Chapter V A Thief in the Night
It was a warm August evening, and the windows of Sea View Cottage were opened wide to let in the faint breeze which had risen with the turning of the tide. The lamp was lit in the little sitting-room, and in its soft glow sat Mrs. Power, her head bending low over her work.
Suddenly she looked up.
“What was that curious noise?” she exclaimed. “It sounded as if someone was in the garden. I really wish old Mrs. Sheppard would keep a dog. It is not safe to be so far off the high road, and she so deaf.”
She rose and went to the window, peering vainly out into the darkness, where nothing was to be seen save the dim outlines of the trees lazily waving their branches against the starlit sky.
“I wonder if it was Robin walking in his sleep again,” she said. “I’ll take the light and see if he’s all right.”
She turned to go, but before lifting the lamp she glanced at the watch which lay beside it on the table.
“Half-past ten!” she remarked, as she took the key and wound it up. “Late hours for this Sleepy Hollow, but I think I’ll go on a little longer with my embroidery before I go to bed.”
Replacing the watch, she disappeared with the light into the passage. As the door closed, a man’s face glanced stealthily in at the window, and the next moment a rough figure in a long overcoat had crept unobserved into the room.
“Ladies shouldn’t leave their jewellery so tempting-like in a poor man’s way,” he muttered. “What else can they expect but to find their trinkets gone when they come back? Serves ’em right for dangling them in front of a fellow’s nose!”
He made his way cautiously to the table and groped about with his hands until he found what he wanted. “Gold!” he ejaculated, “I’m pretty sure of it by the feel, and a gent’s too, by the size of it; not to speak of a good thick chain that’ll bring in a nice little sum by itself.”
He slipped his spoils into the pocket of his coat, and stood pondering for a moment.
“Is there nothing else that I could nab?” he said to himself. “Silver spoons aren’t usually found in country lodgings, so it’s no use looking in the sideboard, but I think I caught sight of a missionary-box on the mantelpiece which might be worth enquiring into, seeing there’s not much else to bag.
“Ha! Pretty heavy!” he added, as he weighed the box is his hand. “With no disrespect to the missionary, I’ll relieve him from having to dispose of too much wealth. Pennies, no doubt, mostly, but they tell no tales, and come in handy for a drink.”
As he was in the act of putting the box into his other pocket, he saw to his dismay that the light was again approaching the door.
“I’ve particular reasons for not showing my attractive face in this neighbourhood, lady,” he continued under his breath, “so with your leave I’ll decline the pleasure of making your acquaintance this evening, and go back by the way I came.”
He made his way hastily to the window, and was in the act of getting out, when the light of the lamp flashed out over the garden from the porch.
Madelaine had found her little son fast asleep in the tiny room which opened off her own, and her motherly anxiety being allayed, her thoughts turned again to outside dangers.
“I’ll close the parlour window,” she said, “as it’s getting late, just in case there might be some one loitering about.”
By experience she had discovered that to do this efficiently it was necessary to push the sash up from outside, so placing the lamp on the porch-seat, she walked a few steps along the path which led by the front of the cottage, and proceeded to shut up the casement with a bang. The stranger had just time to withdraw his hands from the sill, and to start back into the darkness of the room.
“Look out there!” he growled low to himself, “I don’t want to leave the tip of one of my fingers in exchange for what I’ve taken. Now,” he added, “the question is—how shall I get out of this hole? My knowledge of old Mother Sheppard’s diggings in the past ought to serve me in good stead to-night. If I can only manage to slip into the dark passage that leads to the kitchen, I know there’s a capital hidey-hole under the stairs, where I’ve lain in ambush as a boy, and into which I expect I could squeeze again at a pinch.”
Sure enough, before Madelaine had re-entered the house and reached the sitting-room with her lamp, the intruder had gained the coveted refuge, and was crouching down unseen within the recess. Here he remained, cramped and silent, until the last sounds had died away in the house, and the uneasy watcher had laid herself down to rest. Not till then did he creep forth from his shelter and make his way to the kitchen, into which he walked as one intimate with the place.
“Mother Sheppard generally had a shakedown in the room at the side,” he soliloquized. “If she’s as deaf as she used to be, there’s not much fear of disturbing her, even if I dance a hornpipe on the table. Anyway, there’s no doubt she’s a good sleeper, judging by the noise she makes over it. Sounds more like a concert of tin whistles and drums, than one old woman snoring!”
The burglar peeped in at the half-open door, and by the light which came from the still flickering fire in the kitchen, he made out the humble couch whereon Mrs. Sheppard lay.
“Wonder if she keeps her hoard under her pillow,” he continued. “They say these skinflints usually do. Anyhow it’s worth a search, and I’ll hope for a bit of good fortune this time.”
He went up to the bed and gently inserted his hand beneath the bolster, on which reposed the aged head with its close-fitting nightcap and neat grey hair.
“Nothing there!” he said. “Perhaps it’s under the mattress. I’ll have one more try, and then I’ll go.”
If a flash-light had been turned at that moment suddenly upon the scene, it would have disclosed the evil look of triumph which just then rested on the man’s face. With a sardonic grin he withdrew his arm, clutching in his hand a leather bag, tied tightly up with knotted string. Returning to the kitchen, he quietly let himself out by the back door, after having feasted royally upon goodly slices of the bread and ham which he found so conveniently ready to his use in the old dame’s cupboard.
“Now, where are those two nice fat ducks I collared so cleverly before I went round to the front?” he said. “One of them nearly gave me away when I cotched it round the neck. I thought some one would be sure to hear its parting quack. I’ll be off with them and the rest of the swag to Westmarket, before the sun is up, and amuse myself there for a few days, before coming back here to pay my respects to the old man. No one saw me to-night, and if I turn up like a good innocent prodigal son in a week’s time, not a soul will connect me with this neat little job.”
