"But suppose it's a plant?" growled Braddle. "Suppose he's planning to lay a trap for us? Suppose we get in, to find Potter and his lot on the look-out for us, or break into a house that's full of bloomin' coppers?" "I did think of that; but I believe our friend knows that if he doesn't act square with me, his life isn't worth a bent pin; and besides, he can't warn the police without getting himself into more or less hot water. So I think he'll see the wisdom of doing what he's told." "I do," said Leander, "I do, gentlemen. I'd sooner die than deceive you." "Well," said the Count, "you'd find it come to the same thing." "No," added Braddle. "If you blow the gaff on us, my bloomin', I'll saw that pudden head of yours right off your shoulders, and swing for it, cheerful!" Leander shuddered. Amongst what desperate ruffians had his unlucky stars led him! How would it all end, he wondered feebly--how? "Well, gentlemen," he said, with his teeth chattering, "if you don't want me any more, I'll go in; and I'm to expect you to-morrow evening, I believe?" "Expect us when you 'ear us," said Braddle; "and if you make fools of us again----" And he described consequences which exceeded in unpleasantness the worst that Leander could have imagined. The poor man tottered back to his room again, in a most unenviable frame of mind; not even the prospect of being delivered from the goddess could reconcile him to the price he must pay for it. He was going to take a plunge into downright crime now; and if his friend the inspector came to hear of it, ruin must follow. And, in any case, the cloak and the ring would be gone beyond recovery, while these cut-throat housebreakers would henceforth have a hold over him; they might insist upon steeping him in blacker crime still, and he knew he would never have the courage to resist. As he thought of the new difficulties and dangers that compassed him round about, he was frequently on the verge of tears, and his couch that night was visited by dreadful dreams, in which he sought audience of the Evil One himself at cross-roads, was chased over half London by police, and dragged over the other half by burglars, to be finally flattened by the fall of Aphrodite. AT LAST IX. "Does not the stone rebuke me For being more stone than it?" _Winter's Tale._ "Yet did he loath to see the image fair, White and unchanged of face, unmoved of limb!" _Earthly Paradise._ Leander's hand was very tremulous all the next day, as several indignant clients discovered, and he closed as early as he could, feeling it impossible to attend to business under the circumstances.