"Well, if you are," answered the voice, "you'll remember you offered me a bob if I could find out and tell you when somebody was going to do something."
"Well, what's the news?"
"Give me the money first, and then I'll tell you."
Jack Vance fortunately had the required coin in his pocket, and Diggory dropped it into Joe Crump's cap.
"Well, the news is this," said the latter, speaking in the same low tone—"that there Noaks and Hogson are coming up here to-night just afore nine o'clock, and they're a-going to drown your fireworks."
"Drown our fireworks! why, what ever d'you mean? How do they know we've got any fireworks? and how can they get at them when they're all locked up?"
"I can't say," returned Crump, "so it's no use asking me. I only knows that Noaks is a-going to do it; 'drown 'em all in a bucket of water,' was what he said. Remember you promised to tell nothink about me, that's all. Good-night, mister!"
The stranger vanished in the darkness, and Diggory dropped down from the wall.
"Here's a pretty go!" he remarked. "What are we to do? there's no time to lose. Come on, Jack, let's go and tell Acton."
The latter was engaged on the closing sentence of his letter; but on hearing the intelligence which Diggory had to impart, he threw the unfinished epistle into his desk, and rose to his feet with an exclamation of astonishment.