“I want to be there when there’s no one about, so, as the Colonel sits up very late, I think we’ll say three o’clock. That means we ought to leave here about one-fifteen. Can you borrow a second bicycle?”
The sergeant looked completely mystified by these instructions, but he answered, “Certainly,” without asking any questions. It was agreed that they should meet in the evening at his house, sitting up there until it was time to start.
Having explained at the hotel that he had to go to Plymouth and would be away all night, French started out for a tramp on the moor. About eleven he turned up at Daw’s cottage, and there the two men spent the next couple of hours smoking and chatting.
Shortly before three they reached Torview. They hid their bicycles in the brushwood and walked softly up the back drive to the yard. The night was fine and calm, but the sky was overcast and it was very dark. Not a sound broke the stillness.
Silently they reached the well, and French, with his electric torch, examined the wooden cover.
“I think if we lift together we can get it up,” he whispered. “Try at this side and use the ivy as a hinge.”
They raised it easily and French propped it with a billet of wood.
“Now, Sergeant, the fishing line.”
At the sergeant’s cottage they had tied on a bunch of hooks and a weight. French now let these down, having passed the line through one of the holes in the grating to ensure its swinging free from the walls. Gradually he paid out the cord until a faint plop announced that the water had been reached. He continued lowering as long as the cord would run out; then he began jerking it slowly up and down.
“Swing it from side to side, Sergeant, while I keep jerking it. If there’s anything there we should get it.”