“I don’t wish to presume upon your courtesy,” he said, “but will the executive portion of your night’s work finish when that remaining treasure has been bestowed?”

“So far as you are concerned.”

“Oh, another appointment!  Of course, this ‘summer time’ stunt gives you another hour, doesn’t it?  Well, I must wish you a warmer welcome.”

“That were impossible,” was the bland reply “Once or twice, I must confess, I thought you a little—­er, equivocal, but let that pass.  I only regret that Mrs. Pleydell, particularly, should have been so much inconvenienced.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Berry.  “As a matter of fact, we’re all very pleased to have met you.  You have interested us more than I can say, with true chivalry you have abstained from murder and mutilation, and you have suffered me to blow my nose, when a less courteous visitor would have obliged me to sniff with desperate and painful regularity for nearly half an hour.  Can generosity go further?”

The rogue upon the club-kerb began to shake with laughter again.

“You’re a good loser,” he crowed.  “I’ll give you that.  I’m quite glad you came down.  Most of my hosts I never see, and that’s dull, you know, dull.  And those I do are so often—­er—­unsympathetic.  Yes, I shall remember to-night.”

“Going to change his rings,” murmured Berry.

“And now the highly delicate question of our departure is, I am afraid, imminent.  To avoid exciting impertinent curiosity, you will appreciate that we must take our leave as artlessly as possible, and that the order of our going must be characterized by no unusual circumstance, such, for instance, as a hue and cry.  Anything so vulgar as a scene must at all costs be obviated.  Excuse me.  Blake!”

Confederate Number One stepped noiselessly to his side and listened in silence to certain instructions, which were to us inaudible.

I looked about me.

The last of the silver had disappeared.  The packer was dismantling the scales as a preliminary to laying them in the last suit-case.  The clerk was fastening together the sheets which he had detached from the flimsy order-book.  Number Three had taken a light overcoat from a chair and was putting it on.  And the time was six minutes past two....

And what of Jonah?  He and Harry would probably arrive about five minutes too late.  I bit my lip savagely....

Again the chief malefactor lifted up his voice.

“It is my experience,” he drawled, “that temerity is born, if not of curiosity, then of ignorance.  Now, if there is one vice more than another which I deplore, it is temerity—­especially when it is displayed by a host at two o’clock of a morning.  I am therefore going to the root of the matter.  In short, I propose to satisfy your very natural curiosity regarding our method of departure, and, incidentally, to show you exactly what you are up against.  You see, I believe in prevention.”  His utterance of the last sentences was more silky than ever.