"You don't mean to say he's going to buy it?"
"That's what it says, doesn't it?" said the triumphant Mr. Staines.
"It's a catch," said the explosive man suspiciously.
"Not on your life," replied the scornful Staines. "Where does the catch come in? 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?"
"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 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.