“Very well, my dear. I promise.”

As the door closed he threw away the stump he was smoking, and remained for a few moments in thought.

Then he drew another cigar from his case, lit it, and resumed the study of the little note-book.

★ 5 ★ A Thief in the Night

★ 5 ★

How long the light had been darting about the room like a very-much-enlarged firefly Jimmy did not know. It seemed to him like hours, for it had woven itself into an incoherent waking dream of his; and for a moment, as the mists of sleep passed away from his brain, he fancied that he was dreaming still. Then sleep left him, and he realised that the light, which was now moving slowly across the bookcase, was a real light.

That the man behind it could not have been there long was plain, or he would have seen the chair and its occupant. He seemed to be taking the room step by step. As Jimmy sat up noiselessly, and gripped the arms of the chair in readiness for a spring, the light passed from the bookcase to the table. Another foot or so to the left, and it would have fallen on Jimmy.

On it came. From the position of the ray Jimmy could see that the burglar was approaching on his side of the table. Though, until that day, he had not been in the room for two months, its geography was clearly stamped on his mind’s eye. He knew almost to a foot where his visitor was standing. Consequently when, rising swiftly from the chair he made a football dive into the darkness, it was no speculative dive. It had a conscious aim, and it was not restrained by any uncertainty as to whether the road to the burglar’s knees was clear or not.

His shoulder bumped into a human leg. His arms closed instantaneously on it and pulled. There was a yelp of dismay and a crash. The lantern bounced away across the room and wrecked itself on the roof of the steam-heater. Its owner collapsed in a heap on top of Jimmy.

Jimmy, underneath at the fall, speedily put himself uppermost with a twist of his body. He had every advantage. The burglar was a small man, and had been taken very much by surprise, and any fight there might have been in him in normal circumstances had been shaken out of him by the fall. He lay still, 

 Prev. P 26/196 next