"Yes, gents, I'll manage Potter. You break in any time after midnight, and I engage you shall find the Venus on the premises."
"But we want more than that of you, you know. We mustn't lose any time over this job. You must be ready at the door to let us in, and bear a hand with her down to the cart."
But this did not suit Leander's views at all. He was determined to avoid all personal risks; and to be caught helping the burglars to carry off the Aphrodite would be fatal.
He was recovering his presence of mind. As his tormentors had sensibly relaxed, he was able to take steps for his own security.
"I beg pardon, gents," he said, "but I don't want to appear in this myself. There's Potter, you see; he's a hawful man to go against. You know what Potter is, yourselves." (Potter was really coming in quite usefully, he began to think.)
"Well, I don't suppose Potter would make more bones about slitting your throat than we should, if he knew you'd played him false," said the Count. "But we can't help that; in a place like this it's too risky to break in, when we can be let in."
"If you'll only excuse me taking an active part," said Leander, "it's all I ask. This is my plan, gentlemen. You see that little archway there, where my finger points? Well, that leads by a small alley to a yard, back of my saloon. You can leave your cart here, and come round as safe as you please. I'll have the winder in my saloon unfastened, and put the statue where you can get her easy; but I don't want to be mixed up in it further than that."
"That seems fair enough," said the Count, "provided you keep to it."
"But suppose it's a plant?" growled Braddle. "Suppose he's planning to lay a trap for us? Suppose we get in, to find Potter and his lot on the look-out for us, or break into a house that's full of bloomin' coppers?"
"I did think of that; but I believe our friend knows that if he doesn't act square with me, his life isn't worth a bent pin; and besides, he can't warn the police without getting himself into more or less hot water. So I think he'll see the wisdom of doing what he's told."
"I do," said Leander, "I do, gentlemen. I'd sooner die than deceive you."
"Well," said the Count, "you'd find it come to the same thing."
"No," added Braddle. "If you blow the gaff on us, my bloomin', I'll saw that pudden head of yours right off your shoulders, and swing for it, cheerful!"
Leander shuddered. Amongst what desperate ruffians had his unlucky stars led him! How would it all end, he wondered feebly--how?
"Well, gentlemen," he said, with his teeth chattering, "if you don't want me any more, I'll go in; and I'm to expect you to-morrow evening, I believe?"
"Expect us when you 'ear us," said Braddle; "and if you make fools of us again----" And he described consequences which exceeded in unpleasantness the worst that Leander could have imagined.
The poor man tottered back to his room again, in a most unenviable frame of mind; not even the prospect of being delivered from the goddess could reconcile him to the price he must pay for it. He was going to take a plunge into downright crime now; and if his friend the inspector came to hear of it, ruin must follow. And, in any case, the cloak and the ring would be gone beyond recovery, while these cut-throat housebreakers would henceforth have a hold over him; they might insist upon steeping him in blacker crime still, and he knew he would never have the courage to resist.
As he thought of the new difficulties and dangers that compassed him round about, he was frequently on the verge of tears, and his couch that night was visited by dreadful dreams, in which he sought audience of the Evil One himself at cross-roads, was chased over half London by police, and dragged over the other half by burglars, to be finally flattened by the fall of Aphrodite.
AT LAST
IX.
"Does not the stone rebuke me For being more stone than it?"
_Winter's Tale._
"Yet did he loath to see the image fair, White and unchanged of face, unmoved of limb!"
_Earthly Paradise._
Leander's hand was very tremulous all the next day, as several indignant clients discovered, and he closed as early as he could, feeling it impossible to attend to business under the circumstances.
About seven o'clock he went up to his sitting-room. A difficult and ungrateful task was before him. To facilitate her removal, he must persuade the goddess to take up a position in the saloon for the night; and, much as he had suffered from her, there was something traitorous in delivering her over to these coarse burglars.
He waited until the statue showed signs of returning animation, and then said, "Good evening, mum," more obsequiously than usual.
She never deigned to notice or return his salutations. "Hairdresser,"
she said abruptly, "I am weary of this sordid place."
He was pleased, for it furthered his views. "It isn't so sordid in the saloon, where you stood the other evening, you know," he replied. "Will you step down there?"
"Bah!" she said, "it is _all_ sordid. Leander, a restlessness has come upon me. I come back night after night out of the vagueness in which I have lain so long, and for what? To stand here in this mean chamber and proffer my favour, only to find it repulsed, disdained. I am tired of it--tired!"
"You can't be more tired of it than I am!" he said.
"I ask myself," she went on, "why, having, through your means, ascended once more to the earth, which I left so fair, I seek not those things which once delighted me. This city of yours--all that I have seen of it--revolts me; but it is vast, vaster than those built by the mortals of old. Surely somewhere there must be brightness in it and beauty, and the colour and harmony by which men knew once to delight the gods themselves. It cannot be that the gods of old are all forgotten; surely, somewhere there yet lingers a little band of faithful ones, who have not turned from Aphrodite."
"I can't say, I'm sure," said Leander; "I could inquire for you."
"I myself will seek for them," she said proudly. "I will go forth this very night."
Leander choked. "To-night!" he cried. "You _can't_ go to-night."
"You forget yourself," she returned haughtily.
"If I let you go," he said hesitatingly, "will you promise faithfully to be back in half an hour?"
"Do you not yet understand that you have to do with a goddess--with Aphrodite herself?" she said. "Who are you, to presume to fetter me by your restrictions? Truly, the indulgence I have shown has turned your weak brain."
He put his back against the door. He was afraid of the goddess, but he was still more afraid of the burglars' vengeance if they arrived to find the prize missing.
"I'm sorry to disoblige a lady," he said; "but you don't go out of this house to-night."
In another minute he was lying in the fender amongst the fireirons--alone! How it was done he was too stunned to remember; but the goddess was gone. If she did not return by midnight, what would become of him? If he had only been civil to her, she might have stayed; but now she had abandoned him to certain destruction!
A kind of fatalistic stupor seized him. He would not run away--he would have to come home some time--nor would he call in the police, for he had a very vivid recollection of Mr. Braddle's threat in such a contingency.
He went, instead, into the dark saloon, and sat down in a chair to wait.
He wondered how he could explain the statue's absence. If he told the burglars it had gone for a stroll, they would tear him limb from limb.
"I was so confoundedly artful about Potter," he thought bitterly, "that they'll never believe now I haven't warned him!"
At every sound outside he shook like a leaf; the quarters, as they sounded from the church clock, sank like cold weights upon his heart.
"If only Venus would come back first!" he moaned; but the statue never returned.
At last he heard steps--muffled ones--on the paved alley outside. He had forgotten to leave the window unfastened, after all, and he was too paralysed to do it now.
The steps were in the little yard, or rather a sort of back area, underneath the window. "It may be only a constable," he tried to say to himself; but there is no mistaking the constabulary tread, which is not fairy-like, or even gentle, like that he heard.