“I don’t blame you, Sammy. That’s the way I’d feel about it. But you’ll just have to make the best of it, old man. Might as well laugh as cry, you know. Guess we’d better be going, fellows.”
“Yep,” answered Wales. “Sorry, Sammy, but it’s the fortunes of war, you know.”
“Perkins will serve your dinner in a few minutes,” said Chester. “Is there anything you’d like especially, Sammy? We want you to be as happy as――er――as circumstances will permit.”
“Sure thing,” agreed Williams with a grin.
Sam made no reply. He went over to the bed, which held a mattress but nothing more, and took the seat vacated by Williams, thrusting his hands into the pockets of his ball pants and gloomily surveyed his shoes. He wondered whether it would be worth while to try and rush the door when they opened it to go out. Four against one, however, was hopeless odds, and he decided that it would be a useless attempt.
“I wouldn’t try the window,” said Chester, “because, even if you managed to get through the wire, you’d have a twenty foot drop. You can make all the noise you like, Sammy; the horses won’t mind and Perkins is being paid to look after you. By the way, what I started to tell you was that the Towners had decided to kidnap you, Sammy. It may be wrong to give them away, but there are some things I just can’t stand for!”
Chester went out grinning and the rest followed. The key turned in the lock and Sam heard them go shuffling downstairs, talking in low voices and laughing softly. He ground his teeth and clinched his hands. In a moment the footsteps died away, the door at the bottom of the stairs closed and the place was silent. Sam looked at his watch. It was one. There was almost an hour before the game would begin, he told himself, and in that hour he meant to get out of there.
But when he had made the rounds of his prison, tried the door, peered out of the window and measured the transom again he wasn’t so certain about it. The partitions were of inch boards, but without something more than his pocket knife he didn’t believe he could cut his way through them. Besides, even if he succeeded, there was Perkins to reckon with, and Perkins was a hefty, muscular-looking chap of something slightly less than six feet! He went back dejectedly to the bed. A minute or two later sounds reached him and the key turned in the door. Sam edged toward it, prepared to spring through if he had the chance. But it opened very cautiously and Perkins put only his head in.