Mr. Percy Bennett, that gentlemanly stranger, was an enemy to delay; both constitutionally and owing to experience, averse from dallying with fortune; to him a bird in his hand was worth a whole aviary on his neighbor’s unrifled premises.  He thought that Beaumaroy might levant with the treasure; at any moment that unwelcome, though not unfamiliar, tap on the shoulder, with the words (gratifying under quite other circumstances and from quite different lips) “I want you,” might incapacitate him from prosecuting his enterprise (he expressed this idea in more homely idiom—­less Latinized was his language, metaphorical indeed, yet terse); finally he had that healthy distrust of his accomplices which is essential to success in a career of crime; he thought that Sergeant Hooper might not deliver the goods!

Sergeant Hooper demurred; he deprecated inconsiderate haste? let the opportunity be chosen.  He had served under Mr. Beaumaroy in France, and (whatever faults Major-General Punnit might find with that officer) preferred that he should be off the premises at the moment when Mr. Bennett and he himself made unauthorized entry thereon.  “He’s a hot ’un in a scrap,” said the Sergeant, sitting in a public house at Sprotsfield on Boxing Day evening, Mr. Bennett and sundry other excursionists from London being present.

“My chauffeur will settle him,” said Mr. Bennett.  It may seem odd that Mr. Bennett should have a chauffeur; but he had—­or proposed to have—­pro hac vice—­or ad hoc; for this particular job, in fact.  Without a car that stuff at Tower Cottage—­somewhere at Tower Cottage—­would be difficult to shift.

The Sergeant demurred still, by no means for the sake of saving Beaumaroy’s skin, but still purely for the reason already given; yet he admitted that he could not name any date on which he could guarantee Beaumaroy’s absence from Tower Cottage.  “He never leaves the old blighter alone later than eleven o’clock or so, and rarely as late as that.”

“Then any night’s about the same,” said gentleman Bennett; “and now for the scheme, dear N.C.O.!”

Sergeant Hooper despaired of the doors.  The house-door might possibly be negotiated, though at the probable cost of arousing the notice of Beaumaroy—­and of the old blighter himself.  But the door from the parlor into the Tower offered insuperable difficulties.  It was always locked; the lock was intricate; he had never so much as seen the key at close quarters and, 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!”