Here then was the shaft by which Sam had walked into the Padre’s best bin; and here too, in all probability, was a ready-made entrance into the enemy’s stronghold. Determining to muster my forces and head an assault without further loss of time, I quitted the outhouse, as I had entered it, without being observed, and returned to the Alcalde’s. The Padre, at my request, followed me into a private room.
“Señor Padre,” said I, “oblige me by describing in general terms the topography of your cellar.”
“Ah, hijo mio,” said the Padre with deep emotion, “I trust you have no idea of carrying on the war in that quarter. Believe me, except the Lamego hams, the cellar contains nothing but wine.”
“Tell me,” I asked, “does your cellar extend under ground in a lateral direction? Has it any subterranean recesses?”
“Nothing, believe me,” replied the Padre in a panic, “with the sole exception of the wine and the hams, and a few trifling articles in silver which I succeeded in rescuing from our plundered convent.”
“If you wish,” I replied, “to be reinstated forthwith in the possession of your cellar, and of your house besides, only have the goodness to explain to me——”
“Oh, spare the cellar!” cried the Padre, frightened out of his wits, “even if a dozen houses—all the houses in the village—are assaulted, sacked, gutted, levelled with the ground, blown up sky-high!”
“What’s the use of talking in that way?” I replied. “Come, Señor Padre, just give me the information I want, and it shall go hard with us but you and I will dine in the house this afternoon. We must take it offhand, and I already discern the road to victory. Only tell me, does the cellar extend, underground, outside the walls of the house? In particular, does it extend in the direction of the adjoining shed?”
The Padre subsided into a brown study. “Why, now you ask the question,” said he, “I think it does. The house is old, built after the fashion of the Moors. There certainly is an underground recess or passage, of some length, going off from the cellar; and, on consideration, I think it must run in the direction of the wood-house—nay, perhaps extend under it. Probably it served originally as a subterranean communication between the outhouse and the house itself.”
The “enigma” was now well-nigh solved. I summoned Francisco, and inquired whether he had succeeded in obtaining from the villagers any intelligence of Sam’s proceedings. All that could be learnt amounted to this, which, however, was quite decisive: that Sam, the night before, when he stole away from Sergeant Pegden, went begging from cottage to cottage, till he had procured the loan of an implement called a “pico,” which, though not identical with an English pickaxe, in some measure resembles it, and is available for the same purposes. Sam, having made this acquisition, was seen no more, till he reappeared in the village next morning, “mucho embriagado” (very drunk).