“Get away from that door, ye dirty spalpeen! Yer disturbin’ the pleasure o’ gentlemen!”
Stan almost shouted. That was the voice of O’Malley. The guard beat harder upon the sill of the door and shouted louder. Stan heard Allison warning O’Malley to keep his mouth shut. Silence settled inside the building.
Pulling out his sheath knife Stan began cutting a hole in the hedge. The hedge had been carefully tended by the Bolero gardener. The limbs of the shrubs had been entwined and laced together, making the hedge almost a solid wall. Stan cut away a large hole, leaving only a few branches over the inside to hide his work. Getting down he crawled into the opening.
The guard was standing facing the spot where Stan was crouching. A floodlight in the yard made the whole place as light as day. Stan watched the other guards as they moved about. Under a tree at the entrance to the yard a heavy machine gun had been planted. A crew of three men manned the gun. It was set to cover the three jails and the whole yard.
The situation looked hopeless. With so much light an attack could not be engineered. Suddenly Stan’s lips pulled into a straight line. He had a bright thought. The yards and grounds had never been lighted up so completely by the Bolero family. That meant the Germans had strung a lot of wire. If he could locate the main line and cut it, he could plunge the place in darkness long enough to break into the shed where his pals were being held.
After studying the yard and the lighting, Stan decided the wires came in from the big barn. Working his way around the sheds he came to a spot where a wide and well-lighted roadway separated them from the big barn. Four Germans guarded the road and they were well spaced. Again he was blocked.
Then he noticed that a set of heavy wires came down from somewhere in the darkness to the corner of the big barn. They swung in from high above his head. Stan grinned. The electricity for the whole villa came in from behind the barns. It was like General Bolero to have unsightly power poles at the back of his estate. Stan turned and headed into the woods. He was looking for a power line pole.
The job of locating a pole among a forest of trees was not easy, but Stan had the general location from the run of the lines. After a few minutes of hunting he located the pole and got set to climb it. He stacked his things at the base of the pole. He would have to slide down in a hurry and dash to the attack. He hoped there would be plenty of confusion. He also hoped the lead-in wires were insulated. The line was at least 220-volt, because there were three wires leading to the barn.
Climbing up the pole Stan came to a transformer. Gingerly he tested one of the wires with the hard rubber handle of his knife. Nothing happened, so he started sawing away. He was not shorted by any part of the transformer or any wire he might be touching in the darkness. The wire was thick and heavy but it was copper and his sharp knife bit into it. With a tug Stan severed the heavy wire and felt it go twisting away into the darkness, which had suddenly become very black because all of the lights in and around the villa had snapped off.
Stan almost fell down the pole. He heard shouting and bellowing from the yard. Shots were fired and flashlights began to stab back and forth. Stan grabbed his machine gun and leaped into the road leading to the small barns. Suddenly the machine gun under the tree opened up. The Germans knew a prison delivery attempt was on. Stan halted and pulled a grenade from the sack slung over his shoulder. Jerking the pin, he tossed it just as he had often tossed a forward pass in a football game.