by W. W. Jacobs
now."
Mr. Bodfish pursed up his lips and made another note. Then he took aspill from the fireplace, and lighting a candle, went slowly andcarefully up the stairs. He found nothing on them but two caked rims ofmud, and being too busy to notice Mr. Negget's frantic signalling, calledhis niece's attention to them.
"What do you think of that?" he demanded, triumphantly.
"Somebody's been up there," said his niece. "It isn't Emma, because shehasn't been outside the house all day; and it can't be George, because hepromised me faithful he'd never go up there in his dirty boots."
Mr. Negget coughed, and approaching the stairs, gazed with the eye of astranger at the relics as Mr. Bodfish hotly rebuked a suggestion of hisniece's to sweep them up.
"Seems to me," said the conscience-stricken Mr. Negget, feebly, "asthey're rather large for a woman."
"Mud cakes," said Mr. Bodfish, with his most professional manner; "asmall boot would pick up a lot this weather."
"So it would," said Mr. Negget, and with brazen effrontery not only methis wife's eye without quailing, but actually glanced down at her boots.
Mr. Bodfish came back to his chair and ruminated. Then he looked up andspoke.
"It was missed this morning at ten minutes past twelve," he said, slowly;"it was there last night. At eleven o'clock you came in and found Mrs.Driver sitting in that chair."
"No, the one you're in," interrupted his niece.
"It don't signify," said her uncle. "Nobody else has been near theplace, and Emma's box has been searched.
"Thoroughly searched," testified Mrs. Negget.
"Now the point is, what did Mrs. Driver come for this morning?" resumedthe ex-constable. "Did she come--"
He broke off and eyed with dignified surprise a fine piece of wirelesstelegraphy between husband and wife. It appeared that Mr. Negget sentoff a humorous message with his left eye, the right being for some reasonclosed, to which Mrs. Negget replied with a series of frowns and staccatoshakes of the head, which her husband found easily translatable. Underthe austere stare of Mr. Bodfish their faces at once regained theirwonted calm, and the ex-constable in a somewhat offended manner resumedhis inquiries.
"Mrs. Driver has been here a good bit lately," he remarked, slowly.
Mr. Negget's eyes watered, and his mouth worked piteously.
"If you can't behave yourself, George--began began his wife, fiercely.
"What is the matter?" demanded Mr. Bodfish. "I'm not aware that I'vesaid anything to be laughed at."
"No more you have, uncle," retorted his niece; "only George is such astupid. He's got an idea in his silly head that Mrs. Driver--But it'sall nonsense, of course."
"I've merely got a bit of an idea that it's a wedding-ring, not a brooch,Mrs. Driver is after," said the farmer to the perplexed constable.
Mr. Bodfish looked from one to the other. "But you always keep yours on,Lizzie, don't you?" he asked.
"Yes, of course," replied his niece, hurriedly; "but George has alwaysgot such strange ideas. Don't take no notice of him."
Her uncle sat back in his chair, his face still wrinkled perplexedly;then the wrinkles vanished suddenly, chased away by a huge glow, and herose wrathfully and towered over the match-making Mr. Negget. "How dareyou?" he gasped.
Mr. Negget made no reply, but in a cowardly fashion jerked his thumbtoward his wife.
"Oh! George! How can you say so?" said the latter.
"I should never ha' thought of it by myself," said the farmer; "but Ithink they'd make a very nice couple, and I'm sure Mrs. Driver thinksso."
The ex-constable sat down in wrathful confusion, and taking up hisnotebook again, watched over the top of it the silent charges andcountercharges of his niece and her husband.
"If I put my finger on the culprit," he asked at length, turning to hisniece, "what do you wish done to her?"
Mrs. Negget regarded him with an expression which contained all theChristian virtues rolled into one.
"Nothing," she said, softly. "I only want my brooch back."
The ex-constable shook his head at this leniency.
