The first thing I did on getting to the dining-room was to open the window. I had half a mind to smash it, so as to give an extra bit of local colour to the affair, but decided not to on account of the noise. I had put my lantern on the table, and was just reaching out for it, when something happened. What it was for the moment I couldn’t have said. It might have been an explosion of some sort or an earthquake. Some solid object caught me a frightful whack on the chin. Sparks and things occurred inside my head and the next thing I remember is feeling something wet and cold splash into my face, and hearing a voice that sounded like old Bill’s say, “Feeling better now?”
I sat up. The lights were on, and I was on the floor, with old Bill kneeling beside me with a soda siphon.
“What happened?” I said.
“I’m awfully sorry, old man,” he said. “I hadn’t a notion it was you. I came in here, and saw a lantern on the table, and the window open and a chap with a knife in his hand, so I didn’t stop to make inquiries. I just let go at his jaw for all I was worth. What on earth do you think you’re doing? Were you walking in your sleep?”
“It was Elizabeth,” I said. “Why, you know all about it. She said she had told you.”
“You don’t mean——”
“The picture. You refused to take it on, so she asked me.”
“Reggie, old man,” he said. “I’ll never believe what they say about repentance again. It’s a fool’s trick and upsets everything. If I hadn’t repented, and thought it was rather rough on Elizabeth not to do a little thing like that for her, and come down here to do it after all, you wouldn’t have stopped that sleep-producer with your chin. I’m sorry.”
“Me, too,” I said, giving my head another shake to make certain it was still on.
“Are you feeling better now?”
“Better than I was. But that’s not saying much.”
“Would you like some more soda-water? No? Well, how about getting this job finished and going to bed? And let’s be quick about it too. You made a noise like a ton of bricks when you went down just now, and it’s on the cards some of the servants may have heard. Toss you who carves.”
“Heads.”
“Tails it is,” he said, uncovering the coin. “Up you get. I’ll hold the light. Don’t spike yourself on that sword of yours.”
It was as easy a job as Elizabeth had said. Just four quick cuts, and the thing came out of its frame like an oyster. I rolled it up. Old Bill had put the lantern on the floor and was at the sideboard, collecting whisky, soda, and glasses.
“We’ve got a long evening before us,” he said. “You can’t burn a picture of that size in one chunk. You’d set the chimney on fire. Let’s do the thing comfortably. Clarence can’t grudge us the stuff. We’ve done him a bit of good this trip. To-morrow’ll be the maddest, merriest day of Clarence’s glad New Year. On we go.”
We went up to my room, and sat smoking and yarning away and sipping our drinks, and every now and then cutting a slice off the picture and shoving it in the fire till it was all gone. And what with the cosiness of it and the cheerful blaze, and the comfortable feeling of doing good by stealth, I don’t know when I’ve had a jollier time since the days when we used to brew in my study at school.
We had just put the last slice on when Bill sat up suddenly, and gripped my arm.
“I heard something,” he said.
I listened, and, by Jove, I heard something, too. My room was just over the dining-room, and the sound came up to us quite distinctly. Stealthy footsteps, by George! And then a chair falling over.
“There’s somebody in the dining-room,” I whispered.
There’s a certain type of chap who takes a pleasure in positively chivvying trouble. Old Bill’s like that. If I had been alone, it would have taken me about three seconds to persuade myself that I hadn’t really heard anything after all. I’m a peaceful sort of cove, and believe in living and letting live, and so forth. To old Bill, however, a visit from burglars was pure jam. He was out of his chair in one jump.