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, even had opportunity offered, was quite unpractised in the
art of taking impressions of locks--a thing not done with accuracy quite
so easily as seems sometimes to be assumed.

"For my own part," said Mr. Bennett with a nod, "I've always inclined to
the window. We can negotiate that without any noise to speak of, and it
oughtn't to take us more than a few minutes. Just deal boards, I expect!
Perhaps the old gentleman and your pal Beaumaroy--the Sergeant spat--will
sleep right through it!"

"If they ain't in the Tower itself," suggested the Sergeant gloomily.

"Wherever they may be," said gentleman Bennett, with a touch of
irritability--he was himself a sanguine man and disliked a mind fertile
in objections--"I suppose the stuff's in the Tower, isn't it?"

"It goes in there, and I've never seen it come out, Mr. Bennett." Here at
least a tone of confidence rang in the Sergeant's voice.

"But where in the Tower, Sergeant?"

"'Ow should I know? I've never been in the blooming place."

"It's really rather a queer business," observed Mr. Bennett,
allowing himself for a moment, an outside and critical consideration