DANNY'S OWN STORY BY DON MARQUIS TO MY ... - Pink Monkey

"He ended with an impassioned appeal to me to
go with him.
"I showed him the door. I pretended to the
last that I thought he was lying to me. But I did
not think so. I believed him. He had done it all
very cleverly. You can understand how I might--
in view of what had happened?"
I wanted to see Miss Lucy--how she looked
when she said different things, so I could make up
my mind whether she was forgiving the doctor or
not. Not that I had much doubt but what they
would get their personal troubles fixed up in the
end. The iron grating in the floor was held down
by four good-sized screws, one at each corner. They
wasn't no filling at all betwixt it and the iron grating
that was in the ceiling of the room below. The
space was hollow. I got an idea and took out my
jack-knife.
"What are you going to do?" whispers Martha.
"S-sh-sh," I says, "shut up, and you'll see."
One of the screws was loose, and I picked her out
easy enough. The second one I broke the point off of
my knife blade on. Like you nearly always do on
a screw. When it snapped Colonel Tom he says:
"What's that?" He was powerful quick of hearing,
Colonel Tom was. I laid low till they went on
talking agin. Then Martha slides out on tiptoe and
comes back in three seconds with one of these here
little screw-drivers they use around sewing-machines
and the little oil can that goes with it. I oils them
screws and has them out in a holy minute, and lifts
the grating from the floor careful and lays it careful
on the rug.
By doing all of which I could get my head and
shoulders down into that there hole. And by twisting
my neck a good deal, see a little ways to each
side into the room, instead of jest underneath the