"Better not. I’ll just say we want to try an experiment." Mrs. Trenchard somewhat reluctantly agreed to remove her stores for a short time. From her they obtained a quantity of tallow and a few sticks of brimstone, and in the privacy of their bedroom they broke up and pulverised one of the sticks, and boiled a little of the sulphur powder with tallow in a tin. "Ripping stink," said Eves, putting his head out of the window. "It’s going to work A1. We’ll pound up the rest of the brimstone, and then wait for night. This is the stuff to give friend Smail. It will bring him to his senses right enough." "More likely it’ll take his senses away from him to begin with," answered his fellow-conspirator. "But it won’t do him any real harm. Phew, what an aroma!" After dark, when loud snores from the room proclaimed that its occupant was asleep, they bored a couple of holes in the partition wall with a brace and bit obtained from Constable Haylock, who was something of a carpenter. "I’ll lend ’em to ’ee with pleasure, sir," he said when Eves requested the loan, "purvided ’tis for a legal objeck. As a servant of the nation, ’tud be my ruin if so be you was committing a felony." "That’s all right, constable," replied Eves. "We’re only going to bore a couple of holes for Mrs. Trenchard." After an hour’s careful work there were two small holes in the wall, about six niches apart and a few inches above the floor, just under the sofa. Satisfied that all was now ready for the morrow’s experiment, the lads went to bed. Next afternoon Templeton assured himself, by a peep from the outside through the closed window, that Smail had settled himself on the sofa to sleep over his heavy midday meal. Eves then quietly opened the door, abstracted the key, and locked the door from the outside. Their simple apparatus was already fitted up in the store cupboard—an old saucepan over a spirit lamp, with two holes in the lid through which they had passed two lengths of glass tubing, the other ends of which projected slightly into the room. Their next move was to lock all the house doors, except one leading to the garden at the back. By this time they had found it necessary to tell Mrs. Trenchard what they were about, and she was rather timorously awaiting results. "Whatever you do, Mrs. Trenchard, don’t open the door to the fellow after we get him out," said Eves, impressively. "Templeton says he can’t legally force his way in, so keep the doors shut and leave the rest to us." Templeton lit the spirit lamp and closed the store-room door. In a few minutes the nauseating fumes of sulphuretted hydrogen stole through the cracks into the passage. "Gracious goodness, we’ll all be poisoned!" cried Mrs. Trenchard. "No, it’s quite harmless, I assure you, though rather horrid," said Eves. "Look here, Bob, you paste some strips of paper over the cracks while I go outside and see how things are getting on."