London Bill led the way up the foul, creaking stairs, and opened a door on the top floor. It was a room the bigness of the building, and had been used for dancing. Drawing a couple of wooden chairs to a front window, Storri's guide motioned him to a seat.
"Here we be," he said; "now what's it all about?"
Storri, nothing backward when assured that no one was playing eavesdropper, began to talk, carefully avoiding his usual jerky Russian mannerisms. You have been told of Storri's graphic clearness of statement, once he had fully perfected the outlines of some enterprise. In fifteen minutes, but only in vaguest way, he laid his proposal before London Bill; the proposal was so framed that the 'peter-man understood no more than that a bank of unusual richness was to be broken into, and his aid was sought.
"Your share alone," whispered Storri, "will foot up for a million."
London Bill's little black eyes twinkled like those of a rat. He didn't make reply at once, but looked out of the grimy, cobwebby pane at the sky. The face of London Bill was rough, but not unpleasant, and, though he had killed his man and was a desperate individual if cornered, the only trait expressed was a patient capacity for enterprises that might require days or even weeks in their carrying out.
"Don't you think now you're a bit of a come-on?" observed London Bill, swinging around to Storri from his survey of the distant heavens.
"Why?" asked Storri, as cool as the other.
"This is why," returned London Bill. "Here you butt in, a dead stranger, and make a proposition. Suppose I was to rap?"
"I'd declare that you lied," replied Storri cheerfully, "and no one with sense would believe you. They would say that if I intended to ask your help in such work as I have described, I wouldn't seek an introduction through a detective agency."
"Something in that," said London Bill, a gleam of admiration in his beady gimlet eye. "Well, I never squeal, an' only put the question to try you out. Go on, an' tell me what it is an' where it is; whether I go into the job or not, at least you've nothin' to be leary of in me."