“Put up your hands,” he repeated.
The two obeyed.
Something between them and Mansel stirred in its sleep: and I saw that this was the innkeeper, stretched on the bare ground and tied, like a dog, to one of the pillars of the well.
“I’m sorry to intrude,” said Mansel, “but I’ve come all the way from Vichy, and to make such a journey for nothing is not my way. The really annoying thing is I’ve forgotten my measuring-line: but I dare say you can lend me some cord. William, there’s a coil on your left. Just make it fast to that crowbar, and take the depth.”
I instantly fell to work, and a moment later the crowbar was descending the well. While I was thus engaged, Mansel continued to talk.
“You see,” said he, “though I don’t suppose you know it, these springs are intermittent. It’s a well-known thing in Natural History, an intermittent spring. It ebbs and flows, you know, rather like the tides of the sea. Well, we had them on the ebb: and, if you’d got down to it that night you’d have had the treasure. I confess I was rather anxious, but when I took the depth the next day, while you were down in the combe, to my intense relief I found that the flood had begun. Now I shouldn’t tell you all this if the information would do you the slightest good. But it won’t: and I’ll tell you why. Because you don’t know when to expect the ebb. That’s where the well-digger’s statement is so valuable. Of course you can find out—by the process of—er—exhaustion.”
Here I touched bottom and began to pull up the bar.
“When it’s up,” said Mansel to me, “extend your arms and measure from tip to tip. You’re just six feet, aren’t you?”
I nodded, and he returned to Punter and Job.
“Of course, to get up against Nature is no end of a job. There’s a proverb you probably know, which is rather in point. ‘You can drive Nature out with a pitchfork, but she’ll always come back.’ I know you’re not using a pitchfork: you’re using a bucket instead. But, pitchfork or bucket, as you see, the result is the same. She always comes back.”
The cheerful tone in which Mansel delivered this dismal homily and the unpleasantly obvious pertinence of his remarks had their effect: for Punter looked ready to burst with mortification, and Job was regarding his second comforter with the fishy stare of one who perceives his fortune to be almost too repugnant to be true. Indeed, I had much ado to keep a straight face, and I dared not look at Mansel, for, if our eyes had met, I am sure the humour of the case would have been too much for us. I, therefore, busied myself with measuring roughly as much of the cord as was wet, and presently reported my finding of fifty-four feet.
“Dear, dear,” said Mansel. “That’s shocking. Why, the well will be full before dawn. You might just as well have rested today. Never mind. There’s nothing like exercise. And I expect you miss Ellis and Bunch.”
That shaft stung Job into speech.
“ ‘Miss Ellis’?” he groaned. “Oh, good night, nurse!”
I was shaking with laughter, but Mansel only smiled.
“I passed them, coming from Salzburg. To be frank I don’t think they saw me: but they ought to have known the car. And now I must go. I’m sorry to miss Rose Noble, but you must make my excuses and say I was pressed for time. Good night.”
With that he began to go backwards, and I stepped across the redoubt and out of the gap in its wall. The next second Mansel emerged, and we ran like hares for cover towards the sentinel peak.
“Behind a tree,” breathed Mansel. “They’re certain to fire.”
As I whipped round a trunk, somebody fired from the doorway, but the bullet passed over our heads.
“We must wait for Rose Noble,” said Mansel. “And, while they’re putting him wise, we can go on our way. You can’t fire straight and argue at one and the same time.”
Rose Noble must have been returning, when the shot was fired, for we heard his voice almost at once demanding the truth.
Instead of telling him directly that we were at hand in the wood, both Punter and Job began to report what had passed with an incoherence which would have distracted anyone, and in an instant they were all three raving like men possessed. Under shelter of this exhibition, we beat our retreat, and, presently joining Carson, passed over the shoulder of the hill and back the way we had come.
We were well pleased with what we had found, but the head and front of our contentment was naturally furnished by Mansel’s brilliant stroke. Indeed, I cannot believe that the shrewdest of diplomats ever delivered a more dexterous thrust; and, when it is remembered that Mansel’s performance was improvised, that he conceived and executed it with his life, so to speak, in his hand, I think it will be clear that he was a man of lightning apprehension and notable detachment.
By his admirable fable of the intermittent springs he had offered an answer, at once most credible and gloomy, to every one of the problems that troubled the thieves, and had hanged a very
