Frivolities Part 25

Here she is, you see."

There was a slight tapping against the bedroom door.

"Come in!" exclaimed Miss Jones.

The door opened and Miss Welsh came in. She was not exactly in full dress. Mr. Bennett, who through it all was conscious in a horrid, nightmare sort of way, thought that he had never seen anyone look so extremely unprepossessing as Miss Welsh looked in disarray. The instant she was inside the room Miss Jones raised her hand. Miss Welsh stood still. Miss Jones turned to Mr. Bennett.

"I have her entirely under control. Some of the results I have obtained with her are really quite remarkable. But you shall see for yourself and judge." The young lady addressed Miss Welsh.

"Well, Hannah, here is Mr. Bennett, you see."

It was evident that Miss Welsh did see. She seemed struggling to give expression to her feelings in speech. Miss Jones went calmly on--

"He is here on business--he is committing burglary, in fact. You were right in supposing that was his profession. The mistake you made was in imagining that he would have shared the spoil with you. I think, Mr. Bennett, I am right in saying that you would not have given Hannah much?"

"Not a sou."

"Probably you did not even intend to marry her?"

"I would have seen her hung first."

Mr. Bennett made this plain statement with quite curious ferocity.

Miss Welsh rubbed her eyes with the sleeve of what we will suppose, for courtesy's sake, was her nightdress.

"That makes nine of 'em," she said.

"That makes nine of them, as Hannah says. Hannah, Mr. Bennett, is a woman of experience. She has had nine promises of marriage, but not one of them came off. But I don't think, Hannah, that you ever had a promise from a burglar before?"

"Never before."

"Then, at least, that is a new experience, and a new experience is so precious. Is there any remark you would like to make, Hannah, appropriate to the occasion?"

For a moment it did not appear as though there were. Then it seemed that there at least was one.

"I should like to scratch his eyes out," observed the damsel--aetat forty-five or so.

Miss Cecilia smiled. Mr. Bennett immediately smiled too. But there was this difference--that while the lady's smile was a thing of beauty, the gentleman's was a peculiar ghastly grin.

Miss Jones remarked Mr. Bennett's facial contortions with an appearance of considerable interest.

"I never had them smile _quite_ so sympathetically before. In that respect, Mr. Bennett, you are unique. Charmed to have met you, I am sure." The young lady knocked the ash off her cigarette with her dainty finger and turned her attention to Miss Welsh. "I don't think, Hannah, that we will have any scratching out of eyes."

When she had thus delivered herself Miss Jones reclined in silence for some moments on her pillows, discharging the smoke of her cigarette through her delicate pink nostrils. When she spoke again it was to the gentleman she addressed herself.

"Mr. Bennett, would you mind closing that box of diamonds and replacing them in the drawer?"

Mr. Bennett shut the box with a little snap and carried it across the room. There was something odd about his demeanour as he did this--an appearance as though he were not engaged in the sort of labour which physics pain. Miss Welsh, standing as though rooted to the ground, followed him with her eyes. The expression of her countenance was one of undisguised amazement. Her face was eloquent with a yearning to relieve herself with words. When Mr. Bennett put the box back where he had found it and shut the drawer she gave a kind of gasp. From Mr.

Bennett there came a distinctly audible groan. "Turn round, Mr.

Bennett, and look at me." Mr. Bennett did as he was bidden. He was not altogether a bad-looking young man--his chief fault, from the physiognomist's point of view, lay in the steely tint of his clear blue eyes. Miss Jones's great big orbs seemed to rest upon him with a certain degree of pleasure. "I need scarcely point out to you that the burglary is a failure. The princ.i.p.al cause of failure is that you are too subjective. You have quite one of the most subjective organisations I have yet encountered. The ideal criminal must keep himself abreast with the advance of science. In failing to do so, Mr.

Bennett, you have been guilty of a blunder which, in your case, is certainly worse than crime. You are a dreadful example of the burglar's blunder. I might label you, preserve you in your hypnotic state, and use you as an ill.u.s.tration of a lecture I am now preparing.

