"I thought I might find that," he said. "I've shot a bolt on the door. That will hold anyone who tries to come down for a few moments at least, and it will give us time to get out the way we came. We may wish to escape, you see."
"Good!" said Paul. "All right! Now let's try to find those guns."
But of guns or weapons of any sort they could find no trace. They looked behind all the barrels and casks and under every possible hiding place. They lifted some of the barrels, though to do so was a considerable task, and the result was the same.
"Perhaps they have chosen some other hiding place or else the woman did not really know, and only suspected," suggested Arthur.
But that explanation did not satisfy Paul. And in a moment he had an inspiration. At once he began trying to tip back the great hogsheads at one side of the vault. The third yielded easily, and he immediately pried off its top.
"Aha, here we are!" he said. "Look, Arthur! I noticed that some of these were empty, but I thought anything like a gun would rattle around inside. But do you see what they did? They have the guns here, but they're packed in with rags and sacking, so they can't move and make a noise."
"That was clever!" said Arthur. "I suppose they expected the Germans to make a search."
He drew out a gun, a shotgun with a sawed off barrel. The shortening of the barrel served a double purpose. It made it possible for the gun to be hidden in the barrel, and it made of it, also, at close range, a far more dangerous and formidable weapon than it had been in its original form.
"What are we to do with them? Where shall we hide them?"
"Nowhere. We shall put them back," said Paul. "When we have finished with them, that is. Here, let me show you!"