“No, sir,” said the woman, evenly.
“A big, closed car, painted grey. Sometimes the nurses use it when she is ill.”
The woman shook her head.
“You surprise me,” said Mansel. “It’s common talk down in Lass.”
The woman shrugged her shoulders.
“In Lass, perhaps, but we are so isolated here.”
“I wonder if your husband could help me.”
“I fear he is out, sir. But I do not think he would know.”
“Which way has he gone?” said Mansel.
The woman mentioned a hamlet four miles away.
“Perhaps I shall meet him,” said Mansel. “But ask him about this grey car when he comes in.”
“I will, sir.”
“And the castle, or house, somewhere round about here. And, if he thinks he can help me, send him to The Three Kings at Lass.”
“I will, sir.”
Mansel gave her money and returned to the car.
“Nothing doing,” he said shortly. “I was afraid it was useless. Too much off the beaten track.”
As he spoke, the wicket was shut, and the bolts were shot.
“Let’s have a look at the map,” said Mansel.
I gave him the sheet.
As I did so, the sharp clack of wood striking wood came from the door. We all looked round—naturally enough. Someone had drawn the shutter which masked the grill. No doubt they would have done so in silence; but the shutter, I suppose, resisted, and then gave way with a rush.
Mansel laughed.
“Seeing us off the premises,” he said. He returned to the map. “There’s the village she spoke of: we might as well go that way.” He began to fold up the map and turned to the door. “By the way,” he said, using German, “was your husband on foot?”
As he spoke, he stepped to the grill, pocketing the map as he went.
No answer was given.
With his hand in his pocket, Mansel peered through the bars.
“I say,” he said. “My good lady. …”
No one replied.
“Come on,” said I. “She’s scared.”
Mansel took his hand from his pocket and turned away.
“That’s the worst of these people,” he said. “No sense, no observation and an inherent fear that you’re trying to do them down.”
With that, he got into the car.
Carson followed, and I drove slowly away. Not until we were five miles off did Mansel open his mouth.
“Rose Noble was there all the time. On the woman’s left. He was standing with his back to the doors, with his arms folded and a pistol in his right hand. I could see him in the glass of a lantern that hangs from the archway roof: its sides were tilted, and it couldn’t have been better placed.
“It was he that drew the shutter and stood looking out: that’s an assumption, of course; but I’m sure it’s correct. I went back in the hope that he’d stay there—to laugh in my face. But he very properly didn’t. He resisted a great temptation and thereby saved his life. He wouldn’t have expected a bullet, and I don’t think I could have missed. When he saw me coming, he stooped. If he’d moved, I should have heard him: so he stood where he was and stooped. And that was why the woman never came back: he was in the way, and she couldn’t get to the grill.”
Then he turned to Carson and asked him how much he had seen.
“The walls are forty feet high, sir—that is, from the gaps to the ground.”
“ ‘Embrasures’ they’re called,” said Mansel. “Yes?”
“I’m sure they’re not more, sir: they may be a foot or so less. The first windows are fourteen feet up, but they’re very heavily barred: so are the ones above. There’s no downpipe at all and no ledges that you could hold.”
“Then we must have a ladder?”
“Three, sir. Each twelve feet long. The first hooks on to the bars of a window fourteen feet up: the second on to the bars of a window above: and the third to the top of the wall.”
“Very good,” said Mansel. “Are the windows above each other?”
“No, sir. Clear by about a foot. But you go up the left of the first and the right of the one above. There’s a gap—embrasure directly between the two.”
“I see,” said Mansel. “Wrought-iron, one-pole ladders, made by a village smith: ends and rungs covered with rubber tubing, so that they make no noise.”
“I hadn’t thought of that, sir.”
“You would have,” said Mansel. “Once they’re in place, it’ll be like going upstairs.”
“A rough night would help, sir.”
“We must hope for one,” said Mansel, “in two days’ time. And now, Chandos, let me drive. We must find a forge: and it’s got to be forty miles off.”
The tale we told the smith is of no consequence: the ladders were simple to make, and Mansel’s directions were clear: we were to find the work done by the evening of the following day.
Then Mansel found a rope factory and purchased a quantity of rope, after which we drove to some town, whose name I forget, where we bought what else we had need of to aid our assault. All this gear we presently hid in a dell—a pretty, private place, high up in the fold of a mountain, some ten miles by road from Gath. There we could work upon it during the next two days, and thence take it direct to the Castle when the moment came.
Of foul weather we had not much hope, for the sky was clean, and Mansel’s barometer set fair: “however,” said he, “I’m not going to wait any more. At two on Friday morning we’re going over the top: even if we don’t get Adèle, we shall see the inside of that rattrap, and that’ll be devilish useful next time we come.”
How much we were nowadays watched I do not know. A spy can go out, but he is plainly useless unless he can later come in; and, in view of the Casemate business—to say nothing of that of Jute—I fancy Rose Noble was shy of sending his subordinates further
