She put down the coffee pot with a clatter and threw herself back in her chair with a gesture of intense disappointment. "Then surely they will find José!" she cried.
"Oh, you do not know," he exclaimed. "Wait; it was stupid of me not to have explained. Your father is a wonderful man. He overlooks nothing. He foresaw that in spite of all precautions, José—and other friends of his," there was a trace of hesitation in his tones in speaking to her of her father's chosen companions, "might be trapped here in the winter time when they could not escape over the one or two secret trails which he knows and which he has shown José. So, long ago, working secretly and overtime in the Mont d'Or, he hollowed out a small chamber. It is above one of the unworked stopes and its entrance defies detection."
"But are you sure?" she interjected earnestly. "Have you seen it yourself?"
"Yes, I was with José the first time Gallito showed it to him. Then he, your father, took us over the other parts of the mine and brought us back to the same spot to see if we could discover the hiding place for ourselves. I assure you we could not. Neither José nor myself liked being baffled in that way, for it seemed to us that we went over every inch of the ground, and your father stood there laughing at us in that sarcastic way of his. Finally we gave up the search and Gallito marked it, so that it might be found in a hurry. It is above one's head and the wall is too smooth to climb in order to reach it—"
"How can José get in then?" interrupted Pearl.
"José has a key to your father's locker, and in that locker he keeps a rope ladder. José throws up the ladder and the hooks catch on a dark, narrow little ledge; climbing up to this, he finds a small opening; he wriggles into this and finds himself in a small chamber which your father always keeps well provisioned. From this chamber a narrow passage leads up to the surface of the ground, thus providing two exits; but, of course, the one above ground cannot be used now, owing to the snow."
Pearl, who had been listening breathlessly to this description of José's hiding place, leaned back with a sigh of relief. "Then it looks as if José might be all right for the present. I do hope so for all our sakes."
She sat silent for a few moments, apparently turning over something in her mind. When she spoke again her manner showed a certain embarrassment. "Do—do you know," she asked rather hesitatingly, "how they got the information?"
"No," he replied. "And that is what is puzzling all of us, but they have so far refused to tell us."
Almost she uttered a prayer of thankfulness. She very strongly suspected that the only way Hanson could have secured the information was through her mother's inveterate habit of eavesdropping, a weakness of hers which she had failed to hide from her daughter, and a feeling almost of gratitude came over Pearl that so far Hanson had been decent enough to spare that poor babbler.