"Bring him on," he said. "Lord! I should like to have a go at that Sanders, sir! He walks into the stable yard as if every horse in the place belonged to him."
They had by this time skirted the lake again, and the booming of the sluice sounded near at hand. Then, striking for higher ground, they saw they had already passed the house, and close in front of them swam the birds of the box hedge. The mist had sunk back a little, and now they sat, as if in a receding tide, on the long peninsula of the hedge itself, visible above the drift, and black in the moonlight.
"This way," said Geoffrey, and groping round to the back of it they found the overgrown door and entered. Thence, going cautiously and feeling their way, they passed down the length of it, and soon saw in front of them, like a blurred moon, the light from the gun-room windows. The time had been calculated to a nicety, for they had been there scarcely five minutes, when a shadow moved across the blind, which was then rolled up, and the window silently lifted a crack. The figure, owing to the density of the mist, was indistinguishable, but Geoffrey recognised the doctor's voice when it whispered his name. He touched Jim to make him follow, and together they stood close by the window.
"Good you have Jim with you," said the doctor, "and you have told him we may need him. I want him inside the house; so go with him through the secret passage, and open the panel by the stairs which you told me of. I shall be there, and I will tell you what we are going to do. Harry has gone to dress, and the house is quiet. Wait, Geoffrey. Take this."
And he handed him out a rook rifle and eight or ten cartridges.
"Put these inside the hedge," he whispered, "and come round at once with Jim."
Five minutes later Geoffrey gently opened the panel of the door, and the doctor glided in like a ghost, latching it noiselessly behind him. His face brooded and gloomed no laugh; it was alert and active.
"There is very little time," he said; "so, first for you, Geoffrey. Go back for the rifle and cartridges, and get somewhere in cover where you can command the front of the house. What course events will take outside I can not say. But the Luck and the plate will be stolen, and they will have to get them away somehow. You must stop that. Sanders, I suspect, will try to remove them."
"Beg your pardon, sir," put in Jim, "but Sanders was down at the stable this afternoon, and said that the door of the coach house and one of the loose boxes was to be left unlocked to-night, in case a doctor was wanted for Mr. Francis. He said he could put to himself, sir, so that none of us need sit up."
The doctor's keen face grew a shade more animate, his mouth bordered on a smile.