CHAPTER 21
The Three Musketeers lay squashed together on their stomachs with their heads popping over the stairwell on the top floor. They heard a heavy door creak open and saw two men enter through the door that had been disguised with ivy. They were carrying flashlights but the moonlight shone through the open door and lit up the whole area. The three children gazed down on the top of the heads of the two men. “La-bas” one of them said pointing to the small door that led down to the basement. “OK” answered the other. They kicked the door and went down the steps to the basement. “Parfait.”
The two men then returned the way they had come and began to unload boxes into the basement area. There were ten boxes in all and when they were all stacked they covered them with an old tarpaulin they had brought from the van.
The Musketeers could only see part of this operation. Every time the men came near the bottom of the steps they could see them but they were stacking the boxes on the other side of the small room so they could only guess what was happening.
After about twenty minutes of hard work the men seemed to have finished and, sitting on the steps to catch their breath they lit up cigarettes. The three froze. What if the men looked up? They were certain to see the children and if the moved even a bit, they would be heard. They all breathed very slowly indeed.
The smoke filtered up through the stairwell and Jenny felt her nose tingle from the smell. “Oh no!” she thought, “I can’t sneeze!” She looked at the others but could hardly see them in the dark.
The Three Musketeers had been lying on their stomachs for about thirty minutes and were beginning to get very stiff and their necks were aching as they looked over the precipice and down the stairwell. They all wished that the two smugglers would disappear.
Suddenly disaster struck! Thierry’s earring came loose and fell off. He held his breath hoping that the men wouldn’t notice but even he heard the tinkling sound as it bounced on the steps and landed at the smugglers’ feet.
The men immediately sprang into action. “Who’s there?” one of the men shouted. They quickly turned round and knelt on the step they had been sitting on. One shone a powerful flashlight up the stairwell into the faces of the children, while the other pulled a gun and aimed it straight above his head towards them.
The three began to move in an attempt to stand up but one of the men yelled, “Stay where you are!” The three froze in fear as the smuggler with the gun mounted the stairs. As he got near the top he ordered them to stand up and move to the wall. They tried but all had pins and needles in their legs and found it hard to move. ”Move!” he shouted, pointing a gun at them. He climbed onto the platform where the children had been lying and stood at the top of the stairs while the other man came up with the flashlight and some rope and tape that they had brought to cover the smuggled goods.
As the man with the torch began to tie their hands and feet the other man fired lots of questions at them. Thierry being the eldest decided to answer for them all. He told them the whole story, that they were looking for buried treasure in the moulin and that no one knew where they were. He admitted they had lied to their parents to cover their tracks. The man with the gun laughed. “So you thought you would have an adventure. Well you are having one now!”
The children were frightened as the man told them that they would be far away out of the country long before anyone realised that the children were missing and started a search.
Before they went downstairs the men put tape across the children’s mouths so they couldn’t talk or scream, and then pushed them together against the rounded wall of the room where they lay in a helpless heap all tied up with rope like Christmas packages. “If only we had told the twins of our plans,” they all thought.
They lay there, the only light coming from the full moon and listened to the men drive away.