"I thought you had forgotten the meaning of the word," Basil answered dryly. "It seems to me—I only offer the opinion for what it is worth—that while this little plan is about as alluring a proposition as I ever heard, one of the most elementary problems of life has been quite lost sight of. We are going to steal—to put it quite frankly. It is an iridium-pointed, hot-pressed, wire-wove, jewelled-in-every-hole sort of steal, I know, but it is a steal all the same, isn't it? I am open to conviction, of course, and, by the way, if anything goes wrong, conviction is just what will occur. We have a little poem in England which sums up the question in a nutshell—
He who prigs what isn't his'n,
When he's cotched will go to prison;
or, to put it in simpler form still, 'the penalty for abstracting quids by electricity will be quod'—you are a Latin scholar, I believe, Emile?"
The Frenchman made an impatient and angry gesture of his hands.
"There is no time for blague," he said, "with your quids and your quods. I know nothing of your piggish English play upon words. Of course, if it is the fear of discovery that deters you, and the possibilities of arrest, well——"
He did not conclude, but shrugged his shoulders, and puffed out his lips with a peculiarly French contempt.
Basil was quite unmoved. "It is not that," he said, "as you know very well, Emile. I would risk anything upon any chance. Our lives at the present moment are very like two puddings in a fog. Prison could not be much worse. But I do not quite see how one is going to reconcile this marvellously ingenious plan of yours with ordinary morals. There have been lots of times when you and I have wanted a bottle of wine or a packet of cigarettes very badly, and hadn't the money to pay for them. If I had proposed to you to take a bottle of chambertin while the wine-merchant was not looking—well!"
The two little Frenchmen had been listening with keen attention to this dialogue. Basil's English irony had been lost upon them, but they understood the main lines of his objections well enough.