“No, not exactly that. We have a game in hand that nobody, I think, need despise for its facility. What do you say, boys, to carrying off the Crown jewels, or at least part of them?”
“I should say it was a very bad joke, and might, if indulged in, lead to a very good term of penal servitude,” answered Rees, picking out a cigar very carefully from the case Goodhare offered.
“But I suppose that, like many other bad jokes, you won’t be unwilling to lend a hand to carry it out.”
Rees considered a few moments, and then laughed.
“No,” said he. “It would be a new sensation, at all events.”
But Sep began to shiver, and to look with glances of alarm from the one to the other.
“Leave me out this time, Goodhare,” he said at last, hoarsely.
“Can’t, my dear boy. Your shrewdness and methodical way of carrying out instructions is just as necessary to our combination as Rees’s dash and my inventiveness. You sketch, don’t you?”
“Ye-es, a little,” admitted Sep reluctantly.
“And you have been in America, and could get up, I suppose, very fairly as artist and correspondent to a New York paper?”