E TREES

Mr. Percy Bennett, that gentlemanly stranger, was an enemy to delay; both
constitutionally and owing to experience, averse from dallying with
fortune; to him a bird in his hand was worth a whole aviary on his
neighbor's unrifled premises. He thought that Beaumaroy might levant with
the treasure; at any moment that unwelcome, though not unfamiliar, tap on
the shoulder, with the words (gratifying under quite other circumstances
and from quite different lips) "I want you," might incapacitate him from
prosecuting his enterprise (he expressed this idea in more homely
idiom--less Latinized was his language, metaphorical indeed, yet terse);
finally he had that healthy distrust of his accomplices which is
essential to success in a career of crime; he thought that Sergeant
Hooper might not deliver the goods!

Sergeant Hooper demurred; he deprecated inconsiderate haste? let the
opportunity be chosen. He had served under Mr. Beaumaroy in France, and
(whatever faults Major-General Punnit might find with that officer)
preferred that he should be off the premises at the moment when Mr.
Bennett and he himself made unauthorized entry thereon. "He's a hot 'un
in a scrap," said the Sergeant, sitting in a public house at Sprotsfield
on Boxing Day evening, Mr. Bennett and sundry other excursionists from
London being present.

"My chauffeur will settle him," said Mr. Bennett. It may seem odd that
Mr. Bennett should have a chauffeur; but he had--or proposed to
have--_pro hac vice_--or _ad hoc_; for this particular job, in fact.
Without a car that stuff at Tower Cottage--somewhere at Tower
Cottage--would be difficult to shift.

The Sergeant demurred still, by no means for the sake of saving
Beaumaroy's skin, but still purely for the reason already given; yet he
admitted that he could not name any date on which he could guarantee
Beaumaroy's absence from Tower Cottage. "He never leaves the old blighter
alone later than eleven o'clock or so, and rarely as late as that."

"Then any night's about the same," said gentleman Bennett; "and now for
the scheme, dear N.C.O.!"

Sergeant Hooper despaired of the doors. The house-door might possibly be
negotiated, though at the probable cost of arousing the notice of
Beaumaroy--and of the old blighter himself. But the door from the parlor
into the Tower offered insuperable difficulties. It was always locked;
the lock was intricate; he had never so much as seen the key at close
quarters and