Bart centered his attention on this latter. He stooped down as his quick
eye observed a row of holes at one end, just under the hauling strap.
"Quiet, for a minute," he whispered warningly to Pope, who, big-eyed and
trembling, resembled a man on the threshold of some most appalling
discovery.
Bart's strained hearing shortly caught a rustling sound. It was followed
by a kind of choking moan. Unmistakably, he decided, both came from the
trunk.
"Is it locked? No," he said, examining the front of the trunk. Then Bart
snapped back its two catches. He seized the cover and threw it back.
"Gracious!" gasped Peter Pope.
Bart himself was a trifle startled.
As the trunk cover lifted, a man stepped out.
CHAPTER XXVI
ON THE MIDNIGHT EXPRESS
"Air--and water!" panted the mysterious occupant of the trunk.
Bart looked him over in some wonder. He was a short, wiry man, and
arrayed in a close-fitting costume resembling that of the circus athlete
on duty.
The man was drenched with perspiration and so nearly exhausted with his
suffocating imprisonment, that his voice was rasping and hollow.
He was weak, too.
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