For there, stacked neatly, one on top of the other, were six black portfolios, bulky and bulging. There was no need to ask whose properties these were. The golden “R.F.” on one, the arms of Savoy on another, the crowned eagles on a third, advertized their ownership. Very carefully I removed them, handing them to my assistants. The safe contained nothing else except a battered tin cash-box. I lifted it with difficulty, for it was heavy. “No,” thought I, “we are not burglars. We do not require this haughty Lord’s treasure. We Germans are not pot-house thieves, horse-holders and cut-throat hangdogs, to steal from a house like burglars! Let my Lordship keep his gold. I have something better!” I gave the signal and we crept forth along the corridor to the trap. We had closed it for fear that somebody passing through the hall should notice the opening and give the alarm. Hermann knelt down and tried to lift the slab, but without success. He used his pocket-knife and did no more than break off the blade. I cursed his bungling stupidity so furiously that he cowered before me. What undependable swine these German working classes are! What brainless idiots, with no other thought than eating and beer-drinking! “Wretched owl,” I hissed in his ear, “if we were in Germany I would flay you alive!” “Herr Heine,” he whined, “it is not my fault. I wanted to bring up my tools, but you refused to let me.” I could not waste any time arguing with this scum. In half-an-hour the dawn would be breaking. There was only one way out and that was through the kitchen. We passed through one of the doors behind the buffet and found ourselves in another stone corridor lighted by little stone-framed windows, but heavily barred. At one end of the corridor was another door and Heinrich, after a vain attempt to pick the lock, said it had been bolted from the outside. “Have you no bolt-removing instrument?” I asked. “No, Herr Heine,” he said apologetically, “that requires an apparatus of considerable complication. The only thing to do is to cut a hole through the door, and as the door is sheeted with iron I do not think it is possible.” We went down the corridor to the other portal. This door yielded to the turn of a handle and we found ourselves in what was evidently a servery. Here there was one window which was also barred and a kitchen door, which, like the one at the farther end of the corridor, was bolted on the other side. “What!” I said bitterly, “have I trusted my safety and the safety of the Empire to a monkey with the brains of a gnat?” He was silent under my rebuke, for what could he say? There remained only one possible egress and that was a skylight in the servery, and here Fortune was with us, for we found a step-ladder which enabled us to reach the ceiling.