"Now, what on earth are you driving at, guv'nor?" he growled. "No getting at the bottom of you. I never feel like a fool except when I am working for you."
"That, my good Charles," Anstruther said smoothly, "is where education comes in. If you had had my advantages you might have stood very high indeed. As it is, you are an exceedingly good workman, and I, though I say it that should not, am a very good master. I suppose you know perfectly well that I am in a position to give you away at any moment. I could hand you over to the police, who would take very good care of you for the next fourteen years, and you could not give me a simple scratch in return. For instance, we will suppose it is my whim to identify you with that bank burglary last night. Of course, you were not there, but I could prove that you were, all the same. And no cleverness of yours could save you from a conviction."
Gillmore wriggled uneasily on his chair. His eyes followed Anstruther's every movement like those of a dog severely punished; there was a suggestion of the hound that would have bitten his master if he dared.
"I know all about that," he grunted. "And you know I've got to do everything you ask me. It only seems the other day that poor Brown defied you to do your worst and lost his life over it. That was a lesson to me. Not but what I wouldn't be ready and willing to knife you if I thought it was safe. I am pretty bad, and so are some of the others; but outside of hell itself there is no black-hearted scoundrel as bad as you."
The man's voice fairly vibrated with passion; but Anstruther lounged back in his chair with the air of a man who has just received a high compliment. He was a man who loved power. He liked to feel that he could pull the strings and move the actions of other men even when they fought desperately against his iron determination.
"All this is so much waste of time," he said. "I came here to-night to get you to do something for me, and you will have to do it, whether you want to or not. You know what disobedience means--three hours' freedom, and fourteen years in jail. No more of your confounded nonsense; listen to what I have to say."
"Oh, I'll do it right enough," Gillmore growled. "Mind you, it's a pretty big risk. The police have got an idea that I was engaged in that Maidenhead business. I know they've been watching me so close that I can't get rid of a bit of stuff, and I have come down to my last half-sov."
"I'll see to that," Anstruther replied. "What you have to do now is to make your way into the Great Metropolitan Hotel. You shall come with me presently, and I will show you the room I want you to enter. To a man of your ability the thing is ridiculously simple--quiet side entrance, iron fire-escape ladder, and all the rest of it. All you want is a few tools."
"But I haven't got any," Gillmore protested. "I was glad enough to get away from that Maidenhead business with a whole skin."
Anstruther pointed significantly to the flat brown paper parcel which he had brought in with him. "You will find everything you want there," he said. "All you have to remember is this. You are to go up the ladder and make your way to the door at the head of the second corridor. A row of bedrooms runs along the corridor, and the room you have to enter is No. 16. That is a sitting-room attached to one of the bedrooms. I don't want you to do anything neat in the way of a burglary; you have simply to take a letter which I will give you and leave it on the table in the sitting-room. I want the whole thing to be absolutely mysterious, and here is a five-pound note for your trouble. And now I am going out, and you are to follow me. I will lead you directly to the quiet spot at the rear of the hotel, and the rest you must do for yourself. I don't think there is anything more for me to say."