the necessity, of an accomplice. Implements might be needed--disguises
would be required--swift horses for flight to be hired--and, should the
robbery succeed, the bulk of the spoil would be no doubt in bank-notes,
which it would need some other hand than his own to dispose of, either at
the bank next morning at the earliest hour, or by transmission abroad.
For help in all this Jasper knew no one to compare to Cutts; nor did he
suspect his old ally of any share in the conspiracy against him, of which
he had been warned by Mrs. Crane. Resolving, therefore, to admit that
long-tried friend into his confidence, and a share of the spoils, he
quickened his pace, arrived at the railway-station in time for a late
train to London, and, disdainful of the dangers by which he was
threatened in return to any of the haunts of his late associates, gained
the dark court wherein he had effected a lodgment on the night of his
return to London, and roused Cutts from his slumbers with tales of an
enterprise so promising, that the small man began to recover his ancient
admiration for the genius to which he had bowed at Paris, but which had
fallen into his contempt in London.

Mr. Cutts held a very peculiar position in that section of the great
world to which he belonged. He possessed the advantage of an education
superior to that of the generality of his companions, having been
originally a clerk to an Old Bailey attorney, and having since that early
day accomplished his natural shrewdness by a variety of speculative
enterprises both at home and abroad. In these adventures he had not only
contrived to make money, but, what is very rare with the foes of law, to
save it. Being a bachelor, he was at small expenses, but besides his
bachelor's lodging in the dark court, he had an establishment in the
heart of the City, near the Thames, which was intrusted to the care of
a maiden sister, as covetous and as crafty as himself. At this
establishment, ostensibly a pawnbroker's, were received the goods which