"But Noakes wasn't such a fool as to say what house he wanted to get into. He asked a general question, just as I did. Well, on the way up I had a ripping idea. Your tar entanglement—just the very thing."
"What do you mean?"
"Why, if it's good enough to stump the Huns in Flanders it's good enough to spoil old Noakes's game. Noakes is sure to think of the lane. We'll cover the ground with a layer of good runny tar some inches deep and a few feet square, and stretch a few wires across, and Messrs. Noakes and Smail will find themselves properly held up. I know the very place—just where the lane runs under the wall of the barn on one side and a prickly hedge on the other. They couldn't go round. Imagine old Noakes stuck fast in the tar, like a fly in treacle."
"Where's the tar to come from?"
"There's a barrel in the outhouse; Trenchard uses it, no doubt, for tarring his fences. We could melt that down, and it would keep sticky a long time this hot weather."
"But I don't see why we need take all that trouble. All we've got to do is to lock the door between the scullery and the coal-shed."
"Hang it all, where's your enterprise? Don't you see, you owl, we'd kill two birds with one stone? We'd teach old Noakes a lesson and test your idea at the same time. Imagine Noakes is a prowling Hun, coming at dead of night to surprise our unsuspecting Tommies, stealing along, all quiet—and slap he goes into the tar. Come, man, it's splendid."
Templeton came round to his friend's view, and they lost no time in making their preparations. The lane was apparently used only as a short cut from the high-road when coal was brought to the farm. It was just wide enough to allow the passage of a cart, and even on a bright night was dark, owing to the tall hedge on one side and the high blank wall on the other. At its darkest spot, ten or a dozen yards from the house, Eves set to work to prepare the ground. He measured off a space about four yards long, and at the end farthest from the house dug the soft earth to the depth of four inches. Working back from this point, in the course of a couple of hours' diligent spade work he had made a shallow excavation in the lane, varying in depth from four inches to eight. Meanwhile Templeton had broken up the tar and melted it down in the small portable copper which the farmer used for conveying tar from place to place. They ladled the molten stuff into the excavation, filling up to the level of the lane.
"Hope they won't smell a rat—which is tar backwards," said Eves. "Perhaps the smell will have gone off a bit by the time it's dark. Tell you what, we'll cover it lightly with farm litter, and strew some more between here and the road; perhaps one smell will kill the other."
Last of all they carried two strands of stout wire across the lane, about half-way along the tarry patch, and three inches above its surface.