My movement of contempt brought him a step or two nearer. But it was Benson who spoke first.
"Hadn't we better have the police, sir?" he suggested. The burglar, with his eyes on my face, stepped still closer, as though to shoulder any such suggestion as Benson's out of the issue.
"You just go out in the middle of the night," he went on, with derisive volubility. "Go out at night and look at a house. Stand off, and look at it good and plenty. Then ask yourself who's inside, and what's doin' behind them brick walls, and who's awake, and where a shot's goin' to come from, and what chances of a getaway you'll have, and the size of the bit you'll get if you're pinched. Just stand there and tell yourself you've got to get inside that house, and make your haul and get away with the goods, that you've got to do it or go with empty guts. Try it, and see if it takes nerve."
I must have touched his professional pride. I had trifled with that ethical totem-pole that is known as honor among thieves.
"All right," I said, suddenly turning on him as the inspiration came to me. "We'll try it, and we'll try it together. For I'm going to make you take this stuff back, and take it back to-night."
I could see his face cloud. Then a sudden change came over it. His rat-like eyes actually began to twinkle.
"I think we ought to have the police, sir," reiterated Benson, remembering, doubtless, his encounter below-stairs. "He's an uncommon tricky one, sir."
I saw, on more sober second thought, that it would be giving my friend too much rope, too many chances for treachery. And he would not be over-nice in his methods, I knew, now that I had him cornered. A second idea occurred to me, a rather intoxicating one. I suddenly felt like a Crusader saving from pollution a sacred relic. I could catch the whimper of some unkenneled sense of drama in the affair.
"Benson," I said, "I'm going to leave this worthy gentleman here with you. And while you look after him, I'm going to return this peach-bloom vase to its owner."
"He ain't in town to-night," broke in my troubled burglar.