No one in that little room seemed to stir. They seemed to be sitting in silent tableau. Then I could hear the man with the bass voice slowly and meditatively intone his low-life expletive.
"Well, I'll be damned!"
The youngest of the trio spoke again, in a lowered but none the less tense voice.
"In gold, Chuck, pure gold! In fine yellow gold lyin' there waitin' to be rolled over and looked after! Talk about treasure-huntin'! Talk about Spanish Mains and pirate ships! My Gawd, Chuck, we don't need to travel down to no Mosquito Coast to dig up our doubloons! We got 'em right here at our back door!"
Some one struck a match.
"But how're we goin' to pick 'em?" placidly inquired the man called Chuck. It was as apparent that he already counted himself one of the party as it was that their intention had not quite carried him off his feet.
"Look here," broke in the more fiery-minded youth known as Tony, and from the sound and the short interludes of silence he seemed to be drawing a map on a slip of paper. "Here's your pier. And here's your store-room. And here's where your gold lies. And here's the first door. And here's the second. We don't need to count on the doors. They've got a watchman somewhere about here. And they've put two of their special guards here at the land end of the pier. The store-room itself is empty. They've got it double-locked, and a closed-circuit alarm system to cinch the thing. But what t'ell use is all that when we can eat right straight up into the bowels o' that room without touchin' a lock or a burglar alarm, without makin' a sound!"
"How?" inquired the bass voice.
"Here's your pier bottom. Here's the river slip. We row into that slip without showin' a light, and with the kicker shut off, naturally. We slide in under without makin' a sound. Then we get our measurements. Then we make fast to this pile, and throw out a line to this one, and a second to this one, to hold us steady against the tide and the ferry wash. Then we find our right plank. We can do that by pokin' a flashlight up against 'em where it'll never be seen. Then we take a brace and bit and run a row of holes across that plank, the two rows about thirty inches apart, each hole touchin' the other. Don't you see, with a good sharp extension bit we can cut out that square in half an hour or so, without makin' any more noise than you'd make scratchin' a match on your pants leg!"
"And when you get your square?"