The Burglar and the Blizzard Part 2

"So I will, thank you," said the burglar as if he had been asked to remove his hat, and with his left hand he slipped it off. The face that met Geoffrey's interested gaze was thin, yet ruddy, and tanned by exposure so that his very light brilliant eyes flared oddly in so dark a surrounding. Above, his sandy hair, which had receded somewhat from his forehead, curled up from his temples like a baby's. His upper lip was long and with a pleasant mouth gave his face an expression of humour.

His hands were ugly, but small.

They sat for some time without moving, the burglar engaged in bandaging the cut on his right hand with obvious indifference to Holland's presence, Geoffrey meanwhile studying him carefully. The process of bandaging over, the man reached out his hand toward the bookcase and, selecting a volume of Sterne, settled back comfortably in his chair.

Holland stared at him an instant in wonder, and then attempted to follow his example. But his attention to his book was much less concentrated than that of his captive, whose expression soon showed him to be completely absorbed.

They must have sat thus for an hour, before the burglar began to show signs of restlessness. He asked if it were still snowing, and looked distinctly disturbed on being told it was. At last he broke the silence again.

"You don't remember me, do you?" he said.

Geoffrey slowly raised his eyes without moving--his revolver was drooping in his right hand. He ran his mind over his criminal acquaintance unsuccessfully, and repeated:

"Remember you?"

"Yes, we were at school together for a time."

Geoffrey stared, and then exclaimed spontaneously:

"You used to be able to wag your ears."

"Can still."

"Why, you are Skinny McVay."

The man nodded. Neither was without a sense of humour, and yet saw nothing comic in these untender reminiscences.

"I remember the masters all hated you," said Geoffrey, "but you were straight enough then, weren't you?"

Again the man nodded. "I took to this sort of thing a month or so ago."

After a moment Geoffrey said:

"Did not I hear you were in the navy?"

"No," said McVay. "I was at Annapolis for a few months. I had an idea I should like the navy, but Heavens above! I could not stand the Academy.

They threw me out. It seems I had broken every rule they had ever made.

It was worse than State's prison."

"Are you in a position to judge?" asked Geoffrey coolly.

"No," said McVay, as if he nevertheless had information on the subject.

"Well, you will be soon," said Holland, not sorry for an opportunity to point out that his heart was not softened by recollections of his school days. But McVay appeared to ignore this intimation.

"Yes," he said ruminatively; "I've done a lot of things in my time."

"Well, I don't want to hear about them," said Geoffrey, who had no intention of being drawn into an intimate interchange. The burglar looked more surprised than angered at this shortness, and only said:

"Would you have any objection to my putting a match to that fire?"

"No," said Geoffrey, and McVay, with wonderful dexterity, managed to start a cheering blaze with his left hand.

For a few minutes Geoffrey's determined attention to his book discouraged his companion, but presently rapping the pages of Tristram Shandy with the back of his hand, he exclaimed:

"Sterne! Ah, there was a man! Something of my own type, too, it sometimes strikes me. Capable, you know, really a genius, but so unfortunately different from other people. Ordinary standards meant nothing to him--too original--sees life from another standpoint, entirely. That's me! I--"

"Sit down," roared Geoffrey.

"Oh, it's nothing, nothing," said McVay, "only I talk better on my feet."

"Well, you wouldn't talk as well with a bullet in you."

McVay sank back again in his chair. "Yes," he said, "that's me. Why, Holland, I have no doubt you would be surprised if you knew the number of things that I can do--that I am really proficient in. Anything with the hands," he waved his fingers supplely in the air, "is no trouble to me at all. I have at once a natural skill that most people take a lifetime to acquire."

"I'm told there's work for all where you are going."

McVay looked a trifle puzzled for an instant, but never allowing himself to remain at a loss, he said:

"Work! Do you really mean to say that you believe in a utilitarian Heaven, where we are going to work with our hands? For my part--"

"I had reference to the penitentiary," said Geoffrey.

"Oh, yes, of course, the penitentiary. There are some wonderful men in the penitentiary. You don't admit that, I suppose, with your conventional ideas; but to me they are just as admirable as any other great creative artist,--sculptor or financier. I see you don't quite get that. You are hemmed in by conventional standards, and your possessions, and all the things to which you attach such great importance."

"I don't attach so much importance that I steal them from other people,"

said Geoffrey.

"Philistine, Holland, philistine! Is not any one who has anything stealing from some one or other? Of course. But I see you don't catch the idea. Well, I dare say I would not either in your place--rather think I would not. My sister is just the same way. Sweet girl, witty in her own way, but philistine. She is so good as to be my companion, apparently on equal terms, in many ways my superior, but it would be impossible for me even to mention these ideas to her,--ideas which are of the greatest interest to me."

"I wonder," said Geoffrey, "how much of all this rubbish you believe?"

McVay smiled with great sweetness. "I wonder myself, Holland. Still it is undeniably amusing, and the main thing is that I enjoy life,--a hard life too in many ways. Fate has dealt me some sad blows. Look at such a coincidence as your turning up to-night, of all nights in the year."

"It was scarcely a coincidence. I came--"

"Oh, I know, I know. You came to see after your sister's things, but still, if you look at it a little more carefully, you will see that it _was_ a coincidence that you should be by nature a man of prompt action.

Nine men out of ten in your place--still, I'm not depressed. You cannot say, Holland, that I behave or talk like a man who has ten years of hard labour before him, can you? I dare say you have never been thrown with a person who showed less anxiety. Yet as a matter of fact, there is something preying on my mind. Something entirely aside from anything you could imagine."

"You don't tell me!" said Geoffrey, who did not know whether to be most amused or infuriated by his companion's conversation.

"I am about to tell you," said McVay graciously, "I am very seriously worried about my sister. In fact I don't see that there is any getting away from it; you will have to let me go out for an hour or so and get her."

"Let you do _what_?"

"Get my sister. She's living in a little hut in your woods, and I am actually afraid she will be snowed up."

"It seems highly probable."

"Well, then, I must go and get her."