“More than you do in some directions, less in others, perhaps.  Shall I begin?  Because we’ve got to confide in one another, Sergeant.  A little story of what two gentlemen do in London on Wednesdays, and of what they carry home in 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 than was reckoned; dear old gentleman doesn’t cut up as well as they hoped!  And meanwhile our friend B——!  Does it dawn on you at all, from our friend B——­’s point of view, Sergeant?  I may be wrong, but that’s my provisional conjecture.  The question remains how he’s got the old gent into the game, doesn’t it?”