ard two words of thieves' latin; that was enough,
you know; I whipped out the board, jumped on the heavy shutter, and
called for the police."

"Did you expect them to come?"

"Not much. These jobs are timed so as not to secure the attendance
of the police. But assistance of another kind came; a gentleman full
dressed, in a white tie and gloves, ran up, and asked me what it
was. 'Thieves in the cellar,' said I, and shouted police, and gave my
whistle. The gentleman jumped on the shutter. 'I can keep that down,'
said he. 'I'm sure I saw two policemen in acorn Street: run quick!' and
he showed me his sword-cane, and seemed so hearty in it, and confident,
I ran round the corner, and gave my whistle. Two policemen came up; but,
in that moment, the swell accomplice had pulled all his pals out of
the cellar, and all I saw of the lot, when I came back, was the swell's
swallow-tail coat flying like the wind toward a back slum, where I and
my bobbies should have been knocked on the head, if we had tried to
follow him; but indeed he was too fleet to give us the chance."

"Well," said Henry, "that was provoking: but who can foresee every thing
all in a moment? I have been worse duped than that a good many times."

Ransome shook his head. "An old officer of police, like me, not to smell
a swell accomplice. I had only to handcuff that man, and set him down
with me on the shutter, till, in the dispensation of Providence, a bobby
came by."

He added by way of corollary, "You should send to London for a
detective."

"Not I," said Henry. "I know you for a sagacious man, and a worthy man,
and my friend. I'll have no one to help me in it but you."

"Won't you?" said Ransome. "Then I'll go in. You have done me good, Mr.
Little, by sticking to a defeated friend like this. Now for your case;
tell me all you know, and how you know it."

Henry complied, and Ransome took his notes. Then he said, he had got
some old memoranda by him, that might prove valuable: he would call in
two days.

He did call, and showed Henry Coventry's card, and told him he
had picked it up close by his letter-box, on the very night of the
explosion. "Mark my words, this will expand into something," said the
experienced officer.

Before he left, he told Henry that he had now every reason to
believe the swell accomplice was Shifty Dick, the most successful and
distinguished criminal in England. "I have just got word from London
that he has been working here,