"Well, do as you please," he said, slowly. "In the first place, I wantyou to ask Mrs. Driver here to tea to-morrow--oh, I don't mind Negget'sridiculous ideas--pity he hasn't got something better to think of; ifshe's guilty, I'll soon find it out. I'll play with her like a cat witha mouse. I'll make her convict herself."
"Look here!" said Mr. Negget, with sudden vigour. "I won't have it.I won't have no woman asked here to tea to be got at like that. There'sonly my friends comes here to tea, and if any friend stole anything o'mine, I'd be one o' the first to hush it up."
"If they were all like you, George," said his wife, angrily, "where wouldthe law be?"
"Or the police?" demanded Mr. Bodfish, staring at him.
"I won't have it!" repeated the farmer, loudly. "I'm the law here, andI'm the police here. That little tiny bit o' dirt was off my boots, Idare say. I don't care if it was."
"Very good," said Mr. Bodfish, turning to his indignant niece; "if helikes to look at it that way, there's nothing more to be said. I onlywanted to get your brooch back for you, that's all; but if he's againstit--"
"I'm against your asking Mrs. Driver here to my house to be got at," saidthe farmer.
"O' course if you can find out who took the brooch, and get it back againanyway, that's another matter."
Mr. Bodfish leaned over the table toward his niece.
"If I get an opportunity, I'll search her cottage," he said, in a lowvoice. "Strictly speaking, it ain't quite a legal thing to do, o course,but many o' the finest pieces of detective work have been done bybreaking the law. If she's a kleptomaniac, it's very likely lying aboutsomewhere in the house."
He eyed Mr. Negget closely, as though half expecting another outburst,but none being forthcoming, sat back in his chair again and smoked insilence, while Mrs. Negget, with a carpet-brush which almost spoke, sweptthe pieces of dried mud from the stairs.
Mr. Negget was the last to go to bed that night, and finishing his pipeover the dying fire, sat for some time in deep thought. He had from thefirst raised objections to the presence of Mr. Bodfish at the farm, butfamily affection, coupled with an idea of testamentary benefits, had sowrought with his wife that he had allowed her to have her own way. Nowhe half fancied that he saw a chance of getting rid of him. If he couldonly enable the widow to catch him searching her house, it was highlyprobable that the ex-constable would find the village somewhat too hot tohold him. He gave his right leg a congratulatory slap as he thought ofit, and knocking the ashes from his pipe, went slowly up to bed.
He was so amiable next morning that Mr. Bodfish, who was trying toexplain to Mrs. Negget the difference between theft and kleptomania,spoke before him freely. The ex-constable defined kleptomania as a sortof amiable weakness found chiefly among the upper circles, and cited thecase of a lady of title whose love of diamonds, combined with greathospitality, was a source of much embarrassment to her guests.
For the whole of that day Mr. Bodfish hung about in the neighbourhood ofthe widow's cottage, but in vain, and it would be hard to say whether heor Mr. Negget, who had been discreetly shadowing him, felt thedisappointment most. On the day following, however, the ex-constablefrom a distant hedge saw a friend of the widow's enter the cottage, anda little later both ladies emerged and walked up the road.
He watched them turn the corner, and then, with a cautious glance round,which failed, however, to discover Mr. Negget, the ex-constable strolledcasually in the direction of the cottage, and approaching it from therear, turned the handle of the door and slipped in.
He searched the parlour hastily, and then, after a glance from thewindow, ventured up stairs. And he was in the thick of his self-imposedtask when his graceless nephew by marriage, who had met Mrs. Driver andreferred pathetically to a raging thirst which he had hoped to havequenched with some of her home-brewed, brought the ladies hastily backagain.
"I'll go
round the back way," said the wily Negget as they approached thecottage. "I just want to have a look at that pig of yours."
He reached the back door at the same time as Mr. Bodfish, and placing hislegs apart, held it firmly against the frantic efforts of the exconstable.The struggle ceased suddenly, and the door opened easily just as Mrs.Driver and her friend appeared in the front room, and the farmer, with akeen glance at the door of the larder which had just closed,