behind the hangar, watching the cleverly devised back entry way.
247

Because it had been supposed that the “ghost”—Jeff—or whoever it was, would use that means of getting in, Dick’s own position had been chosen. He had selected a place sharply diagonal in direction from it. In his corner he could not be seen in the beam of a flashlight from the small cupboard unless its user came all the way out: otherwise the sides would shape the path of the light so it would not come near him.

But a man or ghost entering from the side, and playing any light around, would show Dick fully exposed.

The worst of that was that there was no rear guard flanking that door!

“Well,” Dick thought. “I can only wait and see what happens—and be ready to chase if I am discovered. Maybe I can catch and hold the ‘ghost’ till the others get to us.............