Again the skilled craftsman would have suspected some sort of treachery, and might have withdrawn; but Mr. Lane, recognizing in the fact that the old man had forgotten to fasten the door behind him only yet another proof of that benevolent Providence which exerts itself for the express service of men “in luck,” entered boldly. He lit a candle stump and looked around.
The evidence of that wealth which is the particular possession of “master-men” was not evident. Indeed, the floor of the passage was uncarpeted, and the walls bare of picture or ornament. Nor was the “office,” a little room leading from the “passage,” any more prolific of result. Such fixtures as there were had apparently been left behind by the previous tenant, and these were thick with dust.
“Bah!” said the inquisitive Mr. Lane scornfully, and his words echoed hollowly as in an empty house.
With the barren possibilities of his exploit before him, Mr. Lane’s spirits fell.
He was of the class, to whom reference has already been made, that looked in awe and reverence toward the “Borough Lot” in the same spirit as the youthful curate might regard the consistory of bishops. In his cups—pewter cups they were with frothing heads a-top—he was wont to boast that his connection with the “Borough Lot” was both close and intimate. A rumor that went around to the effect that the “mouthpiece” who defended him at the closing of the unsatisfactory horsehair episode had been paid for by the “Borough Lot” he did not trouble to contradict.
If he had known any of them, even by sight, he would not at that moment have been effecting a burglarious entry into their premises.
Room after room he searched. He found the ill-furnished bedroom of Connor, and the room where old George slept on an uncleanly mattress. He found, too, the big room where the “Lot” held their informal meetings, but nothing portable. Nothing that a man might slip under his coat, and walk boldly out of the front door with. No little article of jewelry that your wife might carry to a pawnbroker’s with a long face and a longer story of a penury that forced you to part with her dear mother’s last gift. None of these, noted Mr. Lane bitterly, and with every fresh disappointment he breathed the harder.
For apart from the commercial aspect of this, his burglary, there was the sickening humiliation of failure. An imaginative man, he had already invented the story he was to tell to a few select cronies in sneak-thief division. He had rehearsed mentally a scene where, with an air of nonchalance, he drew a handful of golden sovereigns from his pocket and ordered drinks round. And whilst they were sipping his drinks, smirking respectfully, he would have confided to them the fact that he had been duly, and with all ceremony, installed a full-fledged member of the “Borough Lot.” Of the irony of the situation he was ignorant. A qualified burglar would have completed a systematic examination of the premises in ten minutes, but Mr. Lane was not so qualified. In consequence he dawdled from room to room, going back to this room to make sure, and returning to that room to be absolutely certain that nothing had been overlooked. Oblivious of the flight of time, he stood irresolutely in the topmost room of the house when the real adventure of the evening began. He heard the click of a lock—he had thoughtfully closed the office door behind him—and a voice, and his heart leapt into his throat. He heard a voice, a voice hoarse with rage, and another, and yet another.
Mr. Lane realized, from the stamping of feet on the stairs, that half a dozen men had come into the house; from their language he gathered they were annoyed.
Then he heard something that froze his blood and turned his marrow to water.