, even had opportunity offered, was quite unpractised in the
art of taking impressions of locks--a thing not done with accuracy quite
so easily as seems sometimes to be assumed.

"For my own part," said Mr. Bennett with a nod, "I've always inclined to
the window. We can negotiate that without any noise to speak of, and it
oughtn't to take us more than a few minutes. Just deal boards, I expect!
Perhaps the old gentleman and your pal Beaumaroy--the Sergeant spat--will
sleep right through it!"

"If they ain't in the Tower itself," suggested the Sergeant gloomily.

"Wherever they may be," said gentleman Bennett, with a touch of
irritability--he was himself a sanguine man and disliked a mind fertile
in objections--"I suppose the stuff's in the Tower, isn't it?"

"It goes in there, and I've never seen it come out, Mr. Bennett." Here at
least a tone of confidence rang in the Sergeant's voice.

"But where in the Tower, Sergeant?"

"'Ow should I know? I've never been in the blooming place."

"It's really rather a queer business," observed Mr. Bennett,
allowing himself for a moment, an outside and critical consideration
of the matter.

"Damned," said the Sergeant briefly.

"But, once inside, we're bound to find it! Then--with the car--it's in
London in forty minutes, and in ten more it's--where it's going to be;
where that is needn't worry you, my dear Sergeant."

"What if we're seen from the road?" urged the pessimistic Sergeant.

"There's never a job about which you can't put those questions. What if
Ludendorff had known just what Foch was going to do, Sergeant? At any
rate anybody who sees us is two miles either way from a police
station--and may be a lot farther if he tries to interfere with us!
It's a hundred to one against anybody being on the road at that time of
night; we'll pray for a dark night and dirty weather--which, so far as
I've observed, you generally get in this beastly neighborhood." He
leant forward and tapped the Sergeant on the shoulder. "Barring
accidents, let's say this day week; meanwhile, Neddy"--he smiled as he
interjected. "Neddy is our chauffeur--Neddy and I will make our little
plan of attack."

"Don't be too generous! Don't leave all the V.C. chances to me," the
Sergeant implored.

"Neddy's fair glutton for 'em! Difficulty is to keep him from murder!
And he stands six foot four, and weighs seventeen stone."

"Ill back him up--from be'ind--company in support," grinned the Sergeant,
c