Old George looked up.
“You’ll stay here, and not leave till we return. D’ye hear?”
“I hear, Mr. Connor, sir,” said old George, with his curious assumption of dignity, “and hearing, obey.”
As the two men turned into the night the rain pelted down and a gusty northwesterly wind blew into their faces.
“George,” said Connor, answering a question, “oh, we’ve had him for years. One of the boys found him wandering about Limehouse with hardly any clothes to his back, and brought him to us. That was before I knew the ‘Borough Lot,’ but they used him as a blind. He was worth the money it cost to keep him in food.”
Spedding kept the other waiting whilst he dispatched a long telegram from the Westbourne Grove Post Office. It was addressed to the master of the Polecat lying at Cardiff, and was reasonably unintelligible to the clerk.
They found a hansom at the corner of Queen’s Road, and drove to the Bank; here they alighted and crossed to the Royal Exchange. Some men in uniform overcoats who were standing about exchanged glances with Connor, and as the two leaders doubled back to Lombard Street, followed them at a distance.
“The guard left at four o’clock,” said Spedding, fitting the key of the heavy outer door. He waited a few minutes in the inky black darkness of the vestibule whilst Connor admitted the six uniformed men who had followed them.
“Are we all here?” said Connor in a low voice. “Bat? Here! Goyle? Here! Lamby? Here!”
One by one he called them by their names and they answered.