Page:Hornung - The amateur cracksman (Scribner, 1905).djvu/290

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The Amateur Cracksman

afford to chance it. No, I can't have you there to make sure. The great point is that neither of us should be seen from the time we turn in. A couple of ship's boys do sentry-go on these decks, and they shall be our witnesses; by Jove, it'll be the biggest mystery that ever was made!"

"If von Heumann doesn't resist."

"Resist! He won't get the chance. He drinks too much beer to sleep light, and nothing is so easy as to chloroform a heavy sleeper: you've even done it yourself on an occasion of which it's perhaps unfair to remind you. Von Heumann will be past sensation almost as soon as I get my hand through his ventilator. I shall crawl in over his body, Bunny, my boy!"

"And I?"

"You will hand me what I want, and hold the fort in case of accidents, and generally lend me the moral support you've made me require. It's a luxury. Bunny, but I found it devilish difficult to do without it after you turned pi!"

He said that von Heumann was certain to sleep with a bolted door, which he, of

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