I shook my head. "No, I will go alone. It is my job."
Then Danjuro did a strange thing. He took my hand, bowed over it and kissed it! "You also are of the Samurai!" he said.
In a minute more he carried in a heavy bag from his own bedroom, and produced from it a miscellany of objects.
"Here is a twelve-shot automatic, with a dozen cartridge clips," he said. "You know all about the working of it? I thought so. This pair of wire-cutters you will need for the barbed fence. These two keys with adjustable wards—you turn the milled screw at the end to adjust them—will open any ordinary lock. Here also is an extremely powerful steel lever, with a wedge end. In the hands of a strong man like yourself it will wrench open most windows or doors."
God knows there was no lightness in my heart, but in the usual English way at serious moments, I laughed.
"The Complete Burglar!" I said.
Danjuro looked at me with a glance as cold as ice.
"I am in most deadly earnest, Sir John. You know what my experience has been. Well, I say deliberately that I have never been in such peril as you are going into."
"I meant nothing. And what is this?" I had taken up a little leather tube with a lens at one end.