But at last there came five donkeys very heavily loaded with oranges and raisins, in charge of six men, which was a more than liberal allowance.  When they stopped at the little stone house in front of us there was another thing noticeable; instead of hitting the donkeys hard on the nose with a thick club, which is the usual way of calling a halt in Palestine, they went to the heads and stopped them reasonably gently.  So, although all six men were dressed to resemble peasants, they were certainly nothing of the kind.

Nor were they such wide-awake conspirators as they believed themselves, for they were not in the least suspicious of six other men, also dressed as peasants, who followed them up-street, and sat down in full view with their backs against a wall.  Yet I could see quite plainly the scabbard of a bayonet projecting through a hole in the ragged cloak of the nearest of those casual wayfarers.

They had to knock several minutes before the door opened gingerly; then they off-loaded the donkeys, and it took two men to carry each basketful, with a third lending a hand in case of accident.  Only one man went back with the donkeys, and two of the casual loafers against the wall got up to saunter after him; the other five honest merchants went inside, and we heard the bolt shoot into its iron slot behind them.

“How about it, Grim?” asked Goodenough then.

“Ready, sir.  Will you give the order?”

We filed in a hurry down the steps into the alley, ran in a zig-zag down three passages, and reached another alley with narrow door at its end that faced the street.  Grim had made every preparation.  There was a heavy baulk of timber lying near the door, with rope-handles knotted into holes bored through it at intervals.  The Sikhs picked that up and followed us into the street.

The mechanism of the Administration’s net was a thing to wonder at.  As we emerged through the door the “peasants” who were loafing with their backs against the wall got up and formed a cordon across the street.  Simultaneously, although I neither saw nor heard any signal, a dozen Sikhs under a British officer came down the street from the other direction at the double and formed up in line on our lefthand.  A moment later, our men were battering the door down with their baulk of timber, working all together as if they had practised the stunt thoroughly.

It was a stout door, three inches thick, of ancient olivewood and reinforced with forged iron bands.  The hinges, too, had been made by hand in the days when, if a man’s house was not his fortress, he might just as well own nothing; they were cemented deep into the wall, and fastened to the door itself with half-inch iron rivets.  The door had to be smashed to pieces, and the noise we made would have warned the devils in the middle of the world.

“We shouldn’t have let them get in with any TNT at all,” said Goodenough.  “They’ll touch it off before we can prevent them.”