some suffering victim of those scoundrels? What did it mean? Pee-wee
could only stand, listening in growing fear and agitation.

"Who's there?" he finally asked, and his own trembling voice seemed
strange to him.

There was no answer.

"Who's there?" he asked again.

Silence; only the low, steady sound; punctuated, as it seemed by his own
heart beats.

"Who--is--is anybody there?"

Then, suddenly, in a kind of abandon, he cast off his fears and groped
his way with hands before him toward the low sound. Presently his hand
was upon something round and small. It had a kind of tube running from
it. He felt about this and touched something else. He felt along it; it
was smooth and continuous.

And then he knew, and he experienced infinite relief. His hand was upon
the spare tire on the rear of the car. The air was slowly escaping in
irregular jerks from the valve of this tire, making that low sound, now
hardly audible, now clearer and steadier, that escaping air will
sometimes cause when passing through a leaky valve. The darkness and
Pee-wee's own thumping heart had contributed to the horrible illusion
and he smiled in the utter relief which he experienced by the discovery.

But one other discovery he had made also which gave him an inspiration