‘Wheeeee-ew!’ Julian whistled. ‘You’re right, Jock! That’s just what happens. What a cunning plot – to use a perfectly honest little farm as a hiding-place, to stock the farm with black-market men for labourers – no wonder they are such bad workers – and to wait for dark nights to run the stuff down to the yard and load it on the train!’
‘Your stepfather must make a lot of money at this game,’ said Dick to Jock.
‘Yes. That’s why he can afford to pour money into the farm,’ said Jock, miserably. ‘Poor Mum. This will break her heart. All the same, I don’t think my stepfather’s the chief one in this. There’s somebody behind him.’
‘Yes,’ said Julian, thinking of the mean little Mr Andrews, with his big nose and weak chin. ‘There probably is. Now – I’ve thought of something else. If this stuff is got rid of in any other way except down the tunnel it came up, there must somewhere be a way out of these caves!’
‘I believe you’re right,’ said George. ‘And if there is – we’ll find it! And what’s more, we’ll escape that way!’
‘Come on!’ said Julian, and he switched off the glaring light. ‘Your torch will give enough light now. We’ll try this cave first. Keep your eyes open, all of you!’
18 A way of escape
The four children and Timmy went into the big cave. They made their way round piles of boxes, chests and crates, marvelling at the amount the men must have stolen from time to time.
‘These aren’t man-made caves,’ said Julian. ‘They’re natural. I expect the roof did perhaps fall in where the two tunnels met, and the entrance between them was actually blocked up.’
‘But were two walls built then?’ said Dick.
‘Oh, no. We can’t guess how it was that this black market hiding-place came into existence,’ said Julian, ‘but it might perhaps have been known there were caves here – and when someone came prospecting along the tunnel one day, maybe they even found an old train buried under a roof-fall or something like that.’
‘And resurrected it, and built another wall secretly for a hiding-place – and used the train for their own purposes!’ said Dick. ‘Made that secret entrance, too. How ingenious!’
‘Or it’s possible the place was built during the last war,’ said Julian. ‘Maybe secret experiments were carried on here – and given up afterwards. The place might have been discovered by the black marketeers then, and used in this clever way. We can’t tell!’
They had wandered for a good way in the cave by now, without finding anything of interest beyond the
boxes and chests of all kinds of goods. Then they came to where a pile was very neatly arranged, with numbers chalked on boxes that were built up one on top of another. Julian halted.
‘Now this looks as if these boxes were about to be shifted off somewhere,’ he said. ‘All put in order and numbered. Surely the exit must be somewhere here?’
He took George’s torch from her and flashed it all round. Then he found what he wanted. The beam of light shone steadily on a strong roughly-made wooden door, set in the wall of the cave. They went over to it in excitement.
‘This is what we want!’ said Julian. ‘I bet this is the exit to some very lonely part of the moors, not far from a road that lorries can come along to collect any goods carried out of here! There are some very deserted roads over these moors, running in the middle of miles of lonely moorland.’
‘It’s a clever organisation,’ said Dick. ‘Lorries stored at an innocent farm, full of goods for hiding in the tunnel-caves at a convenient time. The train comes out in the dark to collect the goods, and takes them back here, till the hue and cry after the goods has died down. Then out they go through this door to the moorlands, down to the lorries which come to collect them and whisk them away to the black market!’
‘I told you how I saw Peters late one night, locking up the barn, didn’t I?’ said Jock, excitedly. ‘Well, he must have got the lorry full of stolen goods then – and the next night he loaded them on to the spook-train!’
‘That’s about it,’ said Julian, who had been trying the door to see if he could open it. ‘I say, this door’s maddening. I can’t make it budge an inch. There’s no lock that I can see.’
They all shoved hard, but the door would not give at
all. It was very stout and strong, though rough and unfinished. Panting and hot, the four of them at last gave it up.
‘Do you know what I think?’ said Dick. ‘I think the beastly thing has got something jammed hard against it on the outside.’
‘Sure to have, when you come to think of it,’ said Julian. ‘It will be well hidden too – heather and bracken and stuff all over it. Nobody would ever find it. I suppose the lorry-drivers come across from the road to open the door when they want to collect the goods. And shut it and jam it after them.’
‘No way of escape there, then,’ said George in disappointment.
‘ ‘Fraid not,’ said Julian. George gave a sigh.
‘Tired, old thing?’ Julian asked kindly. ‘Or hungry?’
‘Both, ‘said George.
‘Well, we’ve got some food somewhere, haven’t we?’ said Julian. ‘I remember one of the men slinging my bag in after me. We’ve not had what we brought for tea yet. What about having a meal now? We can’t seem to escape at the moment.’
‘Let’s have it here,’ said George. ‘I simply can’t go a step further!’
They sat down against a big crate. Dick undid his kit-bag. There were sandwiches, cake and chocolate. The four of them ate thankfully, and wished they had something to wash down the food with. Julian kept wondering about Anne.
‘I wonder what she did,’ he said. ‘She’d wait and wait, I suppose. Then she might go back to the camp. But she doesn’t know the way very well, and she might get lost. Oh dear -1 don’t know which would be worse for Anne, being lost on the moor or a prisoner down here with us!’
‘Perhaps she’s neither,’ said Jock, giving Timmy his last bit 01” sandwich. ‘I must say I’m jolly glad to have Timmy. Honest, George, I couldn’t believe it when I heard Tim whine, and then heard your voice, too. I thought I must be dreaming.’
They sat where they were for a little longer and then decided to go back to the tunnel where the train was. ‘It’s just possible we might find the switch that works the Open-Sesame bit,’ said Julian. ‘We ought to have looked before, really, but I didn’t think of it.’
They went back to where the train stood silently on its pair of lines. It seemed such an ordinary old train now that the children couldn’t imagine why they had ever thought it was strange and spooky.
They switched on the light again, then they looked about for any lever or handle that might perhaps open the hole in the wall. There didn’t seem to be anything at all. They tried a few switches, but nothing happened.
Then George suddenly came across a big lever low down in the brick wall itself. She tried to move it and couldn’t. She called Julian.
‘Ju! Come here. I wonder if this has got anything to do with opening that hole.’
The three boys came over to George. Julian tried to swing the lever down. Nothing happened. He pulled it but it wouldn’t move. Then he and Dick pushed it upwards with all their strength.
And hey presto, there came a bang from somewhere, as something heavy shifted, and then a clanking as if machinery was at work. Then came the sliding, grating noise and a great piece of the brick wall moved slowly back, and then swung round sideways and stopped. The way of escape was open!
‘Open Sesame!’ said Dick, grandly, as the hole appeared.
‘Better switch off the light here,’ said Julian. ‘If there’s anyone still in the tunnel they might see the reflection of it on the tunnel-wall beyond, and wonder what it was.’
He stepped back and switched it off, and the place was in darkness again. George put on her torch, and its feeble beam lighted up the way of escape.
‘Come on,’ said Dick, impatiently, and they all crowded out of the hole. ‘We’ll make for Olly’s Yard.’ They began to make their way down the dark tunnel.
‘Listen,’ said Julian, in a low voice. ‘We’d better not talk at all, and we’d better go as quietly as we can. We don’t know who may be in or out of this tunnel this evening. We don’t want to walk bang into somebody.’