Merton said: "And now, Alphonse, have you any plan, any means by which we can enter that house at night and get away safe without violent methods?"
"But we do not know, and that we must risk."
"It would be necessary," said Alphonse, "to get the police away from the gate for a time, and, if I am not mistaken, their orders will be capture, dead or alive. They believe your papers are still hidden in that house and that an effort may be made to secure them. You observe, monsieur, that all this care would never be taken in an ordinary case. If monsieur proposes to enter the house and take away certain papers, the guard may resist, and in that case--"
"In that case," laughed Merton, "circumstances--"
"Monsieur does not desire me to enter the house."
I said promptly that we did not. Alphonse seemed relieved, and Merton went on to state with care his own plan. Alphonse listened with the joy of an expert, adding suggestions and twice making very good comments on our arrangements. It would be necessary he thought, to wait for a stormy night, but already it was overclouded.
Alphonse went away to see his mother and to make his own preparations for the share assigned to him in an adventure to which I looked forward with keen interest and with small satisfaction.
Not so Merton. When the valet left us, the captain said: "We are utterly in the hands of that man."
"No. That he did not want to know what these papers are was an expression of his own doubt concerning the extent to which he might trust himself. I think we must trust him."
"Yes," returned the captain. "Whether or not we have been wise to use him, I rather doubted, but now I do not. The limitations of the moral code of a man like Alphonse are strange enough. It is hard to guess beforehand what he will do and what he will not. However, we are in for it. You have a revolver?"
I said I should be glad to borrow it, but I may say that I took care, before we set out, to see that the barrels were not loaded. I might use it to threaten, but was resolute not to fire on any one, even if not to do so involved failure of our purpose. I, too, had my moral limitations.
We lost a day, but on the following night there was such a storm as satisfied us to the full.