“You could even lose a little money to him, sir,” he suggested.
“I could.”
Ricardo was thoughtful for a moment.
“He strikes me, too, as the sort of man to start prancing when one didn't expect it. What do you think, sir? Is he a man that would prance? That is, if something startled him. More likely to prance than to run—what?”
The answer came at once, because Mr. Jones understood the peculiar idiom of his faithful follower.
“Oh, without doubt! Without doubt!”
“It does me good to hear that you think so. He's a prancing beast, and so we mustn't startle him—not till I have located the stuff. Afterwards—”
Ricardo paused, sinister in the stillness of his pose. Suddenly he got up with a swift movement and gazed down at his chief in moody abstraction. Mr. Jones did not stir.
“There's one thing that's worrying me,” began Ricardo in a subdued voice.
“Only one?” was the faint comment from the motionless body on the bedstead.