Your affectionate son
TINKER.
Then, with his boots in his hand, he stole across to the financier's room. Thanks to the brandy, the financier looked very much wound up. Tinker bade him write on a sheet of notepaper, "Don't call me till eleven," pinned it on the outside of his bedroom door, locked it, and took the key. He left the sitting-room door unlocked. Then he opened the window, and, followed by his protégé, who was already shivering with dread, he stepped out on to the balcony with the air of the leader of an army. The balcony ran round the hotel, as a way of escape during a fire; it was broad, and since the night was starry, but fairly dark, they were little likely to be seen from below by the detectives watching the hotel doors. They walked round to the back, came through a window into a bathroom, through the bathroom on to the servants' staircase, and went right down into the basement.
"I get up early in the morning before the servants, and I had to find a way out," said Tinker in an explanatory whisper.
He led the way through the kitchen into a long passage, set with the doors of cellars on either side. At the end of the passage was a short ladder with rounded iron rungs, by which barrels were lowered, and Tinker, mounting three rungs, pushed back a bolt, raised the heavy trap a little, and peered about from under it.
"The street's clear," he said. "Come on!"
He slipped out on to the pavement, helped the clumsy financier through the trap, caught his hand, and ran him across the street into a narrow lane.
"There!" he said cheerfully. "That's the most difficult part of the business! You're out of the hotel, and not a soul knows it!"
The financier's spirits brightened. Tinker had shown him his mettle, and he began to have confidence. Besides, he had drunk a good deal of the bottle of brandy. They hurried through the town by byways, and up on to the cliffs. As they neared the palisade, and saw the great bulk of the balloon looming through the starlight, the panting financier's spirits sank: his teeth chattered, and his knees knocked together.
"Oh, buck up! Buck up!" said Tinker impatiently. "You're all right! You're all right!"
It was a matter of a few seconds for him to climb the door of the palisades, drop lightly on the other side, and open it. He steered the financier gingerly round the planes, past the propelling and steering fans, and got him into the car. He set him well forward in the bows of it, and began to let the rope unwind from the windlass which moored the flying-machine. All the while he heard the steady snores of Herr Schlugst, sleeping in his iron hut.