“There’s an old saying, ‘Nothing risk, nothing have,’” he muttered to himself. “The risk, in this case, seems to be nothing very desperate. If I fail, I shall be no worse off than I am now. If I succeed——” His face blanched as suddenly as if he had seen a ghost.
“I forgot that!” he whispered. “Dering sleeps in the next room to Osmond. What if he should be awake? Even when he does sleep, I’ve heard him say that the noise of a strange footstep is enough to rouse him. That is a difficulty I never thought of—the biggest difficulty of all.”
He was still pondering over this difficulty, whatever it might be, when Osmond burst suddenly into the room.
“Not ready yet?” he said. “What a dilatory fellow you are! We shall have Dering in a devil of a temper if you don’t make haste. I’ll wait for you, if you don’t mind my having a whiff meanwhile.”
CHAPTER XI.
IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT.
“Say, Dering, it ain’t twelve o’clock yet. You’ll give me half an hour in the billiard-room before going to roost?”
Percy Osmond was the speaker. He was getting out of the brougham which had brought the three gentlemen back from Pincote, where they had been dining. His voice was thick, and his gait unsteady. It was evident that he had been indulging too freely in Squire Culpepper’s old port.
“You’ve surely had enough billiards for one night,” said Lionel, good-humouredly. “I should have thought that the thrashing you gave young Cope would have satisfied you till to-morrow morning.”
“I want to thrash you as I thrashed him.”
“You shall thrash me as much as you like in the morning.”