"But where will you be?"
"I shall be waiting outside the ticket barrier with the tickets."
"Supposing he won't?"
"I'll risk seeing him once more. Go and ask if you can speak to him a minute, and tell him to come out in the garden presently. Say you've knocked a ball over or something and will Master Cyril throw it back. I say, we might really put a message inside a ball and throw it over. That was the way the Duc de Beaufort escaped in Twenty Years After."
Hacking looked blankly at Mark.
"But it's dark and wet," he objected. "I shouldn't knock a ball over on a wet evening like this."
"Well, the skivvy won't think of that, and Pomeroy will guess that we're trying to communicate with him."
Mark thought how odd it was that Hacking should be so utterly blind to the romance of the enterprise. After a few more objections which were disposed of by Mark, Hacking agreed to go next door and try to get the prisoner into the garden. He succeeded in this, and Mark rated Cyril for not having given him the sovereign yesterday.
"However, bunk in and get it now, because I shan't see you again till to-morrow at the station, and I must have some money to buy the tickets."
He explained the details of the escape and exacted from Cyril a promise not to back out at the last moment.