They carried out that office, the course of which they had originally prepared.  Beaumaroy passed with his burden hard by the Sergeant, and Mary followed.  In a quarter of an hour they came downstairs again, and Mary again led the way into the parlor.  She went to the window, and drew the curtains aside a little way.  The lights of the car were burning; the Captain’s tall figure fell within their rays and was plainly visible, strolling up and down; the ambit of the rays did not, however, embrace the Tower window.  The Captain paced and smoked, patient, content, gone back to his own happy memories and anticipations.  Mary returned to the table and set her candle down on it.

“All right.  I think we can keep him a little longer.”

“I vote we do,” said Beaumaroy.  “I reckon he’s scared the fellows away, and they won’t come back so long as they see his lights.”

Rash at conclusions sometimes—­as has been seen—­Beaumaroy was right in his opinion of the Captain’s value as a sentry, or a scarecrow to keep away hungry birds.  The confederates had stolen back to their base of operations—­to where their car lay behind the trees.  There, too, no Sergeant and no sack!  Neddy reached for his roomy flask, drank of it, and with hoarse curses consigned the entire course of events, his accomplices, even himself, to nethermost perdition.  “That place ain’t—­natural!” he ended in a gloomy conviction. “’Oo pinched that sack?  The Sergeant?  Well—­maybe it was, and maybe it wasn’t.”  He finished the flask to cure a recurrence of the shudders.

Mike prevailed with him so far that he consented—­reluctantly—­to be left alone on the blasted heath, while his friend went back to reconnoiter.  Mike went, and presently returned; the car was still there, the tall figure was still pacing up and down.

“And perhaps the other one’s gone for the police!” Mike suggested uneasily.  “Guess we’ve lost the hand, Neddy!  Best be moving, eh?  It’s no go for to-night.”

“Catch me trying the bloomin’ place any other night!” grumbled Neddy.  “It’s given me the ’orrors, and no mistake.”

Mike—­Mr. Percy Bennett, that erstwhile gentlemanly stranger—­recognized one of his failures.  Such things are incidental to all professions.  “Our best game is to go back; if the Sergeant’s on the square, we’ll hear from him.”  But he spoke without much hope; rationalist as he professed himself, still he was affected by the atmosphere of the Tower.  With what difficulty do we entirely throw off atavistic notions!  They both of them had, at the bottom of their minds, the idea that the dead man on the high seat had defeated them, and that no luck lay in meddling with his treasure.

“I ’ave my doubts whether that ugly Sergeant’s ’uman himself,” growled Neddy, as he hoisted his bulk into the car.