Rash at conclusions sometimes—as has been seen—Beaumaroy was right in his opinion of the Captain's value as a sentry, or a scarecrow to keep away hungry birds. The confederates had stolen back to their base of operations—to where their car lay behind the trees. There, too, no Sergeant and no sack! Neddy reached for his roomy flask, drank of it, and with hoarse curses consigned the entire course of events, his accomplices, even himself, to nethermost perdition. "That place ain't—natural!" he ended in a gloomy conviction. "'Oo pinched that sack? The Sergeant? Well—maybe it was, and maybe it wasn't." He finished the flask, to cure a recurrence of the shudders.
Mike prevailed with him so far that he consented—reluctantly—to be left alone on the blasted heath, while his friend went back to reconnoitre. Mike went, and presently returned; the car was still there, the tall figure was still pacing up and down.
"And perhaps the other one's gone for the police!" Mike suggested uneasily. "Guess we've lost the hand, Neddy! Best be moving, eh? It's no go for to-night."
"Catch me trying the bloomin' place any other night!" grumbled Neddy. "It's given me the 'orrors, and no mistake."
Mike—Mr. Percy Bennett, that erstwhile gentlemanly stranger—recognized one of his failures. Such things are incidental to all professions. "Our best game is to go back; if the Sergeant's on the square, we'll hear from him." But he spoke without much hope; rationalist as he professed himself, still he was affected by the atmosphere of the Tower. With what difficulty do we entirely throw off atavistic notions! They both of them had, at the bottom of their minds, the idea that the dead man on the high seat had defeated them, and that no luck lay in meddling with his treasure.
"I 'ave my doubts whether that ugly Sergeant's 'uman himself," growled Neddy, as he hoisted his bulk into the car.
So they went back to whence they came; and the impression that the night's adventure left upon them was heightened as the days went by. For, strange to say, though they watched all the usual channels of information, as Ministers say in Parliament, and also tried to open up some unusual ones, they never heard anything again of the Sergeant, of the sack of gold, of the yawning tomb with its golden lining, of its silent waxen-faced enthroned guardian who had defeated them. It all—the whole bizarre scene—vanished from their ken, as though it had been one of those alluring thwarting dreams which afflict men in sleep. It was an experience to which they were shy of alluding among their confidential friends, even of talking about between themselves. In a word—uncomfortable!
Meanwhile the Sergeant's association with Tower Cottage had also drawn to its close. After his search and his discovery in the Tower, Beaumaroy came out into the passage where the prisoner lay, and proceeded to unfasten his bonds.
"Stand up and listen to me, Sergeant," he said. "Your pals have run away; they can't help you, and they wouldn't if they could, because, owing to you, they haven't got away with any plunder, and so they'll be in a very bad temper with you. In the road, in front of the house, is Captain Naylor—you know that officer and his dimensions? He's in a very bad temper with you too." (Here Beaumaroy was embroidering the situation; the Sergeant was not really in Captain Alec's thoughts.) "Finally, I'm in a very bad temper with you myself. If I see your ugly phiz much longer, I may break out. Don't you think you'd better depart—by the back door, and go home? And if you're not out of Inkston for good and all by ten o'clock in the morning, and if you ever show yourself there again, look out for squalls. What you've got out of this business I don't know. You can keep it—and I'll give you a parting present myself as well."
"I knows a thing or two——" the Sergeant began, but he saw a look that he had seen only once or twice before on Beaumaroy's face; on each occasion it had been followed by the death of the enemy whose act had elicited it.