“Prompt business, Mr Smith, with approved customers, and to any amount.”
“That will do then. I’ll come. Private and confidential, eh?”
“Private and confidential, sir. Good-evening.—Jobson, shut up.”
“Yes, and I shut him up,” muttered Roach, as he went out with his Gladstone bag feeling weighty, and sought his cab, but not without looking back once or twice and choosing another way for his return.
But he saw nothing to excite his suspicions of being followed, for it was not likely that the homely-looking woman with a thickish umbrella had come from the pawnbroker’s. But somehow she had.
An hour later, Roach’s carefully-done-up parcel was denuded of its wrappings, and its golden glories were hidden in the iron plate-closet at the back of his pantry. And then he came upon Arthur, not long returned from setting down their people at Grosvenor Place.
“Hullo! Didn’t know you’d come back. Got it?” said the footman.
The butler nodded.
“Shut the door,” he said; and as soon as they were alone in the pantry, Roach unlocked the iron closet which contained the plate under his charge, and pointed to a handsome centre-piece standing on the shelf.
Then it was that the younger man so far forgot the respect due to his elder as to slap him on the back, an act not in the least resented, but responded to by a playful dig in the ribs.