Our policy had been always to take no avoidable risk, and, since if the car had been discovered, our store of timber also had been remarked, we at once decided to get as much of this as the cover of night would allow into the oubliette. As a rule, the relief had brought enough wood to last us for twenty-four hours, and this much had been delivered by Hanbury and Rowley that night; but, since without timber to advance the shaft would be at best a very perilous business, to transfer every balk that we could seemed but a natural precaution.
We, therefore, set about this removal without more ado. Rowley was brought to help us, while Hanbury and Bell stayed to receive the wood. We laboured with all our might till an hour before dawn, by which time we had carried a great deal, though not, it appeared, so much as we had already employed.
We made no attempt to find a fresh hiding-place for the car; for, for one thing, we had no mind to leave her any more unattended, and, for another, it seemed better in future to berth her each night at a different point, so that, if our visit was expected, at least we should not be playing clean into some peeper’s hands. The boat and sculls we decided to bestow in a culvert some four miles away, for they were nothing to carry, and, to take them up, as we passed, would be but a moment’s work.
The sky was pale when Rowley and I stood again in the gallery, and before Mansel could come to Salzburg, we knew that the sun would be high: but the smell of the timber all about us did our hearts good, and we lay down to sleep for an hour in the comfortable state of a garrison whose store of munitions is no longer without the fort.
Now, whether it was this reflection or the scent of the sawn wood that jogged my memory I cannot tell: but my mind whipped back to the tanner, and in a twinkling I remembered when and where I had noticed his particular odour before. And that put an end to my slumber before it was ever begun, and to that of the others as well: for, though I had clean forgotten it, I now recalled perfectly that I had become aware of the smell of tan at one and the same instant that I was felled from behind on that night of alarms and excursions when Mansel was down in the well.
VII
Rose Noble Moves
There was, naturally, much to be said: but, till Mansel returned to the dungeon, there was nothing to be done. And, since the commentary he made, so soon as he heard my news, was far more valuable than the swarm of conclusions which we had drawn out of the matter, I will set it down, using his words.
“A great deal is depending on how much the tanner saw. If he saw two come in the car, the presence of a third must have told him that we have some hiding-place hereabouts: if he saw the relief carrying timber, that should have made him think: but, if he saw the boat cross the river, he must know a damned sight too much. And it was a moonlit night.
“The point is—what will he do?
“His instinct will be to put the innkeeper wise. But the innkeeper is in balk. He will, therefore, endeavour to communicate with him without the knowledge of the thieves. And the only way to do that is through the inn.
“Now, I think it more than likely that now and again the landlord returns to his inn—under escort, of course. Otherwise, long before now, a hue and cry would have been raised. And that wouldn’t suit Rose Noble. About once a week, I imagine, they take him back to the inn: and they give him to understand that, if he gets out of the car, that’s the last living movement he’ll make. Again, he has, without doubt, been straitly advised that upon the first sign of any attempt at his rescue he will immediately die. If they’ve got these things into his head—and, though he can’t speak German, from what I’ve seen of Rose Noble, I should say he was ‘above Babel’—not fifty home-sweet-homes will drag him out of that car; and he probably tells his people that he’s having the time of his life. And that’s the way, I expect, they get their supplies.
“Very well. If the tanner tells the innkeeper, what will the latter do? I think it more than likely that he will give us away. I don’t say he’ll do so deliberately: but the tanner’s tidings will startle him, and, unless he’s alone to receive them—and that is most improbable—the thieves will perceive his emotion and demand to be told its cause.
“The first thing to
