“But, once inside, we’re bound to find it! Then—with the car—it’s in London in forty minutes, and in ten more it’s—where it’s going to be; where that is needn’t worry you, my dear Sergeant.”
“What if we’re seen from the road?” urged the pessimistic Sergeant.
“There’s never a job about which you can’t put those questions. What if Ludendorff had known just what Foch was going to do, Sergeant? At any rate anybody who sees us is two miles either way from a police station—and may be a lot farther if he tries to interfere with us! It’s a hundred to one against anybody being on the road at that time of night; we’ll pray for a dark night and dirty weather—which, so far as I’ve observed, you generally get in this beastly neighborhood.” He leant forward and tapped the Sergeant on the shoulder. “Barring accidents, let’s say this day week; meanwhile, Neddy”—he smiled as he interjected. “Neddy is our chauffeur—Neddy and I will make our little plan of attack.”
“Don’t be too generous! Don’t leave all the V.C. chances to me,” the Sergeant implored.
“Neddy’s fair glutton for ‘em! Difficulty is to keep him from murder! And he stands six foot four, and weighs seventeen stone.”
“Ill back him up—from be’ind—company in support,” grinned the Sergeant, considerably comforted by this description of his coadjutor.
“You’ll occupy the station assigned to you, my man,” said Mr. Bennett, with an admirable burlesque of the military manner. “The front is wherever a soldier is ordered to be—a fine saying of Lord Kitchener’s! Remember it, Sergeant!”
“Yes, sir,” said the Sergeant, grinning still.
He found Mr. Bennett on the whole amusing company, though occasionally rather alarming; for instance, there seemed to him to be no particular reason for dragging in Neddy’s predilection for murder; though, of course, a man of his inches and weight might commit murder through some trifling and pardonable miscalculation of force. “Same as if that Captain Naylor hit you!” the Sergeant reflected, as he finished the ample portion of rum with which the conversation had been lightened. He felt pleasantly muzzy, and saw Mr. Bennett’s cleancut features rather blurred in outline. However, the sandy wig and red mustache which that gentleman wore—in his character as a Boxing Day excursionist—were still salient features even to his eyes. Anybody in the room would have been able to swear to them.
Thus the date of the attack was settled and, if only it had been adhered to, things might have fallen out differently between Doctor Mary and Mr. Beaumaroy. Events would probably have relieved Mary from the necessity of presenting her ultimatum, and she might never have heard that illuminating word “Morocco.” But big Neddy the Shover—as his intimate friends were wont to call him—was a man of pleasure as well as of business; he was not a bloke in an office; he liked an ample Christmas vacation and was now taking one with a party of friends at Brighton—all tip-toppers who did the thing in style and spent their money (which was not their money) lavishly. From the attraction of this company—not composed of gentlemen only—Neddy refused to be separated. Mr. Bennett, who was on thorns at the delay, could take it or leave it at that; in any case the job was, in Neddy’s opinion (which he expressed with that massive but good-humored scorn which is an appanage of very large men), a leap in the dark, a pig in a poke, blind hookey; for who really knew how much of the stuff the old blighter and his pal had contrived to shift down to the Cottage in the old brown bag. Sometimes it looked light, sometimes it looked heavy; sometimes perhaps it was full of bricks!