in England.

The pair had not met since the memorable evening nine months before,
when Ansell had been sitting in the Grand Cafe, and Carlier had slipped
in to warn him that the police had arrested Bonnemain and the rest, and
had already been to his lodgings. Two hours later, without baggage or
any encumbrance, he had reached Melun in a hired motor-car, and had
thence left it at midnight for Lyons, after which he doubled his tracks
and travelled by way of Cherbourg across to Southampton, while Carlier
had, on that same night, fled to Orleans.

Part of the proceeds of the robbery at the diamond merchants had been
divided up by the gang prior to Bonnemain's arrest--or rather the fifty
thousand francs advanced by the Jew broker from Amsterdam to whom they
always sold their booty. Therefore both men had been possessed of funds.
Like others of their profession, they made large gains, but spent
freely, and were continually short of money. Old Bonnemain, however, had
brought burglary to a fine art, and from the proceeds of each _coup_ he
used to keep back a certain amount out of which to assist the needy
among his accomplices.

Ansell, in addition, had a second source of revenue, inasmuch as he was
on friendly terms with a certain Belgian Baron, who, though living in
affluence in Paris, was nevertheless a high official of the German
Secret Service. It was, indeed, his habit to undertake for the Baron
certain disagreeable little duties which he did not care to perform
himself, and for such services he was usually highly paid. Hence, when
he fled to London, it was not long before a German secret agent called
upon him and put before him a certain proposal, the acceptance of which
had resulted in the death of Dick Harborne.

The young adventurer threw himself into the arm-chair opposite to where
Adolphe Carlier was seated, and in the twilight unfolded his scheme for
a _coup_ at a well-known jeweller's in Bond Street, at which he was
already a customer and had thoroughly surveyed the premises.

"I expected that you had some new scheme in hand," Carlier said at last,
in French, after listening attentively to the details of the
proposition, every one of which had been most carefully thought out by
the pupil of the notorious Bonnemain. "On arrival this afternoon I put
up at the Charing Cross Hotel--so as to be handy if we have to get out
quickly."

"Good. Probably we shall be compelled to move pretty slick," Ansell
said, in En