Arthur went off reluctantly, but, as usual, he obeyed Paul to the letter. He found a clump of bushes from which, without being seen himself, he could watch the door of the house, and there he crouched down to wait. It was dull work, and, after he had once settled himself, he was afraid to move lest unseen eyes be watching somewhere in the neighborhood.
Meanwhile Paul was busy getting into the house. It was easier than he had thought it likely to be. The catch on the window was simplicity itself and he forced it with his penknife without any difficulty at all.
"I feel like a burglar," he thought to himself, as he climbed in. "But I don't care. Even if there's nothing wrong in here, I've got the right, in a time like this, to make sure. Every Belgian has to think of his country first now."
And he was pretty sure that there was a decided connection between this cottage, so strangely stout in its construction, and the unquestionably threatening and sinister discovery he and Arthur had made in the field only a stone's throw away.
Inside, he found himself in a large room that took up all save a very small part of the ground floor of the cottage. To the left there was a wall, and in it an open door—he could see that much through the very faint light that filtered through the windows. Seemingly, he was in luck. There was absolutely nothing to make him doubt that he was alone in the house. Everything was still. There was not even the ticking of a clock, the one sound he might reasonably have expected to hear even in a temporarily deserted house. But he waited for quite a minute, to make sure that no one was about. He felt certain that, had anyone been there, he would have heard breathing, no matter how anxious the other occupant of the house might be to conceal his presence.
Then he switched on the light, shielding it with his hand, so that no reflection of its faint glow should betray him, by means of the windows, to anyone approaching from outside.
About the big room in which he found himself there was nothing to excite suspicion at first sight. The room seemed ordinary enough; the usual living-room of a peasant. One thing was curious; he could see a trap door, evidently leading to a cellar below. But that he reserved for later inspection, preferring at first to look upstairs. He reached the second floor by the stairs; there, too, there seemed at first nothing out of the ordinary. But when he threw aside all scruples and looked everywhere, he found something that confirmed some at least of his suspicions—a bundle of letters, all written in German script. He did not stop to read the letters, but on the chance that they might contain something that would prove valuable or important, he slipped them into his pocket.
As yet, however, he had made no real discovery. The letters might prove a great deal; for the moment he was obliged to leave them unread, since his time might prove to be very short. Down he went, light out, pausing in the big living-room to listen for some sound from the watcher outside. There was none.
Now he lifted the trap door, and found, as he had been sure he would, a ladder leading to the cellar below. He hesitated for a moment now. There seemed to be no safe way of propping up the trap door. To descend, closing it after him, meant that he would be shut into the cellar, where he could not hear the warning signal from Arthur, should it be sounded. But his hesitation lasted only a minute.
"It's a chance, but I've got to take it," he said to himself. "After all, I haven't really found anything anywhere else. The cellar's the last place to look—and the most likely, too."