Draw off your companies
from the Piazza on that pretense. Then take fifteen or twenty men you
can trust--not more, for it's no use taking more than you can help,
and resistance is out of the question. About two, when everything is
quiet, surround the bank. Jones will open when you knock. Don't hurt
him, but take him outside and keep him quiet. Go in and take the
money. Here's the key of the safe. Then, if you like, set fire to the
place."
"Bravo, my boy!" said the colonel. "There's stuff in you after all.
Upon my word, I was afraid you were going to turn virtuous."
I laughed as wickedly as I could.
"And what are you going to get out of it?" he said. "I suppose that's
coming next?"
As the reader knows, I wasn't going to get anything out of it, except
myself and the signorina. But it wouldn't do to tell the colonel that;
he would not believe in disinterested conduct. So I bargained with
him for a _douceur_ of thirty thousand dollars, which he promised so
readily that I strongly doubted whether he ever meant to pay it.
"Do you think there's any danger of Whittingham making an attack while
we're engaged in the job?"
The colonel was, in common parlance, getting rather _warmer_ than I
liked.
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