"I've seen 'em like that.... 'Ere, wotcher giving us? _I_ know them 'orrors is all in my mind. _I_ ain't no common lushington. _I_ knows it's the gin. _I_ know they're folks like everyone." "Oh, _you_ know, do you? Open up that walnut you call your mind, chum. Why do we both see the identical brutes, if they're in your mind?" "I dunno," he growled sullenly. "Then just sit quiet--there's the gin beside you--and I'll explain it all in words of one syllable." And this I did. I went over the whole frightful business, with a side dissertation on the theory of a fourth dimension. Then I went over it again. Somewhere in the distance a clock struck two. I summarized it again. I could see it beginning to penetrate to his submerged intellect. I went through it all a fourth time, and his murky gaze began to glow. The far-away clock struck three. "'Ere," he said at last. "You ain't loony at all, are yer? Tell me agayn about them as is in it wiff yer." "There's an old Colonel, a real big gun in his day, with pots of money. There's two veterans, gentlemen both, and one the son of a lord. There's a doctor with plenty of brains, and an old chap with more dignity than you ever saw in your misspent life. There's even a girl, a real lady. And there's me. Do you think we'd all be chucking our lives into this mess if we didn't know it was desperately real?" * * * * * He scratched his nose with a black nail. "No," he said, "no, you wouldn't. I can see as you're real clarss, ripper or no. What d'yer want of me, though? I'm plain dirt compared wiff you." "Why, you were Manny Jarman's right-hand man," I said. "You haven't forgotten what it's like to be top dog?" He was immensely flattered at that. "Thank you kindly, General. You sees deeper into a bloke than most. Go on." "I've only a hazy idea of what I want you to do, Arold, when the time comes. But here's an important part of it. Could you find me a whole raft of fellows who'd be willing to commit murder for money, no questions asked?" "Hell," he grinned, "could a cat find garbage cans?" "They'd have to be given definite instructions, and be the kind of men who would carry them out to the letter. And no copper's narks, see? Nobody who'd take our cash and then squeal." "I could do it," he said, thinking. "I could get bullies 'ere in Brummagem who'd cut their mothers' necks for three quid. And they could get others. Ow, trust Arold Smiff to find the right 'uns!" "We might need a hundred." "There's that many and more." I was giving slow birth to a real plan now. "It might be that they'd have to go all over England, and do these murders in a hundred different places. And they'd have to do them in a certain manner you'd tell 'em about, see? No slipshod hatchet work, but well-planned assassinations." "Might be harder to find them as would work precise to orders, but I could do it. I know every rogue in these parts, don'tcher doubt it, General."