It did. The Sergeant was excited. The stranger seemed to be touching on a subject which always excited the Sergeant—to the point of hands trembling, twitching, and itching.
"Have to pay for it too! Thirty bob in curl-twisters for every ruddy disc; that's the figure now, or thereabouts. What do they want to do it for? What's your governors' game? Who, in short, is going to get off with it?"
"What is it they does—the old blighter and Boomery" (Thus he pronounced the name Beaumaroy)—"in London?"
"First to the stockbroker's—then to a bank or two—I've known it three even; then a taxi down East, and a call at certain addresses. The bag's with 'em, Sergeant, and at each call it gets heavier. I've seen it swell, so to speak."
"Who in hell are you?" the Sergeant grunted huskily.
"Names later—after the usual guarantees of good faith."
The whole conversation, carried on in low tones, had passed under cover of noisy mirth, snatches of song, banter, and giggling; nobody paid heed to the two men talking in a corner. Yet the stranger lowered his voice to a whisper, as he added:
"From me to you fifty quid on account; from you to me just a sight of the place where they put it."
Sergeant Hooper drank, smoked, and pondered. The stranger showed the edge of a roll of notes, protruding it from his breast-pocket. The Sergeant nodded—he understood that part. But there was much that he did not understand. "It fair beats me what the blazes they're doing it for," he broke out.
"Whose money would it be?"