“I should just jolly well think I do, guv’nor!  Them were days, if yer like it!  Never knew next minute if yer were goin’ ter see daylight again.”

“And this little adventure of ours seems a fair imitation of them!” returned Cleek, with a noiseless laugh.  “Let’s move a bit farther on and get our bearings.  Hello! here’s a little sort of cupboard without a door.  And ... look at those sacks standing there against that other side in that little cut-out place, Dollops.  Now I wonder what the devil they contain.  Talk about the Catacombs!  They aren’t in it with this affair.”

Dollops crept up noiselessly and laid a hand upon one of the great sacks that stood one upon the other in three double rows, and tried to feel the contents with his fingers.  It gave an absolutely unyielding surface, as though it might be stuffed with concrete.

“’Ard as a ship’s biscuit, sir,” he ejaculated.  “Now I wonder what the dickens?...”

His voice trailed off suddenly, and he stood a moment absolutely still, every nerve in his slim young body taut as wire, every muscle rigid.  For along the passage—­not so very far in front of them, from where it seemed to terminate—­came the thud of men’s feet upon the soft clayey ground.  The torch went out in an instant.  In another, Cleek had caught Dollops’s arm and drawn him into the narrow aperture, where, with faces to the wall, they stood tense and rigid, listening while the steps came nearer and nearer.  They waited in the darkness, as men in the Bonnet Rouge days must have waited for the stroke of Madame Guillotine.

...  The footsteps came forward leisurely.  The intruders could hear the sound of muffled voices.  One, brief, concise, clipping its words short, and with a note of cool authority in the low tones; the other—­Dollops huddled his shoulders closer and contrived to whisper “Black Whiskers” before the two men came abreast of them.  Strange to be walking thus comfortably in the dark!  Either they were sure of their way that it didn’t matter about having a light, or else they were afraid to use a torch.

“You will see that it is done, Dobbs, and done properly to-night?” sounded the brisk tones of “Black Whiskers’” companion.  And then the reply:  “Yes, it’ll be done all right.  We’re sending ’em off at one o’clock sharp.  Loadin’ at twelve.  No need to worry about that, sir.”

“And these two newcomers?  You can vouch for their reliability to keep their mouths shut, Dobbs?  We wouldn’t have chanced taking them on if we hadn’t been so short-handed, but ... you’re sure of them, eh?”

They could hear “Dirty Jim’s” ugly little chuckle.  It seemed laden with sinister purpose.

“They’re sound enough, master, I promise yer!” he made reply.  “Ugliest-lookin’ pair er cut-throats yer ever laid yer peepers on.  Seen dirtier business than this, I dare swear.  And Piggott’s on to the right kind, all right.  Good man, Piggott.”