Again a shout in signal that he was seen, as one of the officers' heads
appeared over the top of the fence--and Jimmie Dale, as though in mad
haste, plunged through the door.
And now suddenly his tactics changed. He needed every second he could
gain, and the police now certainly could no longer lose their way. He
swung the door shut behind him, locked it to delay them, and snatched
his flashlight from his pocket. He was at the top of a few ladder-like
steps that led down into the cellar of the building, and halfway along
the length of the cellar the ray of his flashlight swept across a huge
coal bin, its sides, it seemed, built almost up to the ceiling.
Jimmie Dale was muttering to himself now, as he took the steps at a
single leap, and raced toward the side of the bin that flanked the
wall--"seventh board from the wall--knot on a level with shoulders"--and
now he was counting rapidly--and now the round, white ray played on the
seventh board. They were smashing at the cellar door now. The knot!
Ah--there it was! He pressed it. Two of the boards in front of him, the
width of a man's body, swung back. He left this open--a blazed trail for
his pursuers, battering now at the cellar door--and stepped forward into
a little opening, too short to be called a passage, and, silent now,
halted before another door.
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