"

"No, no--now! while Hastings sees to the horses. I could not exist long
without knowing, and we are well sheltered from the rain under this
tree."

"Well, then, since you will have it," he began with a laugh, which
despite the weariness and anxiety of the past twenty-four hours had
forced itself to his lips, "I have been sweeper and man-of-all-work at
the Temple for the past few weeks, you must know--"

"No!" ejaculated my Lord Tony lustily. "By gum!"

"Indeed, you old sybarite, whilst you were enjoying yourself heaving
coal on the canal wharf, I was scrubbing floors, lighting fires, and
doing a number of odd jobs for a lot of demmed murdering villains,
and"--he added under his breath--"incidentally, too, for our league.
Whenever I had an hour or two off duty I spent them in my lodgings, and
asked you all to come and meet me there."

"By Gad, Blakeney! Then the day before yesterday?--when we all met--"

"I had just had a bath--sorely needed, I can tell you. I had been
cleaning boots half the day, but I had heard that the Simons were
removing from the Temple on the Sunday, and had obtained an order from
them to help them shift their furniture."

"Cleaning boots!" murmured my Lord Tony with a chuckle. "Well! and
then?"

"Well, then everything worked out splendidly. You see by that time I was
a well-known figure in the Temple. Heron knew me well. I used to be his
lanthorn-bearer when at nights he visited that poor mite in his prison.
It was 'Dupont, here! Dupont there!' all day long. 'Light the fire in
the office, Dupont! Dupont, brush my coat! Dupont, fetch me a light!'
When the Simons wanted to move their household goods they called loudly
for Dupont. I got a covered laundry cart, and I brought a dummy with
me to substitute for the child. Simon himself knew nothing of this, but
Madame was in my pay. The dummy was just splendid, with real hair on its
head; Madame helped me to substitute it for the child; we laid it on the
sofa and covered it over with a rug, even while those brutes Heron and
Cochefer were on the landing outside, and we stuffed His Majesty the
King of France into a linen basket. The room was badly lighted, and
any one would have been deceived. No one was suspicious of that type of
trickery, so it went off splendidly. I moved the furniture of the Simons
out of the Tower. His Majesty King Louis XVII was still concealed in the
linen basket. I drove the Simons to their new lodgings--the man still