A tall boy with a banjo took up his instrument and twanged the chords. "Now, gentlemen!" he shouted in a clear fresh tenor, "a chorus!" And without further preliminary he dashed into nothing less than the "Pirate's Chanty" from "Treasure Island": "_Fifteen men on the dead man's chest! Yo, ho! and a bottle of rum!_" The inn rocked with the volume of sound. I stood there fascinated, with a sort of horror. The thing--knowing what I knew--was so daring and grim that, more than anything else, it showed me with whom we had to deal. The application was lost upon Danjuro, but I told him what it meant in French, and he nodded with contracted eyes. "_Drink, and the devil had done for the rest, Yo, ho! and a bottle of rum!_" One would have thought that the room could not contain the noise, and that the very windows must be shattered, and in the very middle of it I heard something else--the urgent, throbbing sound of an engine. Danjuro heard it as soon as I did. "Motor-bicycle," he whispered. The sound grew insistent. Whoever was coming rode hell for leather and with the exhaust open. Then there was a succession of reports, a grinding noise, and the door of the bar was flung suddenly open. A tall man in goggles and overalls covered with dust walked in. As he did so, the pirate chant stopped with dramatic suddenness, and the singers jumped to their feet. Then he removed his glasses and his cap. It was Major Helzephron. They clustered round him thickly, and to each one he said a quiet word. In every case, when this happened, the man spoken to nodded and vanished into the night. I could hear them running outside the inn. Lastly, Helzephron took Vargus by the arm, and they also passed out. I could see the man more plainly than ever before. There was a great bruise round about the left eye, and the face was pale. But it blazed with will and purpose, and the cruel mouth was set in a malicious and abominable smile. "_The wolves are hunting to-night!_" Danjuro said to me two minutes later in my bedroom, and once again his face was like a demon of Old Japan. "Helzephron will not appear at the police court to-morrow. He has arranged it somehow, and, after all, it is a trivial affair. He has ridden down from London during the day." "You mean that there is going to be a raid to-night?" "I feel sure of it. Why else should Helzephron rush from London? And you observed the manner of his confederates. Don't you see this--with all his cunning precautions the pirate is far too clever not to know that his career must be a short one. He cannot hope to remain concealed for any great length of time. His object is to obtain an immense fortune _quickly_. Already I calculate he has stolen jewels and money to the value of two hundred thousand pounds. A few more such coups and he can disband his crew and disappear for ever. Speed is the essence of his plan." "But we must do something, we must stop it...."