After a brief spell of smoother working, both above and below the surface, things began to go wrong again.
In the first place, the exasperating stratum of stones recurred and persisted. The tunnel was now being inclined upwards. From rough measurements it had been estimated that the face must now be approaching the desired spot and be nearly abreast with the edge of the rye-field. But the obstinate stratum added to the difficulty of working uphill, and reduced the rate of progress almost to the lowest on record; and, work as they might, it was the last week in June before those directing decided that the distance had been accomplished and the tunnel might be inclined to the surface.
On the last day in June Lieutenant Butler, one of the leading spirits in the concern, went up to the face on the important duty of breaking the surface and pinpointing the position. The tunnel had at length been pushed through the clogging stratum, a total ascent of nine feet had been made from the lowest point, and it was judged that the end of it must now be very near the surface. To confirm this, a narrow hole was bored straight upwards from the face. It was found that there were still six feet of clay and soil to be negotiated. This was disappointing, but it was not so disappointing as was the result of verifying the actual position. Butler very gingery pushed a stick with a piece of white paper attached to it up through the hole. The watchers from one of the upper end-corridor windows groaned as they discerned the damning piece of paper moving slowly to and fro, still eight or nine yards short of the rye.
The interest and general tension had now become so great that, although nothing was said, half the camp knew the same evening that something was wrong and guessed fairly shrewdly what the something was. To carry on into the rye would take at least three weeks’ hard work, by which time the rye would probably have been cut and the only cover afforded would be the darkness of the night. But about three or four yards nearer than the rye was a row of beans, and it was decided to make a last effort to reach these and to trust to luck and the darkness to carry the party across the bare space between the beans and rye. The beans in themselves would afford no mean screen.
Meanwhile, “Munshi” Gray, another of the conspirators, the Father of the Tunnel, and in every way one of the most important personages concerned, fell due for a fortnight of solitary confinement. He had some time ago had a violent altercation with the most odious of the parcel room attendants, and had, in the course of it, absent-mindedly handled a large knife which was lying on the parcel room counter. The attendant promptly brought a charge against him for attempted homicide, and—the word, as well as the body, of even the vilest German being sacrosanct when brought into collision with those of prisoners-of-war—Gray was in due course brought up before a court-martial. It says something for his judges on this occasion that they did not give him more than a fortnight, which in reality amounted to acquittal. There existed tribunals which would have given him six months of the best without the slightest twinge of conscience, or—more melancholy still—without the thought of having been in the least unjust. This was but an instance of the perversions of all the accepted canons of fair play which frequently occurred; fortunately for Gray and the tunnel, it was a mild sample. So the Munshi languished and knew nothing of what was passing in the tunnel, except from guarded scraps of Hindostani spoken to him in an even voice from the window of the camp adjutant’s room, immediately above his cell.
Finally, Tim and his young woman made their long deliberated effort and were caught most unluckily at the main gate, thereby throwing the camp officials and Niemeyer in particular into a most undesirable mood of added watchfulness. Everything had gone according to plan up to a point—the Kommandantur staircase had again been made use of, and a most seductive little flapper typist had tripped his unassuming way unchallenged through the gate. Tim himself, dressed in a German private’s uniform (but otherwise unmistakably Tim), had attempted to follow suit; but he was unable to avoid his doom in the shape of one too curious and too intelligent pair of eyes at the guard-room window. Their owner recognised him as an English officer and promptly gave the alarm. Result, the usual Tim débacle, and the work of months once again nullified. The pair were marched off to the cells under escort amidst sympathetic expressions from every side. Even Ulrich, the German officer of B Kaserne, was loud in his admiration of the disguises used; ‘he had of course suspected something was up for months.’ Of course.
Lieutenant Lincke, the officer who had succeeded the pot-bellied Gröner in charge of A Kaserne, a pharmacist by trade and the personification of pompous absurdity, seized the opportunity to show his ignorance of the English and his unsuitability for his post by intimating that the female disguise had been culled from the theatrical wardrobe allowed us on parole. Once again, and in accordance with cherished tradition, war had to be waged on the parole question, and the artificially good relations which were being promoted in the interests of the tunnel were temporarily suspended until Lincke could be induced to retract his entirely inexcusable inference.
It must be explained that the whole of the theatrical wardrobe, both for male and female parts, was kept strictly apart under lock and key and under the supervision of a particular officer. It had always been a strict injunction of each successive senior British officer that on no account was there to be any tampering with these clothes for the purposes of escape, and that any infringement of this order would be looked upon as a breaking of parole. This unwritten, but none the less thoroughly understood, reservation was as clear as it was necessary in the interests of that large section of the community which relied on the periodical “shows”—whether as performers or spectators—for their principal means of relief from the ennui of prison existence. The disguise of Tim’s accomplice had, as a matter of fact, been smuggled in from the town at a considerable expenditure in German money and British kind.
But Lincke, having been, till within the last year, a German pharmacist in a small way of business, had about as much idea of British (not to say German) military honour as he had of field operations. His training had consisted of three or four months in a Reserve of Officers Training Battalion, and he came out of it vibrant with the glory of two things—the German military system, and himself as reflecting a modest proportion of that glory. He was perfectly genial, self-satisfied, and common. On appel he insisted on believing that he was dealing with a company of recruits on parade, and the long, shuffling, indifferent rows of British officers winced or laughed at his antics, according to the state of their nerves. He used to begin operations by a salute with the top half of his person inclined almost at right angles with the ground; some of the lighter spirits used to go one better and execute a complete salaam, and this, of course, made him querulous. He would recall to the senior officer on parade the great day when he and his brother officer-aspirants stood poker stiff at attention under inspection by one of the very biggest of the German Generals. “Scarcely a pickelhaube moved.” That was his triumph—scarcely a pickelhaube had moved. And so why could not now the British officers do likewise, instead of appearing on parade in dirty uniforms and without caps and saluting so raggedly? Oh it was too bad.
He was of course a complete nonentity and disregarded alike by Niemeyer and the British, as well as by his non-commissioned officers. But even nonentities exercise awkward powers if placed in positions where they should not be, and Lincke, for all his mildness, was about as troublesome to deal with as a Junker of the real Prussian school. His pharmaceutical soul and his hopeless inability to understand the British point of view made him in fact a serious thorn in the flesh, as was evidenced in the wardrobe incident.