But I have other views, and it is not impossible I may encounter you again. Go to my writing-table. You will find a sheet of foolscap paper. Write what I dictate."

Mr. Bennett went to the writing-table. He found the sheet of foolscap paper. "Write, in good, bold characters:--

"_I am George Bennett_, _The Burglar_.

_For further particulars apply at Acacia Villa_."

Mr. Bennett wrote as she dictated, displaying the above legend in a striking round hand right across the sheet of paper. Miss Jones addressed Miss Welsh:

"Hannah, in my workbasket you will find a needle and some good stout thread. Get it out." Miss Welsh got it out. "Mr. Bennett, take off that sack which you have wound round your body beneath your coat." Mr.

Bennett took it off. "b.u.t.ton up your coat again." Mr. Bennett b.u.t.toned it up. "Hannah, take that sheet of foolscap paper, on which Mr.

Bennett has written at my dictation, and sew it firmly to the front of his b.u.t.toned-up coat."

Miss Welsh took the sheet of foolscap paper. She approached Mr.

Bennett, holding it in her hand. Mr. Bennett's hands dropped to his sides. He regarded her with a look which was the reverse of amiable.

She eyed him with what were doubtless intended to be soft, pleading glances. When she reached him she placed her hand timidly against his chest. Mr. Bennett looked particularly glum. She raised the other hand which held the sheet of foolscap paper and spread it out upon his breast. It was legible at quite a considerable distance:

"_I am George Bennett_, _The Burglar_.

_For further particulars apply at Acacia Villa_."

It was hardly the sort of inscription a chivalrous spirit would wish to have displayed upon his breast by the object of his heart's desire, or even by the woman he had promised to marry in the course of the following morning. Miss Welsh, who seemed to feel the truth of this, looked at him with sad, beseeching eyes. But Mr. Bennett's glumness perceptibly increased. Then Miss Welsh proceeded to sew the inscription on. It must be owned that it was a conscientious piece of sewing. She first tacked it round the edges, then she sewed it up and down and across, from corner to corner, with a hundred careful st.i.tches, in such a way that he would have had to tear it to fragments, piecemeal, in order to get it off. It would have been quite impossible to unb.u.t.ton his coat while he had that inscription on. The process seemed to make Miss Welsh extremely sad. It made Mr. Bennett sadder still. When she had finished her conscientious piece of work she crossed her hands meekly in front of her and looked up at him with a rapturous gaze. Mr. Bennett did not seem to feel rapturous at all.

"Now, Hannah, take the sack which Mr. Bennett wore beneath his coat and hold it open for him, and enable him to step inside."

The sack was lying on the floor. Miss Welsh, with a half-uttered sigh, picked it up, and held the mouth wide open. Mr. Bennett scowled first at the lady, then at the bag. He raised his left foot gingerly, and placed it in the opening. Miss Welsh a.s.sisted him in thrusting his leg well home. Then there was a pause.

"Perhaps, Mr. Bennett, you had better put you arms round Hannah's neck," observed Miss Jones.

She was engaged in lighting a second cigarette at the ashes of the first.

Mr. Bennett put his arms about Miss Welsh's neck and thrust his other leg into the sack.

"Draw it up about his waist," remarked Miss Jones. By now the second cigarette was well alight.

Miss Welsh drew it up about his waist. It was a good-sized sack, so that, although a man of at least the average height, being drawn up it reached his loins.

"Mr. Bennett, hold the sack in that position with both your hands."

Mr. Bennett held the sack in that position with both his hands.

"Hannah, in the bottom of the hanging cupboard you will find some cord. Get it out."

In a mechanically melancholy way Miss Welsh did as she was told. The cord, being produced, took the shape of a coil of rope, about the thickness of one's middle finger.

"Make two holes in the front of the sack and pa.s.s the cord through them." With the same sad air Miss Welsh acted on Miss Jones's fresh instructions. She made two holes in the front of the sack and pa.s.sed the two ends of the cord through them.

"Now pa.s.s the cord over his shoulders, make two holes in the back of the sack, pa.s.s the cord through them, then draw it tight."