They used to come to the theatrical shows and sit enraptured through the most scurrilous and thinly veiled allusions to Niemeyer and other ornaments of the Xth Army Corps. The fact that they were there solely as censors rather added zest to the humour of it. Sometimes, even, they lost dignity. Wolff in particular was not proof against the attractions of the chemical compound which in those days used to pass for Rhine wine; and after one entertainment at which the bottle passed somewhat freely he became violently intoxicated, and was found next morning asleep in an orchard on the other side of the town, having temporarily thrown off the bonds of barrack discipline and made a regular night of it.

The hardened criminals of Room 83 on the attic floor covered equally satisfactorily the traces of their contraband consignments and the tracks of the consigners. To the outward eye there was not a more innocent-looking room in the whole of the two buildings. But hiding-places lurked everywhere. The floor in this as in nearly every other room was, fortunately, straightforward planking laid without bolts or intersections. Once one plank had been loosened and removed, there was a space about five to six inches deep between the planking and the foundation of the floor wherein to store treasure. When one plank had been removed the remainder could be slid up and down at leisure and the whole of the space filled up, if necessary. This practice was universal, and before the end there was hardly a room without its cache, not one of which, in spite of two or three most conscientious and Berlin-inspired searches, was ever discovered.

In this room also there were sliding panels in the walls, false partitions in the cupboards, false bottoms in the drawers. Almost everything that ought to have been solid was hollow.

Here maps were photographed without cameras and developed without solutions; German uniforms were made for use if a suitable opportunity arose; an air pump was constructed out of bits of wood and the leather of an R.F.C. flying-coat; air pipes were made out of old tins; a device was thought out to fuse the electric wires outside; dummy keys were fashioned. It was the temple of the Goddess of Flight.

Room 24, the little room on the ground floor in B House where the working shifts changed into their orderlies’ clothes, was almost as complete a mask. The clothes themselves were kept unlocked at the bottom of several British uniforms in a wooden box. If a search came they would have to take their chance of being found; it was impossible to “cache” them afresh under the boards every time that they were returned from actual use.

In this room it was usual to find at least four or five seated in conclave, in a space officially allotted to two. “Tim” was the owner of the room and had come to be regarded as the doyen and authority amongst escapers in the camp. Tim had had a curious war. He had carried despatches for a fortnight in August and early September of 1914 and had then been taken prisoner at a cross-roads by an ex-Rhodes Scholar of New College. Since then he had spent his time either preparing to escape or being confined for doing so. He had probably been out of more camps, done more solitary confinement, and had on the whole harder luck, than any other prisoner-of-war in Germany. He spoke correct German with a strong Irish accent. The very perfection and thoroughness of his schemes seemed somehow to have militated against their success. In all his time in Germany he had not been actually at large for more than half an hour. He had always been caught—perfectly disguised and by the purest mischance—at the gate or just outside it. He had gone with the first exchange party for Holland, but at Aachen he had announced his intention of coming back to Germany, and had brought back a full report of the proceedings at Aachen and the lie of the land generally—for the benefit of future parties. It was generally understood that an attempt to escape while on the journey to Holland was permissible when in, or on the German side of Aachen, but not when once the party had left Aachen for the frontier. This was Tim all over. When he was not working for his own hand, he was helping others. He disdained such vulgar expedients as tunnels and was now hard at work on his most elaborate scheme of all. He intended to walk out of the main gate through the Kommandantur in a German private’s uniform, accompanied by a young curly-haired and dimpled flying officer disguised as his sweetheart. The plot was by now almost mature, and the curls were already growing in a most beautiful and highly suspicious cluster low on the nape of the young man’s neck.

Room 24 also harboured such of the official documents of the senior British officer and his adjutant as it was unwise to have lying about in the event of a search. One of these was a most damning, authoritative, and complete narrative of the misdeeds of Niemeyer during the first three months of the camp’s existence. It was called the Black Book, and was biding its time to be thrust as red-hot evidence into the hands of some superior inspecting official from the Kriegsministerium. Unfortunately that opportunity never arrived, and the book did not attain publicity till it was produced in Copenhagen after the Armistice. It then made interesting reading.

CHAPTER VI
IN THE TUNNEL

We left the trio next for duty in process of disappearing behind the planks, and about to start on their three-hour shift at the face of the tunnel. Let us keep company with them awhile at their difficult and absorbing task.