It would indeed be difficult to decide which of the three inhabitants of the cottage was most distressed when the morning revealed to them their loss.
Poor old Mrs. Sheppard sat rocking herself to and fro in her chair by the kitchen fire, her hands over her face, and the tears streaming down her shrivelled cheeks. “It’s all my little savin’s as have gone,” she moaned, “every mortal halfpenny as I’ve worked so hard to put by. There’s naught to keep me out of the workhouse now—not even enough to bury me, if so be as I die of a broken heart to-night.”
“I don’t believe I should mourn the theft of all the money I have in the house as I do that of the watch,” said Madelaine, as for the twentieth time she hunted in every likely and unlikely place in hopes that she might absently have laid it down somewhere the night before. “That which my dear husband always wore, and which was sent to me after he was dead! It may be silly of me, but the face of that watch seemed to me as the face of a friend. It comforted me when I looked at it, and made me feel nearer my lost one than anything else.”
As for Robin, he was inconsolable. To think that his beloved Lily and Snowball should have been carried off! His two special pets who were so tame they would follow him all round the garden and eat out of his hand! It was too dreadful to think that their pretty sleek necks had been wrung, and that they would be plucked and eaten like any common barndoor fowl. Such a possibility had never before entered his head. To him they were only the beautiful creatures which the good God had created for his special joy. It is to be feared that the disappearance of the missionary-box sank into comparative insignificance beside this larger grief.
It was vain to recount their woes to the stolid village policeman who came pompously to enquire and make elaborate notes of all.
“He’s been a clever fellow, that!” was the verdict. “But whoever he is, he’s got clear away, and left no clue either. It’s a mystery, m’am, and a mystery it will remain for ever.”
“It’s a pity I’ve just come a few days too late,” said Benjamin Green, old Timothy’s son, as he sat taking a glass at the “Bull Inn,” the Saturday after the burglary. “Hopeless stick-in-the-muds you are in this out-of-the-way place. If you want to be wakened up it’s to America you should go, where I’ve been all these years. Away there, they’d have hunted the scapegrace out in no time, aye, and strung him up on the nearest tree too, for daring to rob widows and children in that heartless manner. If only I’d been here in time, I bet you I’d have found him for you! It’s just my luck only to have arrived to-day.”
“Have you been up to see your old father yet, Green?” asked one of the men.
“No,” answered Ben. “I thought I’d fortify myself here before setting out for the affecting interview. It’s not every day that a long-lost son returns home, and I always feel the better for a dram.”
“What be you a-going to do with him, now you’ve come back?” continued his questioner. “Be you going to leave him to tumble over the crag along with the house, or be you going to make him move, and take Squire Field’s offer before it be too late?”
“What offer is that?” asked Ben. “I haven’t heard of it before.”
“Mean to say you’ve been half an hour in the place, and nobody’s told you how the squire says he’ll give old Timothy one hundred pounds for the bit of ground he owns on the top of the cliff? Which sum he’ll pay in solid gold the day the old man quits the house. They say he’s wild to pull down the whole place seeing as how it spoils the view from his grand windows.”
Ben whistled.
“I’ve not been up to see my father yet, but I warrant you, he’ll not stay much longer in yonder cottage if that’s the way the wind blows. One hundred pounds in solid gold! What can the old chap be dreaming of? Why on earth didn’t he move the same hour as the offer came?”
“Says he’ll never budge till he’s carried out feet foremost,” replied another of the company.
“There’s no use argufying with him. He’s wonderful firm.”
“It’s not argument I’ll use,” answered Ben. “It’s common sense first, and then force, if need be. You tell me the house may fall on to the beach any day now, and if that happens Mr. Field may cancel his bid for the land. Of course one might draw him again by threatening to build another house a little further back, but that’s a risk. If the offer is in writing it would be safer to hold him to it now, so long as the walls are there. Catch me losing a hundred pounds for the sake of an old man’s fads. I’ll go up to-night, and we’ll soon see who’s got the strongest will!”
It was a strangely assorted pair that sat opposite each other in the little cottage on the cliff that evening.
Ben’s countenance was dark with passion, and his eyes were fixed with a vicious scowl upon his father’s frail shrinking form.
“You say you’ll not move,” he shouted. “You dare tell me that, and a hundred pounds at stake.”
“I dare,” was the answer, and the quavering voice seemed to take on a new strength as he said the words. “Never will I sleep under any roof but this. Here was I born, and here will I die, and no man has a right to say me nay. Many a time have I prayed for thee, Ben, and longed to see thee again, my only child, but for such a home-coming as this did I never reckon. It had been better that you had never returned at all. Go now, and leave your old father to die in peace, alone with God.”
For a moment, even Ben’s rough spirit was checked as he heard the quiet decision come from the pale thin lips.
The old man looked up with calm and reproachful eyes into his son’s face. “I’m in the Hand of the Almighty,” he added. “I’m not afraid.”
As he spoke, a sudden sound like the report of a gun made the two men look round, and Ben involuntarily took a few steps in the direction of the door.
“Why, it’s a great crack just come in the ceiling beyond the passage,” he exclaimed. “The next thing will be that the wall itself will be down. If you don’t think it worth while saving your own neck, I certainly shan’t risk mine a minute longer. But you needn’t flatter yourself that the last word has been said. If the house is still standing to-morrow morning I’ll be up by sunrise to carry you out bodily, with or without leave, it matters not to me, and I’ll see to it that the money’s paid—cash down—before that same sun has set.”
With an oath, Ben hastily quitted the house and went back to console himself in the hospitable parlour of “The Bull,” where he aired his grievances before an admiring and sympathizing group, only too glad to drink at his expense to the success of his desires.