"At night! What were you doing there?"
"I have removed the supporting beam underneath the bridge leading across the reservoir! It was a hard bit of work but I had the strength to do it."
"Why did you do that?"
"Because he will come from the opposite side and immediately he steps on the middle of the bridge the plank will give way beneath him and he will fall into the water like a mouse in a trap."
"What is the good of that, he will only swim out again."
"Yes, but his pistols will then be full of water and he will be unable to use them against you."
Szilard began to perceive that he had a most determined ally with all sorts of ideas in his head that had never occurred to himself.
"But surely, my poor fellow, you do not imagine that anybody will be mad enough to face so many armed men alone."
"I don't know, sir, but I also do not know whether you yourself may not be alone among so many armed men, for I hear snoring among the very guard you told off to watch the cellar."
Szilard was startled. He immediately hastened to the place indicated and there, sure enough, he saw the sentry stretched at full length across the cellar door. He angrily hastened to arouse him and seized the sleeper by the arm; but all his efforts were powerless to awake the fellow,—he might just as well have been dead.