28 a terrible storm
bill gave a cry of rage. then jack heard his voice. ‘get under the bed, jack and philip, quick!
there may be shooting!’
the boys did exactly as they were told. they dived for the bed, jack clanking in his armour.
philip lay there panting, wishing his hands were not tied. jack got stuck halfway under the bed.
what was happening in the room they didn’t know. there were shouts and panting and groans –but nobody did any shooting. it was too dark to risk that in case friend shot friend. it sounded tothe boys as if men in armour and men without were rolling on the ground together, for there was atremendous thudding and clashing.
suddenly there was a grating noise, and the boys knew the entrance above was being opened.
but who was opening it, their side or the other? philip had no idea how it was opened from below,though he had often tried to find out, for obviously there must be a way.
then he knew that scar-neck or one of his friends must have opened it, as a way of escape, forhe heard bill’s voice shouting up to the man he had left above.
‘tom! look out! shoot anyone coming up!’
tom sprang to the top of the steps, but he could see nothing down below. he could only hearthe groans and clanks the boys could hear. then up the steps crept one of the men. tom did nothear him, and suddenly he felt a blow that sent him sprawling. it was scar-neck trying to escape.
in the fight he had lost his revolver or he would certainly have shot tom.
before tom could get up and catch him, he was gone – and yet another man was on top of thesurprised tom, falling over him. poor tom got another blow, and his head sang. then the shaggy-browed man kicked him savagely and disappeared too.
after that tom didn’t know what to do – whether to stand at the top of the steps to preventanyone else coming up, or to go after the escaping men. but as he hadn’t the remotest idea wherethey had gone, he chose the first course.
down below things were going badly for the three men left. one of them was completelyknocked out. another had given in because bill had sat on top of him so firmly that there wasn’tanything else to do. and the third man had tried to escape down the secret way behind thetapestry, but was now being forcibly brought back by jim, who was yanking him along with manymuttered threats.
bill at last found a torch and switched it on. the oil lamp was smashed beyond repair. it wasfortunate that it had not set the place on fire. by the light of the powerful torch bill had a lookround.
the man he had been sitting on was now in the charge of someone else, and was lookingextremely sorry for himself. he had a black eye and a very large lump on his head. bill lookedodd. he was still wearing his armour, but he had taken off the helmet so that his bald head, withthe thick hair at each side, rose up startlingly.
the two boys came out from under the bed. bill had to tug at jack to set him free. jack got outof the hot armour as quickly as he could, and freed philip’s hands.
bill’s face wore a look of utter disgust. he could see that the two men he most wanted to catch– scar-neck and the shaggy-browed man – were gone. he called up to tom.
‘are you there, tom?’
‘yes, sir,’ came back tom’s voice, rather subdued.
‘have you got the two who came up the steps?’ shouted bill.
‘no, sir. sorry to say they bowled me over and got away, sir,’ replied tom, even more subdued.
bill muttered a few rude names for the unlucky tom. ‘come on down here,’ he said. ‘what afool you are, tom! you had a wonderful position up there – you could have stopped a whole armygetting out!’
‘well, it was so dark, sir,’ said tom. ‘i couldn’t see a thing.’
‘well, you’ve let two of our most important men go,’ said bill grimly. ‘that’s not the way toget promotion, you know. i wish i’d put someone else up there now. i suppose those fellows arewell away down the hill now. i’ve no doubt they’ve got their own powerful car well hidden awaysomewhere, ready for an emergency, and will be the other side of the country by tomorrow night.’
poor tom looked very sheepish. he was an enormous fellow, and the boys thought he ought tohave been able to capture two enemies single-handed! they were in a terrible state of excitementand wished that they had been able to capture scar-neck themselves.
‘tie up these fellows,’ said bill, curtly nodding to their captives. jim began to do it veryefficiently and soon the men sat like trussed fowls, sullen and tousled, frowning into space.
‘now we’ll have a look at those papers,’ said bill, and one of his men went to spread them outbefore him. bill bent over them.
‘yes – they’ve got everything here they wanted to know,’ he said. ‘that fellow scar-neck isabout the cleverest spy in any country. i bet he felt mad to leave these behind. they are worth afortune to him, and are of untold value to the country he was spying for.’
one of the men rolled them up. as he did so a terrific roll of thunder echoed all round.
everyone looked startled.
