The fact that the afternoon was cold for crouching about amongst bushes did not concern them—they had watched football on much colder days. What was an occasional shiver compared with such undiluted amusement as this? How glad they were then that they had taken Robin's advice to conceal themselves, instead of blundering into the empty cottage at Little John's fatheaded suggestion.
Later, agog with excitement, they had something to do to hold their tongues, as it became evident to most of them that the stranger was playing a dirty trick on the two disguised policemen. Robin got out of his pocket a scrap of paper and wrote on it the one word "drugged". This was passed from hand to hand, and all the Merry Men nodded in agreement.
There was need of his strong and quick leadership, too, when the stranger's flag-signalling began. Again using paper as an agent, Robin pencilled a few directions to Flenton, who handed the slip to the three other boys mentioned on it. He and this trio were the sturdiest runners in the Junior school, and their instructions were to steal quietly off by the Bramble Path, known to the Foxes as the easiest descent other than the roadway, and, while taking care not to be seen, reach the police-station as speedily as possible and inform the Chief Constable of the strange things that were happening. The Bramble Path was a narrow sunken track that wound steeply down the hillside through closely-growing brambles and bushes. It afforded a first-rate hidden escape from the neighbourhood of the cottage for the Foxes, who were not without practice in the art of moving silently and taking advantage of cover.
Meanwhile, Robin did some furious thinking. He calculated the chances of a successful attack upon the sham tourist, but abandoned that idea as melodramatic, not to say dangerous. Moreover, he had been near enough to overhear what the stranger said about the swift coming of a car, and where, he reflected, would be the sense of tackling one offender, when there might be three or four others in league with him?
Robin had the gumption to see that a battle with grown men, most probably armed, on this lonely moorland, would be a very different thing indeed from a wild rough-and-tumble with the Squirms in Foxenby's Forest. This was no cinema rehearsal, but a grimly realistic piece of business, with which no Fourth Form schoolboys had the strength to grapple. Whatever was done, therefore, must be accomplished by silent strategy.
Motioning the Merry Men to remain quietly in their somewhat cramped positions, he waited with fast-beating heart until the throbbing of a motor-engine indicated that the expected car was climbing the hill. Half-a-minute later the car drew up, and two small, thick-set men, each carrying what appeared to be ordinary travelling-bags, hurriedly joined the verse-reciting stranger.
"Why the deuce did you keep us waiting so long?" irritably inquired one of them. "Wasn't the coast clear?"
The "tourist" pointed to the two drugged men on the ground.
"I stumbled across this typical pair of British working-men sitting here as though they'd taken root—waiting for their boss to come, they said. Probably they were going to start pulling the cottage down. I had to win their confidence and dope them, as you see. Of course, it took time."
"Bully for you, Cyrus!" was the admiring admission. "You're sure they're safe?"