“There,” said Sikes, smacking his lips. “Now I’m ready.”
“For business?” inquired the Jew.
“For business,” replied Sikes; “so say what you’ve got to say.”
“About the crib at Chertsey, Bill?” said the Jew, drawing his chair forward, and speaking in a very low voice.
“Yes. Wot about it?” inquired Sikes.
“Ah! you know what I mean, my dear,” said the Jew. “He knows what I mean, Nancy; don’t he?”
“No, he don’t,” sneered Mr. Sikes. “Or he won’t, and that’s the same thing. Speak out, and call things by their right names; don’t sit there, winking and blinking, and talking to me in hints, as if you warn’t the very first that thought about the robbery. Wot d’ye mean?”
“Hush, Bill, hush!” said the Jew, who had in vain attempted to stop this burst of indignation; “somebody will hear us, my dear. Somebody will hear us.”
“Let ’em hear!” said Sikes; “I don’t care.” But as Mr. Sikes did care, on reflection, he dropped his voice as he said the words, and grew calmer.
“There, there,” said the Jew, coaxingly. “It was only my caution, nothing more. Now, my dear, about that crib at Chertsey; when is it to be done, Bill, eh? When is it to be done? Such plate, my dear, such plate!” said the Jew: rubbing his hands, and elevating his eyebrows in a rapture of anticipation.
“Not at all,” replied Sikes coldly.
“Not to be done at all!” echoed the Jew, leaning back in his chair.
“No, not at all,” rejoined Sikes. “At least it can’t be a put-up job, as we expected.”
“Then it hasn’t been properly gone about,” said the Jew, turning pale with anger. “Don’t tell me!”
“But I will tell you,” retorted Sikes. “Who are you that’s not to be told? I tell you that Toby Crackit has been hanging about the place for a fortnight, and he can’t get one of the servants in line.”
“Do you mean to tell me, Bill,” said the Jew: softening as the other grew heated: “that neither of the two men in the house can be got over?”
“Yes, I do mean to tell you so,” replied Sikes. “The old lady has had ’em these twenty years; and if you were to give ’em five hundred pound, they wouldn’t be in it.”
“But do you mean to say, my dear,” remonstrated the Jew, “that the women can’t be got over?”
“Not a bit of it,” replied Sikes.
“Not by flash Toby Crackit?” said the Jew incredulously. “Think what women are, Bill.”
“No; not even by flash Toby Crackit,” replied Sikes. “He says he’s worn sham whiskers, and a canary waistcoat, the whole blessed time he’s been loitering down there, and it’s all of no use.”
“He should have tried mustachios and a pair of military trousers, my dear,” said the Jew.
“So he did,” rejoined Sikes, “and they warn’t of no more use than the other plant.”
The Jew looked blank at this information. After ruminating for some minutes with his chin sunk on his breast, he raised his head and said, with a deep sigh, that if flash Toby Crackit reported aright, he feared the game was up.
“And yet,” said the old man, dropping his hands on his knees, “it’s a sad thing, my dear, to lose so much when we had set our hearts upon it.”
“So it is,” said Mr. Sikes. “Worse luck!”
A long silence ensued; during which the Jew was plunged in deep thought, with his face wrinkled into an expression of villainy perfectly demoniacal. Sikes eyed him furtively from time to time. Nancy, apparently fearful of irritating the housebreaker, sat with her eyes fixed upon the fire, as if she had been deaf to all that passed.
“Fagin,” said Sikes, abruptly breaking the stillness that prevailed; “is it worth fifty shiners extra, if it’s safely done from the outside?”
“Yes,” said the Jew, as suddenly rousing himself.
“Is it a bargain?” inquired Sikes.
“Yes, my dear, yes,” rejoined the Jew; his eyes glistening, and every muscle in his face working, with the excitement that the inquiry had awakened.
“Then,” said Sikes, thrusting aside the Jew’s hand, with some disdain, “let it come off as soon as you like. Toby and me were over the garden-wall the night afore last, sounding the panels of the door and shutters. The crib’s barred up at night like a jail; but there’s one part we can crack, safe and softly.”
“Which is that, Bill?” asked the Jew eagerly.
“Why,” whispered Sikes, “as you cross the lawn—”
“Yes?” said the Jew, bending his head forward, with his eyes almost starting out of it.
“Umph!” cried Sikes, stopping short, as the girl, scarcely moving her head, looked suddenly round, and pointed for an instant to the Jew’s face. “Never mind which part it is. You can’t do it without me, I know; but it’s best to be on the safe side when one deals with you.”
“As you like, my dear, as you like” replied the Jew. “Is there no help wanted, but yours and Toby’s?”
“None,” said Sikes. “ ’Cept a centre-bit and a boy. The first we’ve both got; the second you must find us.”
“A boy!” exclaimed the Jew. “Oh! then it’s a panel, eh?”
“Never mind wot it is!” replied Sikes. “I want a boy, and he musn’t be a big ’un. Lord!” said Mr. Sikes, reflectively, “if I’d only got that young boy of Ned, the chimbley-sweeper’s! He kept him small on purpose, and let him out by the job. But the father gets lagged; and then the Juvenile Delinquent Society comes, and takes the boy away from a trade where he was earning money, teaches him to read and write, and in time makes a ’prentice of him. And so they go on,” said Mr. Sikes, his wrath rising with the recollection of his wrongs, “so they go on; and, if they’d got money enough (which it’s a Providence they haven’t,) we shouldn’t have half a dozen boys left in the whole trade, in a year or two.”
“No more we should,”