‘what a storm!’ said the man called jim. ‘was that lightning then?’
it was, flashing down even to the underground room. it had flashed almost at the same momentas the thunder crashed.
‘storm’s about overhead, i should think,’ said bill. ‘i don’t think we’ll venture down thehillside ourselves till it’s over.’
‘aren’t you going to see where that secret way leads to?’ asked jack, in disappointment.
‘oh yes,’ said bill. ‘tom and i will go, whilst the others take the prisoners down the hill – butwe’ll wait till daylight now, i think.’
the storm grew worse. philip tried to tell bill what had happened to him that day, but he had toshout at the top of his voice, because the thunder crashed so loudly overhead.
‘i was so bored i thought i’d go down the secret passage myself and see where it led to,’
shouted philip. ‘so when the men had gone up the stone steps after a good long sleep here, islipped out from under the bed and went into that hole in the wall there. the men had left it open,just as you see it now, with the tapestry hooked back, and the stone slid from the opening. it goesright back, as you can see. well, there’s a door in the side of the opening . . .’
the thunder interrupted him again and he stopped. everyone was listening to him with interest,except the surly prisoners.
‘the door there was locked, but someone had left the key in the lock,’ went on philip, when thethunder had died down a little. ‘so i unlocked it. the door pushed backwards and i found myselfin a narrow passage.’
‘wasn’t it dark?’ asked jack.
‘yes, but i had my torch,’ said philip. ‘i put it on, and saw my way quite well. the passagewent downwards, at first between walls of stone – must have been the foundations of the castle, isuppose – and then i saw that i must have come out from under the castle, and was going througha tunnel hewn out of the solid rock.’
‘and i suppose it led you out on to the hill on the other side?’ said bill. ‘and you looked downon something rather interesting?’
‘i never got as far as that,’ said philip. ‘i heard one of the men coming some way behind me,and i thought i’d better hide. so i climbed up on to a narrow ledge near the roof of the passage justthere, and lay quite quiet.’
‘golly!’ said jack. ‘did he pass you?’
‘yes. but he was looking for me,’ said philip. ‘you see, i’d forgotten to close the door that ledinto the secret passage, and when the men came back, they noticed it, and got puzzled. so theysent someone down the passage to see who had opened the door.’
‘and they found you?’ said bill, but his words were lost in another crash of thunder.
‘when the man found i wasn’t anywhere in the passage he came back,’ went on philip. ‘butevidently the chief man wasn’t going to let me wander about there, and he and everyone else camedown the secret way then. and, of course, they soon found me lying on that narrow ledge, anddragged me down.’
‘what happened to you then?’ asked bill. ‘you weren’t taken back to the hidden room, becausethe girls wondered where you were when they came down that night.’
‘no. they tied my wrists together, and my ankles too, and just left me there in the passage,’ saidphilip. ‘they said as i seemed to have a liking for the passage, i could stay there till they wereready to bring me back and question me. so there i stayed till at last they did fetch me. theyuntied my ankles so that i could walk – and brought me to the hidden room, as you saw.’
‘poor old philip – a nasty experience,’ said bill.
‘golly, i was scared when i saw your eyes gleaming at me through the visor of the helmet, bill,’
said philip. ‘i had the fright of my life! but i soon realised you must be friends.’
the thunder was now so noisy and continuous that it was no use talking. they all sat in silence,thinking what a tremendous storm must be going on outside on the hill.
‘i’m just going up to have a squint out of the front door,’ said bill. ‘it must be a fine sight, thisstorm.’
‘we’ll come too,’ said the boys. so up the stone steps they went, and down the hall to the openfront door of the castle.
they stopped in awe just before they got there. the whole countryside lay cowering beneath theworst storm they had ever seen. lightning tore the sky apart continually, great jagged forks thatran up and down from the top of the sky to the bottom.
the thunder was like nothing they had ever heard, it was loud and so overwhelming. it neverstopped! it rolled round and round the hillside, like terrific guns bombarding an enemy.
and the rain! it poured down as if great rivers had been let loose from the sky. no one could goout in that, for they would surely be battered to the ground!
‘it’s a cloud burst,’ said bill. ‘the sky has opened, and let down a deluge! i’ve never seenanything like this, except once in india. i should think scar-neck and the other fellow are having apretty bad time of it out on the hillside.’
‘anyway the girls had plenty of time to get down to spring cottage,’ said jack. ‘they’ll be safeat home, i hope. good gracious – what’s that?’
