n? We've done nothing he could catch us for?"

"Let's have a look at that telegram again," said the thin man, and,
having read it in a dazed way, remarked: "He'll wait for you at the
office until nine. Well, Jack, nip up and fix that deal. Take the
transfers with you. Close it and take his cheque. Take anything he'll
give you, and get a special clearance in the morning, and, anyway, the
business is straight."

Honest John breathed heavily through his nose and staggered from the
bar, and the suspicious glances of the barman were, for once,
unjustified, for Mr. Staines was labouring under acute emotions.

He found Bones sitting at his desk, a very silent, taciturn Bones, who
greeted him with a nod.

"Sit down," said Bones. "I'll take that property. Here's my cheque."

With trembling fingers Mr. Staines prepared the transfers. It was he
who scoured the office corridors to discover two agitated char-ladies
who were prepared to witness his signature for a consideration.

He folded the cheque for twenty thousand pounds reverently and put it
into his pocket, and was back again at the Stamford Hotel so quickly
that his companions could not believe their eyes.

"Well, this is the rummiest go I have ever known," said the explosive
man profoundly. "You don't think he expects us to call in the morning
and buy it back, do you?"

Staines shook his head.

"I know he doesn't," he said grimly. "In fact, he as good as told me
that that business of buying a property back was a fake."

The thin man whistled.

"The devil he did! Then what made him buy it?"

"He's been there. He mentioned he had seen the property," said
Staines. And then, as an idea occurred to them all simultaneously,
they looked at one another.

The stout Mr. Sole pulled a big watch from his pocket.

"There's a caretaker at Stivvins', isn't there?" he said. "Let's go
down and see what has happened."

Stivvins' Wharf was difficult of approach by night. It lay off the
main Woolwich Road, at the back of another block of factories, and to
reach its dilapidated entrance gates involved an adventurous march
through a number of miniature shell craters. Night, however, was
merciful in that it hid the desolation which is called Stivvins' from
the fastidious eye of man. Mr. Sole, who was not aesthetic and by no
means poetical, admitted that Stivvins' gave him the hump.

It was ten o'clock by the time they had reached the wharf, and
half-past ten b