Flashing his torch round, Tom noticed that the flooring had been worn and chipped away, no doubt in the process of manacling, and scattered about there was a large quantity of loose particles of brick. An idea struck him. He collected a big handful of these fragments and pushed them into the keyhole. Then, leaving Abdul to complete the work, which would, he hoped, cause the lock to stick, he hastened down the vaulted passage. CHAPTER XI—PRISON BREAKERS Tom found himself in a long broad alley-way, flanked by arches. There was no sign of the dungeons, apparently no means of exit. The air was damp and heavy, and the first indication that he was approaching the neighbourhood of the dungeons was afforded by his nose. Coming at length to a narrow flight of steps leading downwards, the fact that he was nearing the object of his quest was borne in upon his sense with ever-increasing pungency. “Surely,” he thought, “the sheikh is not such a beast as to herd Ingleton with the ordinary criminals!” Another alley-way, apparently underneath the one from which he had come, was disclosed by his electric torch when he reached the bottom of the staircase; but in this case there were doors at his right, and in the thickness of the wall, Moorish fashion, little peep-holes, through which no doubt the warder could spy upon the movements of the captives within. Which was the door leading to the place of the envoy’s confinement? Tom wondered. Was he indeed imprisoned here at all? Tom gave no thought to the predicament in which Abdul and he would be placed if it should prove that they had gone astray; his whole mind was centred on the plight of the English prisoner and the terrible misfortune it would be if he were elsewhere, and deep within him burned a fierce indignation that any countryman of his should be even within hailing distance of so noisome a place as this kasbah dungeon. So anxious was he to know whether he was on the right track that, scarcely giving a thought to possible consequences, he lifted up his voice and shouted the name of the man for whom he was seeking. The loud tones went rolling beneath the arches, answered by a hundred echoes. But there was a nearer and more material answer. By the light of his torch, which he kept constantly in use, Tom saw a big, bearded, spectacled face appear at the aperture nearest to him on the right. “Ach! Gott in Himmel! Vas zat English voice?”