Young Petrella by Michael Gilbert

any event, when you do not return, they will think, no doubt, that you are at some party – busy asking questions. That seems to have been your occupation on all other evenings. To ask questions.”
    Petrella had nothing to say to that.
    “By tomorrow morning, no doubt, some enquiry will start. Believe me, my little detective, they will have to search long and closely if they wish to find you then.”
    The two men standing behind M. Clairambaud laughed.
    “One other thing. If you shout and scream it may be necessary to tie you up with cords. That will be very uncomfortable for you. And you will, in any event, have wasted your time. At this point you are three metres below the ground and the walls are of great thickness.”
    “I shall not shout,” said Petrella.
    “I was sure of it,” said Clairambaud. He walked out, snapped shut the lock of the grille with his big key, and turned out the light. Then he turned it on again for a moment to say: “Look out for the spiders. They grow, in this darkness, to the size of a man’s hand.” Then he turned it out again. The three men tramped away. When they reached the steps, the cellar light went out as well, and Petrella heard the heavy outer door being shut and bolted.
    He sat still for some minutes. It was not that he was afraid of the spiders, whose existence he doubted, but he decided to wait until his flickerings of panic had died down. Then he could start to work things out.
    Slowly, the darkness cleared to a dim, shadowy dusk. There was no direct source of light in his cage, but it was not quite black. There must be ventilators, up near the roof, to let in the necessary air, and they let in some light as well. He could see the bars of his door black against the lesser darkness beyond. The atmosphere was quite fresh.
    What a fool he had been. And he had imagined he was being clever. He had only succeeded in being obvious. They had suspected him all along. They had not minded – that was the galling part. They had not even minded his seeing how the goods came ashore from the steamer. They had known, only too well, that he would come to the château. Everything was arranged. He had no doubt at all that a long, limp bundle would go back on the handcart that night, and that in the early hours of the morning a heavily loaded dinghy would pull out from the jetty into midstream.
    That, or something like it, was their intention. One thing mattered: would they visit him again before night? Even if they intended to kill him that night they would hardly dare to move him before midnight. More probably it would be later than that. Would they visit him first? In the circumstances they would be unlikely to waste food and drink on him.
    All the same, he thought they would look in once – just to make sure that all was well. Perhaps at about nine or ten o’clock. That gave him three hours to make his preparations.
    He was confident that he could open the door. It would take time, but it could be done. The lack of light did not bother him, because you always have to open a lock by touch, and not by sight. He would need two strong, thinnish pieces of iron, bent to the correct angle.
    In a clumsy great lock like this one the retaining spring would be very powerful. It would be the sort of spring that needed a thick key with a long shaft and a wide handle to lift it at all. Little pieces of bent wire were going to be no use. In his hip pocket he had a relic of his Egyptian experiences, a pair of pliers with a fine saw edge in one handle and a triangular file in the other.
    There was plenty of metal in the wire racks around him. He selected a cross-strut of half-inch angle iron, out of sight of the door, and started to work on it.
    It took him two hours to make the necessary tools. When he had perfected them, and knew that he could open the door quickly, he hid them in the dust at the foot of the cellar wall. Then he waited. The waiting was the hard part.
    He might be making a stupid