The ways of the three gentlemen evidently lay in opposite directions. They separated without remark. Their plans had long since been complete, and they had waited patiently until the stake was worth the hazard.
Their patience had been rewarded.
To-night the Continental mail would carry £20,000 worth of bullion, addressed to bankers in Paris.
Rushing along through the night, the swift train would bear a fortune down to the sea—a sum for which many a man would gladly slave and toil all his days.
This vast sum would travel safely, guarded by vigilant eyes, enclosed in massive safes, and secured by every precaution. Twice on the journey the safes would be weighed—at Folkestone and at Boulogne—so that the slightest difference in the weight of the precious packages would be detected.
Yet, if Messrs. Smith and Co., financial agents of London, could get their way, the gold would never reach its destination.
The three gentlemen who separated on London Bridge were, for the time, members of the firm in question.
The gentleman with the hook nose went off in the direction of the west; the other two were a pleasant-looking elderly gentleman, who hailed a cab and told the driver to take him to Camden Road, and a big, burly, grey-haired fellow, who went back to his lodgings in Southwark, and was greeted with some very bad language by a depraved parrot.
Messrs. Seth Preene, Brooks, and Josh Heckett had only a few hours to prepare for a railway journey which they proposed to take that evening.