The Second Christmas Megapack. Гарриет Бичер-Стоу
the fitful flashing of his lamp in a far corner.
“He’s beat me to ut!” muttered The Hopper, realizing that Muriel’s father was indeed on burglary bent, his obvious purpose being to purloin, extract, and remove from its secret hiding-place the coveted plum-blossom vase. Muriel, in her longing for a Christmas of peace and happiness, had not reckoned with her father’s passionate desire to possess the porcelain treasure—a desire which could hardly fail to cause scandal, if it did not land him behind prison bars.
This had not been in the program, and The Hopper weighed judicially his further duty in the matter. Often as he had been the chief actor in daring robberies, he had never before enjoyed the high privilege of watching a rival’s labors with complete detachment. Wilton must have known of the concealed cupboard whose panel fraudulently represented the works of Thomas Carlyle, the intent spectator reflected, just as Muriel had known, for though he used his lamp sparingly Wilton had found his way to it without difficulty.
The Hopper had no intention of permitting this monstrous larceny to be committed in contravention of his own rights in the premises, and he was considering the best method of wresting the vase from the hands of the insolent Wilton when events began to multiply with startling rapidity. The panel swung open and the thief’s lamp flashed upon shelves of pottery.
At that moment a shout rose from somewhere in the house, and the library lights were thrown on, revealing Wilton before the shelves and their precious contents. A short, stout gentleman with a gleaming bald pate, clad in pajamas, dashed across the room, and with a yell of rage flung himself upon the intruder with a violence that bore them both to the floor.
“Roger! Roger!” bawled the smaller man, as he struggled with his adversary, who wriggled from under and rolled over upon Talbot, whose arms were clasped tightly about his neck. This embrace seemed likely to continue for some time, so tenaciously had the little man gripped his neighbor. The fat legs of the infuriated householder pawed the air as he hugged Wilton, who was now trying to free his head and gain a position of greater dignity. Occasionally, as opportunity offered, the little man yelled vociferously, and from remote recesses of the house came answering cries demanding information as to the nature and whereabouts of the disturbance.
The contestants addressed themselves vigorously to a spirited rough-and-tumble fight. Talbot, who was the more easily observed by reason of his shining pate and the pink stripes of his pajamas, appeared to be revolving about the person of his neighbor. Wilton, though taller, lacked the rotund Talbot’s liveliness of attack.
An authoritative voice, which The Hopper attributed to Shaver’s father, anxiously demanding what was the matter, terminated The Hopper’s enjoyment of the struggle. Enough was the matter to satisfy The Hopper that a prolonged stay in the neighborhood might be highly detrimental to his future liberty. The combatants had rolled a considerable distance away from the shelves and were near a door leading into a room beyond. A young man in a bath-wrapper dashed upon the scene, and in his precipitate arrival upon the battle-field fell sprawling across the prone figures. The Hopper, suddenly inspired to deeds of prowess, crawled through the window, sprang past the three men, seized the blue-and-white vase which Wilton had separated from the rest of Talbot’s treasures, and then with one hop gained the window. As he turned for a last look, a pistol cracked and he landed upon the terrace amid a shower of glass from a shattered pane.
A woman of unmistakable Celtic origin screamed murder from a third-story window. The thought of murder was disagreeable to The Hopper. Shaver’s father had missed him by only the matter of a foot or two, and as he had no intention of offering himself again as a target he stood not upon the order of his going.
He effected a running pick-up of the Lang-Yao, and with this art treasure under one arm and the plum-blossom vase under the other, he sprinted for the highway, stumbling over shrubbery, bumping into a stone bench that all but caused disaster, and finally reached the road on which he continued his flight toward New Haven, followed by cries in many keys and a fusillade of pistol shots.
Arriving presently at a hamlet, where he paused for breath in the rear of a country store, he found a basket and a quantity of paper in which he carefully packed his loot. Over the top he spread some faded lettuce leaves and discarded carnations which communicated something of a blithe holiday air to his encumbrance. Elsewhere he found a bicycle under a shed, and while cycling over a snowy road in the dark, hampered by a basket containing pottery representative of the highest genius of the Orient, was not without its difficulties and dangers, The Hopper made rapid progress.
Halfway through New Haven he approached two policemen and slowed down to allay suspicion.
“Merry Chris’mas!” he called as he passed them and increased his weight upon the pedals.
The officers of the law, cheered as by a greeting from Santa Claus himself, responded with an equally hearty Merry Christmas.
VIII.
At three o’clock The Hopper reached Happy Hill Farm, knocked as before at the kitchen door, and was admitted by Humpy.
“Wot ye got now?” snarled the reformed yeggman.
“He’s gone and done ut ag’in!” wailed Mary, as she spied the basket.
“I sure done ut, all right,” admitted The Hopper good-naturedly, as he set the basket on the table where a few hours earlier he had deposited Shaver. “How’s the kid?”
Grudging assurances that Shaver was asleep and hostile glances directed at the mysterious basket did not disturb his equanimity.
Humpy was thwarted in an attempt to pry into the contents of the basket by a tart reprimand from The Hopper, who with maddening deliberation drew forth the two glazes, found that they had come through the night’s vicissitudes unscathed, and held them at arm’s length, turning them about in leisurely fashion as though lost in admiration of their loveliness. Then he lighted his pipe, seated himself in Mary’s rocker, and told his story.
It was no easy matter to communicate to his irritable and contumelious auditors the sense of Muriel’s charm, or the reasonableness of her request that he commit burglary merely to assist her in settling a family row. Mary could not understand it; Humpy paced the room nervously, shaking his head and muttering. It was their judgment, stated with much frankness, that if he had been a fool in the first place to steal the child, his character was now blackened beyond any hope by his later crimes. Mary wept copiously; Humpy most annoyingly kept counting upon his fingers as he reckoned the “time” that was in store for all of them.
“I guess I got into ut an’ I guess I’ll git out,” remarked The Hopper serenely. He was disposed to treat them with high condescension, as incapable of appreciating the lofty philosophy of life by which he was sustained. Meanwhile, he gloated over the loot of the night.
“Them things is wurt’ mints; they’s more valible than di’mon’s, them things is! Only eddicated folks knows about ’em. They’s fer emp’rors and kings t’ set up in their palaces, an’ men goes nutty jes’ hankerin’ fer ’em. The pigtails made ’em thousand o’ years back, an’ th’ secret died with ’em. They ain’t never goin’ to be no more jugs like them settin’ right there. An’ them two ole sports give up their business jes’ t’ chase things like them. They’s some folks goes loony about chickens, an’ hosses, an’ fancy dogs, but this here kind o’ collectin’s only fer millionaires. They’s more difficult t’ pick than a lucky race-hoss. They’s barrels o’ that stuff in them houses, that looked jes’ as good as them there, but nowheres as valible.”
An informal lecture on Chinese ceramics before daylight on Christmas morning was not to the liking of the anxious and nerve-torn Mary and Humpy. They brought The Hopper down from his lofty heights to practical questions touching his plans, for the disposal of Shaver in the first instance, and the ceramics in the second. The Hopper was singularly unmoved by their forebodings.
“I guess th’ lady got me to do ut!” he retorted finally. “Ef I do time fer ut I reckon’s how she’s in fer ut, too! An’ I seen her pap breakin’ into a house an’ I guess I’d be a state’s witness fer that! I reckon they ain’t goin’