interrupting -it seemed better not to inquire too closely into the methods of persuasion to which an old-timer like Hoppy Uniatz would naturally have turned to squeeze information out of reluctant mouths.
'I have to work a long time,' said Mr. Uniatz hesitantly. 'But after a bit, when I get started on de lawyer, he squawks.'
The Saint's irritation had subsided again. He was hanging on Hoppy's narrative with a growing ecstasy of excitement.
'You've found out where Julia is?'
'Yes, boss,' said Mr. Uniatz sheepishly. 'She's upstairs in dis empty house all de time-all I gotta do is go an' look for her.'
Simon stared at him for a moment; and then he leaned back and went limp with silent laughter. There was something so climactically cosmic about the picture he saw that it was some time before he could trust his voice again.
'What did you do then-apologise for troubling them?'
'Well, boss, I put 'em all in de flivver an' we come back here. I send Julia up to her room when I come in, an' I look for you. De udder guys are still tied up outside.'
The Saint got up and walked silently about the room. The time was racing away now, but he expected to hear the warning explosion of Portmore's dynamite before the rescue party returned, and he wanted to get everything worked out before the final showdown.
'Did you find out anything else while you were giving these guys your-er-massage?' he asked.
'Yeah,' said Mr. Uniatz, not without pride. 'I finished de job.'
He told everything that he had learnt; and Simon listened to him and filled in all the gaps in his own knowledge. The last details of the most amazing plot he had ever stumbled upon fell into place, and he knew the extent of his own sublime good fortune.
'Did you get hold of this cheque-book?' he asked; and Hoppy produced it.
He also took over two of the automatics which Hoppy had brought back with him as trophies, and carefully checked the loading of both of them before he put them away, one in each side pocket of his coat. Then he lighted himself another cigarette; and he was smiling. He punched Hoppy thoughtfully in the stomach.
'Next time I make any rude remarks about your brain, I hope you'll hang something on my chin,' he said. 'All the boodle in this party belongs to you, and I hope you won't spend it on riotous living. Now shove off and keep an eye on the birds outside while I'm busy. Recite some of your poetry to them and cheer them up.'
There was no need for him to go down into the tunnel, but he was curious to see the amazing work that Jeffroll and company had done, with his own eyes. The ladder inside the safe door took him down through a short shaft into a broad natural cave, and at once he saw how circumstances had helped the rescuers with their undertaking. Some subterranean river, long since dried up, had done half their work for them; but even so he had to admire the thoroughness with which they had carried on that prehistoric excavation.
On the other side of the cavern, which was lighted at intervals by bulbs slung from the low roof, he saw a hydraulic lift at the foot of another shaft that disappeared vertically upwards into darkness; and he guessed that this was the route by which the excavated earth was removed. At the top of this shaft he knew, without looking for it, that he would have found the door cunningly concealed in the timberings and plaster of the outside wall of the inn through which the soil was tipped out into the lorry that stood in the garage close up to that very wall. Running away from the lift into the depths of the cave was a pair of rusty lines professionally laid on sleepers. A small mine truck stood on the rails close to the lift; that was how the earth was brought up from the head of the tunnel, and it would be the explanation of the strange rumblings underground which had troubled Julia Trafford and brought him on to the trail of the mystery.
Following the guiding rails, he came at the end of the cavern to the beginning of the artificial tunnel. A mound of shining machinery abandoned close by he was able to identify as some kind of electric excavating drill which had made this terrific task possible to such a small number of workers: the heavily sheathed power cables, still left in place, beside the truck lines, confirmed all his guesses.
After a moment's hesitation he started into the tunnel. It was barely six feet high, so that he had to stoop slightly to move along it. Throughout the length he saw, it was neatly and expertly buttressed; but all these things were possible with an experienced engineer, which he knew Jeffroll to be, in charge, and four intelligent confederates to help him, of whom two at least must be retired sapper officers. The same electric bulbs dangled at long intervals along the sap, so that in between them there were patches of deep gloom practically amounting to complete darkness. Even so, the technique that must have been required to bring out the far end of the tunnel exactly under a pre-determined cell in Larkstone Prison was one of those astounding exercises of scientific ingenuity at which the Saint, as an uninitiated layman, would always have to gape in speechless awe.
As he moved deeper into the warren, he began to pick his steps more cautiously, until he was travelling almost noiselessly, a mere foot at a time. Then he heard a patter of scurrying feet somewhere ahead of him; and Portmore's voice boomed hollowly down the echoes with eerie distinctness.
'Look out!'
Instinctively the Saint spun off the track and pressed himself against the wall, freezing into immobility in the middle of the deepest patch of darkness he could find. The running men came nearer; and then there was a sudden crash of sound that thundered down the tunnel like the crack of doom. A blast of air like a tornado struck him down the whole side of his body, lifted him off his feet and hurled him a dozen yards down the passage as if he had been hit by an express train.
He struggled up again, deafened and half-stunned, and listened to the patter of falling stones loosened from the roof by the detonation. All the lights had been shattered by the explosion, and when he felt around for the truck lines to get his bearings he found them half buried in the debris. But the buttressing had been good, and the thousands of tons of earth which might have sunk down from overhead had not fallen.
He heard Jeffroll's voice now, startlingly near.
'Are we all right?'
'I am,' said Voss; and one by one the others chimed in reassuringly.
There was a sixth voice among the responses, a voice which the Saint had not heard before. A moment later
