Room after room he searched. He found the ill-furnished bedroom of Connor, and the room where old George slept on an uncleanly mattress. He found, too, the big room where the “Lot” held their informal meetings, but nothing portable. Nothing that a man might slip under his coat, and walk boldly out of the front door with. No little article of jewelry that your wife might carry to a pawnbroker’s with a long face and a longer story of a penury that forced you to part with her dear mother’s last gift. None of these, noted Mr. Lane bitterly, and with every fresh disappointment he breathed the harder. For apart from the commercial aspect of this, his burglary, there was the sickening humiliation of failure. An imaginative man, he had already invented the story he was to tell to a few select cronies in sneak-thief division. He had rehearsed mentally a scene where, with an air of nonchalance, he drew a handful of golden sovereigns from his pocket and ordered drinks round. And whilst they were sipping his drinks, smirking respectfully, he would have confided to them the fact that he had been duly, and with all ceremony, installed a full-fledged member of the “Borough Lot.” Of the irony of the situation he was ignorant. A qualified burglar would have completed a systematic examination of the premises in ten minutes, but Mr. Lane was not so qualified. In consequence he dawdled from room to room, going back to this room to make sure, and returning to that room to be absolutely certain that nothing had been overlooked. Oblivious of the flight of time, he stood irresolutely in the topmost room of the house when the real adventure of the evening began. He heard the click of a lock--he had thoughtfully closed the office door behind him--and a voice, and his heart leapt into his throat. He heard a voice, a voice hoarse with rage, and another, and yet another. Mr. Lane realized, from the stamping of feet on the stairs, that half a dozen men had come into the house; from their language he gathered they were annoyed. Then he heard something that froze his blood and turned his marrow to water. It had begun in a rumble of hoarse, undistinguishable words, and ended in the phrase that caught his ear. “... he’s sold us, I tell ye! Put spies on us! He led us into the trap, curse him....” He heard another voice speaking in a lower tone. “What are we worth? You’re a fool! What d’ye think we’re worth? Ain’t we the ‘Borough Lot’? Don’t he know enough to hang two or three of us.... It’s Connor and his pal the lawyer....” The “Borough Lot”! The paralyzing intelligence came to Mr. Lane, and he held on to the bare mantelshelf for support. Spies! Suppose they discovered him, and mistook him for a spy! His hair rose at the thought. He knew them well enough by repute. Overmuch hero-worship had invested them with qualities for evil which they may or may not have possessed.