“You must go separate at first, my lads,” said the young pickpocket, “and disguise yourselves. This is easy enough; we have plenty of togs here for that purpose. We can find whatever you want in that way.”
“You’re as good as father, brother, and son to us, that’s what you are,” said the cracksman.
“If either of you should get boxed into the jug, one of us must help the canary bird out of his cage, and cheat the beaks again. I will write down some notions I have on the point, and you shall decide upon them afterwards. Bring me some pens and ink.”
Laura Stanbridge rose from her seat, and took from a side table a handsome bronze inkstand, some writing paper, and pens; these she placed before the young man.
“All right, that will do,” said the latter, who proceeded to write down instructions for his two associates in crime.
While the Cracksman was eating and the pickpocket was writing, the Smoucher whistled a popular thieves’ air in an undertone, and Laura Stanbridge remained apparently in deep thought, glancing furtively at her vis-à-vis.
The four personages formed a strange contrast; the woman presented the appearance of a handsome patrician lady, the young man to all appearance belonged to the “upper ten,” and the Smoucher and the cracksman were unmistakeable ruffians of the most pronounced order.
The young man presently handed the paper to his two confederates.
The Cracksman frowned over it, not because he disapproved of the ideas, but because he found it difficult to decipher the words in which they were conveyed.
Honest English was as unintelligible to him as the hieroglyphics of thieves would be to us.