“Sir,” said Mr. Brentin, with magisterial emphasis, “in the simplicity of the idea lies its grandeur. It is significant of poor human nature to make difficulties for themselves; they neglect what lies at their feet, ready to be carted away for the trouble. Everybody has heard of the man who stood on your London Bridge offering sovereigns for a penny apiece, and doing no trade in them; while we all know the Boer children played for years with large diamonds, believing them to be white pebbles. Sir, it’s the same thing here precisely, and that’s all there is to it.”
“I need hardly say, of course, that here there’s a good deal of risk,” said Thompson. “You have naturally all of you thought well over that?”
“We have thought well over everything. If you care to attend the rooms on Saturday—Saturday night—at about ten, you will see for yourself how complete in every respect our thought has been. And you will be amused, I fancy, at the little scene you will witness, in which I will undertake, Mr. Bailey Thompson, you shall be neither hurt nor hustled,” added Mr. Brentin, considerately.
As we strolled back with Thompson to his hotel, I could, having some sort of gift that way, see quite well what was passing in his mind.
After all, he said to himself, he was an English detective; why should he interfere to protect a French company who couldn’t look after themselves? Why, too, should he spoil gentlemen’s sport? They didn’t want the money for themselves; they wanted it (as we had always been careful to explain) for hospitals and good works generally. It wasn’t as if we were vulgar cracksmen, long firm swindlers, gentry he had been brought up to struggle with and defeat all his life. Hang it all! we were gentlemen and had treated him well, quite as one of ourselves. We had been frank and above-board, and had told him everything from the first.
I could see it was on the tip of his tongue to blurt out: “Mr. Brentin and Mr. Blacker! you have been quite frank with me, and, at any cost, I will be quite frank with you. I am a detective from Scotland Yard, and unless you promise me to give up this scheme of yours—which, as Heaven shall judge me, will, I believe, be successful!—it will be my unpleasant duty to warn the police here and have you all arrested.”
But there lay the difficulty, eh? We could scarcely be arrested for an idea, without overt act of any kind. Wouldn’t it be a complete answer if we declared the whole thing a practical joke, and turned the tables by laughing at him for being so simple as to believe it? No, if we were to be successfully caught, we must be caught in the act, that was clear.
And then I felt the detective was too strong in him: the desire for the reward, the fame of such a capture; his professional pride, in short, bulked too large before him to be ignored.
No! he said to himself, if we would go on with it, why we must take the consequences. For his part, he would go to the Principality police, arm a couple of dozen of them, and have them ready in the rooms. It would be a simple matter, for hadn’t we always told him our revolvers would not be loaded?
When, after a long silence, he ended by shrugging his shoulders, I was as well aware of his resolve as though he had spoken it out loud.