“Hallo! you’ve got an illumination up here, I see! What a mistake it is, this showing the State jewels at sixpence a head, like the Chamber of Horrors at a waxworks! What do you think, warder?”
“Well, I don’t know, my lord; they’re the people’s treasures after all, and it pleases them to see ’em.”
At the words “my lord,” the American correspondent and the young carpenter looked around. The latter started. Seen by a cursory observer, not careful to mark trifling differences of stature and feature, the easy-mannered gentleman at the door, who wore an overcoat of “horsey” cut, and carried a small dressing-bag, would have passed for Lord St. Austell.
“I find my brother is not in,” went on Amos, still in the earl’s well-known genial manner, “so I’ve come up for a chat with you. They wanted to stop my bag at the gate—for a dynamitard’s, I suppose. But the sight of my hair brushes and pomatum pots reassured them, I believe. You can keep it under your own eye, at any rate.”
And the pseudo earl threw his bag down inside the doorway of the stone chamber, and proceeded to ask the alarmed warder if he had heard that it was proposed to do away with the body of men of which he formed so distinguished and ornamental a member, and to replace them with a staff chosen from the ranks of the metropolitan police.
The alarmed warder listened in consternation to this suggestion, which, coming from the lips of a gentleman who had so much access to persons in authority as the Earl of St. Austell, bore a frightful impress of probability. They discussed the rumor with much warmth, the sham nobleman growing even more excited and loud than the warder. A few visitors passed into the chamber and out again, while still the noble visitor and the alarmed guardian conversed at the door. With the last batch came the young carpenter and the American, the latter full of thanks to the warder for his courteous assistance. Still they discussed, the poor veteran much comforted, in the midst of his alarm, by the promise of his noble companion to “use his influence” for him and the body to which he belonged.
At last, however, with a start, the gentleman affected to remember that his brother, the Honorable Charles Cenarth, would have returned and be waiting for him. Snatching up his bag, he thrust a half-sovereign into the warder’s hand, and made his way in a sauntering, jaunty manner, down the stone staircase.
That handsome “tip” was, however, dearly bought. A quarter of an hour later the poor warder, having recovered his equanimity a little, made his accustomed perfunctory tour of the chamber in which the Crown jewels lay. At the innermost point of the stone apartment he stopped, sick with horror. Some of the jewels were gone.
With clammy, trembling hands, the unhappy man touched the cage, behind the bars of which the treasures had seemed so safe. They gave way at the touch. The bars had been filed through, the glass neatly and noiselessly cut, and the jewels taken without the least warning sound. In a moment the whole building rang with the alarm. The soldiers turned out, the gates were closed, the few visitors still groping their way about in the fog were closely searched—all to no purpose.
By that time there was a bundle of clothes—“horsey” overcoat, carpenter’s suit, American tourist’s rig out—sinking, heavily-weighted, to the bottom of the Thames; while Amos Goodhare, Sep, and Rees were finding their way to the lodging in St. Martin’s-lane by different routes.