Beaumaroy was down again in a minute.
"It is as I feared," he said quietly. "He has got up again, and gone into the Tower. Shall I try and get him out, or will you——?"
"I will go in with you, of course, Mr. Beaumaroy."
His old mirthful, yet rueful, smile came on his lips—just for a moment. Then he was grave and formal again. "This way, then, if you please, Dr. Arkroyd," he said deferentially.
CHAPTER XI
THE CAR BEHIND THE TREES
Mr. Percy Bennett, that gentlemanly stranger, was an enemy to delay; both constitutionally and owing to experience, averse from dallying with fortune; to him a bird in his hand was worth a whole aviary on his neighbour's unrifled premises. He thought that Beaumaroy might levant with the treasure; at any moment that unwelcome, though not unfamiliar, tap on the shoulder, with the words (gratifying under quite other circumstances and from quite different lips) "I want you," might incapacitate him from prosecuting his enterprise (he expressed this idea in more homely idiom—less Latinized was his language, metaphorical indeed, yet terse); finally he had that healthy distrust of his accomplices which is essential to success in a career of crime; he thought that Sergeant Hooper might not deliver the goods!
Sergeant Hooper demurred; he deprecated inconsiderate haste; let the opportunity be chosen. He had served under Mr. Beaumaroy in France, and (whatever faults Major-General Punnit might find with that officer) preferred that he should be off the premises at the moment when Mr. Bennett and he himself made unauthorized entry thereon. "He's a hot 'un in a scrap," said the Sergeant, sitting in a public-house at Sprotsfield on Boxing Day evening, Mr. Bennett and sundry other excursionists from London being present.
"My chauffeur will settle him," said Mr. Bennett. It may seem odd that Mr. Bennett should have a chauffeur; but he had—or proposed to have—pro hac vice—or ad hoc; for this particular job in fact. Without a car that stuff at Tower Cottage—somewhere at Tower Cottage—would be difficult to shift.