a brown leather bag? Would that interest you? Oh, that
stuff in the brown leather bag! Hard to come by now, isn't it? But they
know where there's still some, and so do I, to remark it incidentally.
There were actually some people, Sergeant Hooper, who distrusted the
righteousness of the British Cause, which is to say (the stranger smiled
cynically) the certainty of our licking the Germans, and they hoarded it,
the villains!"

Sergeant Hooper stretched out his hand towards the bottle. "Allow me!"
said the stranger politely. "I observe that your hand trembles a little."

It did. The Sergeant was excited. The stranger seemed to be touching on a
subject which always excited the Sergeant--to the point of hands
trembling, twitching, and itching.

"Have to pay for it, too! Thirty bob in curl-twisters for every ruddy
disc; that's the figure now, or thereabouts. What do they want to do
it for? What's your governor's game? Who, in short, is going to get
off with it?"

"What is it they does, the old blighter and Boomery (thus he pronounced
the name Beaumaroy), in London?"

"First to the stockbroker's, then to a bank or two, I've known it three
even; then a taxi down East, and a call at certain addresses. The bag's
with 'em, Sergeant, and at each call it gets heavier. I've seen it swell,
so to speak."

"Who in hell are you?" the Sergeant grunted huskily.

"Names later--after the usual guarantees of good faith."

The whole conversation, carried on in low tones, had passed under cover
of noisy mirth, snatches of song, banter, and gigglings; nobody paid heed
to the two men talking in a corner. Yet the stranger lowered his voice
to a whisper, as he added:

"From me to you fifty quid on account; from you to me just a sight of the
place where they put it."

Sergeant Hooper drank, smoked, and pondered. The stranger showed the edge
of a roll of notes, protruding it from his breast-pocket. The Sergeant
nodded, he understood that part. But there was much that he did not
understand. "It fair beats me what the blazes they're doing it _for_," he
broke out.

"Whose money would it be?"

"The old blighter's, o' course. Boomery's stony, except for his screw."
He looked hard at the gentlemanly stranger, and a slow smile came on his
lips, "That's your idea, is it, mister?"

"Gentleman's old, looks frail, might go off suddenly. What then? Friends
turn up, always do when you're dead, you know. Well, what of it? Less
money in the funds