“Do you think you can make the gentlemen believe we have never undertaken any such little matters as this before?” she said. Then turning to Hawkins, she said, “But now that I understand you, sir, I see that thirty sovereigns would be too little for what you expect. Be a generous gentleman and make it fifty. Times are hard, and a thing of this sort is both dangerous and difficult.”
“Do what I ask, and fifty sovereigns are yours,” said Hawkins.
“Spoken like the open-handed gentleman I took you for,” cried the landlord’s wife, delightedly. “And now,” to her husband, “let us set to to earn this prize. Do you go first, and I’ll follow after with the light.”
“No light,” said the man sulkily, as though he did not relish being ordered about. “A light would waken them.”
He took a number of straps down from a peg behind a door where they hung among some odds and ends of harness. From another place he took a short, heavy, mace-like weapon, at sight of which the woman resumed her chuckling and shaking.
“Ah, that is the gentle persuader,” she said. “Many’s the time I’ve silenced an over-noisy patron with it. Its reasoning is short and sharp, my good sirs, and no one who makes its acquaintance remains unconvinced.”
“Enough of your clacking,” said the landlord, sharply. “Let us set about our work.”
The two lads expected to see them ascend the rickety staircase; but in this they were wrong; for after a few brief sentences to the two guests, the landlord and his wife disappeared through the doorway leading to the inner room.
“Well,” whispered Ben to his companion, “what do you think of this?”
“Sure, and it’s past thinking about it I am,” said Paddy Burk. “Never in the whole of me life did I see or hear such a lot of complete blackguards.”