n brave enough to try and take away that wad of banknotes from the
little Englishwoman, he would have met trouble. For in a pocket of her
gown she carries a revolver, and sleeps with it under her pillow by night;
that is another thing that Trudi has told me." He kissed his fingers, and
waved them in the direction of Kink's Hotel. "She is a lovely maiden!" He
blew his nose without the assistance of a pocket-handkerchief, and
continued:

"Of course, Bough might have put some stuff in the Englishwoman's coffee
that would have made her sleep while he stole that money, or he might even
have killed her quietly, and buried her on the farm. But a man who does
that is not so clever and so wise as the man who makes a plan that gets
the money and keeps friends all round, and makes everybody happy--is he,
now? And that man is me, and that plan was mine. From P. Blinders you have
genuine information to sell the Englishwoman, and when she has bought it,
paying well for it, and written it all down in her despatches to the
Commandant at Gueldersdorp, she hands the letters back to you to be
smuggled through the lines, and pays through the nose for that also. And
who shall say she is cheated? For the letters do get through"--the pimply
countenance of P. Blinders was quite immobile, but the eyes behind the
great spectacles twirled and twinkled with infinite meaning--"a week or so
after date, perhaps, but what is that? Nothing--nothing at all."

"Nothing," agreed Van Busch. The two men smiled pleasantly in each other's
faces for a minute more. Then said Van Busch, with a loud sigh:

"But what I have to tell you now is something. The Englishwoman has got no
more money. Ask Trudi, if you think I lie. And, of course, the plan was a
good plan, and you were a smart fellow to hit on it; but now the two
hundred pounds is gone----"

"Three hundred remain to get." P. Blinders briskly held up five stumpy red
fingers and tucked down the thumb and little finger, leaving a trio of
mute witnesses to the correctness of his arithmetic.

"No more remains to get. The cow has run dry."

The brow of P. Blinders grew scarlet as a stormy sunrise.

"Hoe? What is this I hear?" he demanded with indignation. "Nothing left,
and I have not had but a hundred and fifty out of the five hundred. There
has been dishonesty somewhere. There have been tricks, unbefitting the
dealings of scrupulous Christian men. Foei, foei!"

Van Busch stuck his thumbs into his belt a