moment enjoying the reluctant hospitality of Happy Hill Farm. He resolved to continue his policy of silence as to the young heir’s whereabouts until Muriel had shown her hand. She had not wholly abandoned the thought of telephoning to her father-in-law’s, he found, from her next remark.
“You think it’s all right, don’t you? It’s strange Roger didn’t leave me a note of some kind. Our cook left a week ago and there was no one here when he left.”
“I reckon as how yer kid’s all right, miss,” he answered consolingly.
Her voluble confidences had enthralled him, and her reference of this matter to his judgment was enormously flattering. On the rough edges of society where he had spent most of his life, fellow craftsmen had frequently solicited his advice, chiefly as to the disposition of their ill-gotten gains or regarding safe harbors of refuge, but to be taken into counsel by the only gentlewoman he had ever met roused his self-respect, touched a chivalry that never before had been wakened in The Hopper’s soul. She was so like a child in her guilelessness, and so brave amid her perplexities!
“Oh, I know Roger will take beautiful care of Billie. And now,” she smiled radiantly, “you’re probably wondering what I’ve been driving at all this time. Maybe”—she added softly—“maybe it’s providential, your turning up here in this way!”
She uttered this happily, with a little note of triumph and another of her smiles that seemed to illuminate the universe. The Hopper had been called many names in his varied career, but never before had he been invested with the attributes of an agent of Providence.
“They’s things wot is an’ they’s things wot ain’t, miss; I reckon I ain’t as bad as some. I mean to be on the square, miss.”
“I believe that,” she said. “I’ve always heard there’s honor among thieves, and”—she lowered her voice to a whisper—“it’s possible I might become one myself!”
The Hopper’s eyes opened wide and he crossed and uncrossed his legs nervously in his agitation.
“If—if”—she began slowly, bending forward with a grave, earnest look in her eyes and clasping her fingers tightly—“if we could only get hold of father’s Lang-Yao jar and that plum-blossom vase Mr. Talbot has—if we could only do that!”
The Hopper swallowed hard. This fearless, pretty young woman was calmly suggesting that he commit two felonies, little knowing that his score for the day already aggregated three—purse-snatching, the theft of an automobile from her own door, and what might very readily be construed as the kidnapping of her own child!
“I don’t know, miss,” he said feebly, calculating that the sum total of even minimum penalties for the five crimes would outrun his natural life and consume an eternity of reincarnations.
“Of course it wouldn’t be stealing in the ordinary sense,” she explained. “What I want you to do is to play the part of what we will call a reversible Santa Claus, who takes things away from stupid people who don’t enjoy them anyhow. And maybe if they lost these things they’d behave themselves. I could explain afterward that it was all my fault, and of course I wouldn’t let any harm come to you. I’d be responsible, and of course I’d see you safely out of it; you would have to rely on me for that. I’m trusting you and you’d have to trust me!”
“Oh, I’d trust ye, miss! An’ ef I was to get pinched I wouldn’t never squeal on ye. We don’t never blab on a pal, miss!”
He was afraid she might resent being called a “pal,” but his use of the term apparently pleased her.
“We understand each other, then. It really won’t be very difficult, for papa’s place is over on the Sound and Mr. Talbot’s is right next to it, so you wouldn’t have far to go.”
Her utter failure to comprehend the enormity of the thing she was proposing affected him queerly. Even among hardened criminals in the underworld such undertakings are suggested cautiously; but Muriel was ordering a burglary as though it were a pound of butter or a dozen eggs!
“Father keeps his most valuable glazes in a safe in the pantry,” she resumed after a moment’s reflection, “but I can give you the combination. That will make it a lot easier.”
The Hopper assented, with a pontifical nod, to this sanguine view of the matter.
“Mr. Talbot keeps his finest pieces in a cabinet built into the bookshelves in his library. It’s on the left side as you stand in the drawing-room door, and you look for the works of Thomas Carlyle. There’s a dozen or so volumes of Carlyle, only they’re not books—not really—but just the backs of books painted on the steel of a safe. And if you press a spring in the upper right-hand corner of the shelf just over these books the whole section swings out. I suppose you’ve seen that sort of hiding-place for valuables?”
“Well, not exactly, miss. But havin’ a tip helps, an’ ef there ain’t no soup to pour—”
“Soup?” inquired Muriel, wrinkling her pretty brows.
“That’s the juice we pour into the cracks of a safe to blow out the lid with,” The Hopper elucidated. “Ut’s a lot handier ef you’ve got the combination. Ut usually ain’t jes’ layin’ around.”
“I should hope not!” exclaimed Muriel.
She took a sheet of paper from the leathern stationery rack and fell to scribbling, while he furtively eyed the window and again put from him the thought of flight.
“There! That’s the combination of papa’s safe.” She turned her wrist and glanced at her watch. “It’s half-past eleven and you can catch a trolley in ten minutes that will take you right past papa’s house. The butler’s an old man who forgets to lock the windows half the time, and there’s one in the conservatory with a broken catch. I noticed it today when I was thinking about stealing the jar myself!”
They were established on so firm a basis of mutual confidence that when he rose and walked to the table she didn’t lift her eyes from the paper on which she was drawing a diagram of her father’s house. He stood watching her nimble fingers, fascinated by the boldness of her plan for restoring amity between Shaver’s grandfathers, and filled with admiration for her resourcefulness.
He asked a few questions as to exits and entrances and fixed in his mind a very accurate picture of the home of her father. She then proceeded to enlighten him as to the ways and means of entering the home of her father-in-law, which she sketched with equal facility.
“There’s a French window—a narrow glass door—on the veranda. I think you might get in there!” She made a jab with the pencil. “Of course I should hate awfully to have you get caught! But you must have had a lot of experience, and with all the help I’m giving you—!”
A sudden lifting of her head gave him the full benefit of her eyes and he averted his gaze reverently.
“There’s always a chance o’ bein’ nabbed, miss,” he suggested with feeling.
Shaver’s mother wielded the same hypnotic power, highly intensified, that he had felt in Shaver. He knew that he was going to attempt what she asked; that he was committed to the project of robbing two houses merely to please a pretty young woman who invited his coöperation at the point of a revolver!
“Papa’s always a sound sleeper,” she was saying. “When I was a little girl a burglar went all through our house and carried off his clothes and he never knew it until the next morning. But you’ll have to be careful at Mr. Talbot’s, for he suffers horribly from insomnia.”
“They got any o’ them fancy burglar alarms?” asked The Hopper as he concluded his examination of her sketches.
“Oh, I forgot to tell you about that!” she cried contritely. “There’s nothing of the kind at Mr. Talbot’s, but at papa’s there’s a switch in the living-room, right back of a bust—a white marble thing on a pedestal. You turn it off there. Half the time papa forgets to switch it on before he goes to bed.