Atlas Nightshade

Day 72

"Ah, my child, that I do; and indeed there is no wish of me to add to

your anguish. But just think, what can we do, until all the world be at

movement. Then will come our time. I have thought and thought, and it

seems to me that the simplest way is the best of all. Now we wish to get

into the house, but we have no key; is it not so?" I nodded.

"Now suppose that you were, in truth, the owner of that house, and could

not still get in; and think there was to you no conscience of the

housebreaker, what would you do?"

"I should get a respectable locksmith, and set him to work to pick the

lock for me."

"And your police, they would interfere, would they not?"

"Oh, no! not if they knew the man was properly employed."

"Then," he looked at me as keenly as he spoke, "all that is in doubt is

the conscience of the employer, and the belief of your policemen as to

whether or no that employer has a good conscience or a bad one. Your

police must indeed be zealous men and clever--oh, so clever!--in reading

the heart, that they trouble themselves in such matter. No, no, my

friend Jonathan, you go take the lock off a hundred empty house in this

your London, or of any city in the world; and if you do it as such

things are rightly done, and at the time such things are rightly done,

no one will interfere. I have read of a gentleman who owned a so fine

house in London, and when he went for months of summer to Switzerland

and lock up his house, some burglar came and broke window at back and

got in. Then he went and made open the shutters in front and walk out

and in through the door, before the very eyes of the police. Then he

have an auction in that house, and advertise it, and put up big notice;

and when the day come he sell off by a great auctioneer all the goods of

that other man who own them. Then he go to a builder, and he sell him

that house, making an agreement that he pull it down and take all away

within a certain time. And your police and other authority help him all

they can. And when that owner come back from his holiday in Switzerland

he find only an empty hole where his house had been. This was all done

_en règle_; and in our work we shall be _en règle_ too. We shall not go

so early that the policemen who have then little to think of, shall deem

it strange; but we shall go after ten o'clock, when there are many

about, and such things would be done were we indeed owners of the

house."

I could not but see how right he was and the terrible despair of Mina's

face became relaxed a thought; there was hope in such good counsel. Van

Helsing went on:--

"When once within that house we may find more clues; at any rate some of

us can remain there whilst the rest find the other places where there be

more earth-boxes--at Bermondsey and Mile End."