"Yes. But it was infernally risky. I was afraid the Customs might open them at Charing Cross," Carlier replied. "You never need fear. They never open anything here. This is not like Calais or Boulogne." "I shan't take them back." "You won't require to, my dear Adolphe," laughed Ansell, who, though in London he posed as a young man of means, was well known in a certain criminal set in Paris as "The American," because of his daring exploits in burglary and robbery with violence. A year before, this exemplary young man, together with Adolphe Carlier, known as "_Fil-en-Quatre_," or "The Eel," had been members of the famous Bonnemain gang, to whose credit stood some of the greatest and most daring jewel robberies in France. For several years the police had tried to bring their crimes home to them, but without avail, until the great robbery at Louis Verrier's, in the Rue des Petit-Champs, when a clerk in the employ of the well-known diamond dealer was shot dead by Paul Bonnemain. The latter was arrested, tried for murder, and executed, the gang being afterwards broken up. The malefactors had numbered eight, six of whom, including Bonnemain himself, had been arrested, the only ones escaping being Carlier, who had fled to Bordeaux, where he had worked at the docks till the affair had blown over, while Ansell, whose _dossier_ showed a very bad record, had sought refuge in England. The pair had not met since the memorable evening nine months before, when Ansell had been sitting in the Grand Cafe, and Carlier had slipped in to warn him that the police had arrested Bonnemain and the rest, and had already been to his lodgings. Two hours later, without baggage or any encumbrance, he had reached Melun in a hired motor-car, and had thence left it at midnight for Lyons, after which he doubled his tracks and travelled by way of Cherbourg across to Southampton, while Carlier had, on that same night, fled to Orleans. Part of the proceeds of the robbery at the diamond merchants had been divided up by the gang prior to Bonnemain's arrest--or rather the fifty thousand francs advanced by the Jew broker from Amsterdam to whom they always sold their booty. Therefore both men had been possessed of funds. Like others of their profession, they made large gains, but spent freely, and were continually short of money. Old Bonnemain, however, had brought burglary to a fine art, and from the proceeds of each _coup_ he used to keep back a certain amount out of which to assist the needy among his accomplices.