Chapter 18 A WAY OF ESCAPE
　　The four children and Timmy went into the big cave. They made their way round piles of boxes,chests and crates², marvelling³ at the amount the men must have stolen from time to time.
　　'These aren't man-made caves,' said Julian. 'They're natural. I expect the roof did perhaps fall inwhere the two tunnels met, and the entrance between them was actually blocked up.'
　　'But were two walls built then?' said Dick.
　　'Oh, no. We can't guess how it was that this black market hiding-place came into existence,' saidJulian, 'but it might perhaps have been known there were caves here - and when someone cameprospecting along the tunnel one day, maybe they even found an old train buried under a roof-fall or something like that.'
　　'And resurrected it, and built another wall secretly for a hiding-place - and used the train for theirown purposes!' said Dick. 'Made that secret entrance, too. How ingenious!'
　　'Or it's possible the place was built during the last war,' said Julian. 'Maybe secret experimentswere carried on here - and given up afterwards. The place might have been discovered by theblack marketeers then, and used in this clever way. We can't tell!'
　　They had wandered for a good way in the cave by now, without finding anything of interestbeyond the boxes and chests of all kinds of goods. Then they came to where a pile was veryneatly arranged, with numbers chalked on boxes that were built up one on top of another. Julianhalted.
　　'Now this looks as if these boxes were about to be shifted off somewhere,' he said. 'All put inorder and numbered. Surely the exit must be somewhere here?'
　　He took George's torch from her and flashed it all round. Then he found what he wanted. Thebeam of light shone steadily⁴ on a strong roughly-made wooden door, set in the wall of the cave.
　　They went over to it in excitement.
　　'This is what we want!' said Julian. 'I bet this is the exit to some very lonely part of the moors⁶,not far from a road that lorries can come along to collect any goods carried out of here! There aresome very deserted⁷ roads over these moors, running in the middle of miles of lonely moorland.'
　　'It's a clever organisation,' said Dick. 'Lorries stored at an innocent farm, full of goods for hidingin the tunnel-caves at a convenient time. The train comes out in the dark to collect the goods, and93

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