have been hard put to it to explain the exact why-and-wherefore, but I was conscious of a feeling as regards Carsie that I didn’t like him. It was little I had ever seen of him, to be sure—twice or thrice at the Grange, in his mistress’s presence, and now and then in the village street—but there was something in his soft gait and his subdued manner of talking that made me think of things, animals, that slink. However, there was nothing slinking in his present approach; he came up confidently enough, and his first words were almost affectionate in their tone.
“Good-evening, Mr. Ben!” he said. “A nice evening, sir! Glad to see you out and about again—this summer air will do you good after your long spell indoors.”
I thanked him for his politeness, and stood looking at him, a bit awkwardly, and secretly wishing that he would go on his way. But he seemed inclined to linger, and, more than that, to talk.
“Any more news about these extraordinary mysteries, Mr. Ben?” he asked, with a glance which was plainly intended to suggest that whatever conversation might ensue was to be regarded as strictly confidential. “We hear next to nothing across there at the Grange—you’re more in the thick of things down here by the village.”
“I know of nothing very definite,” I answered.
He nodded, and began making holes in the turf at our feet with the ferrule of his neatly-rolled umbrella.
“Well, it’s as queer a business as ever I heard of in my life, Mr. Ben!” he remarked. “And I’ve seen a bit of the world—and some out-of-the-way bits, too! Of course, what most interests me is the burglary—that, I suppose, is what the police would call it—at our place. To be sure—between you and me, you know—I think my mistress laid herself open to that! If that Chinese vase is worth all that she now says it is—why, it was practically inviting burglars to come and take it when she let its picture and its situation in our drawing-room be advertised in a paper! There’ll be swell mobsmen in London, no doubt, that specialise in that sort of thing. Of course, I never had the least idea that the vase was in any way valuable—no more than any other old ornament of its sort! Seems remarkable, Mr. Ben, that a bit of a thing like that should be worth—thousands of pounds, I understand?”
“It’s because of its rarity,” I answered. “I don’t suppose there are many like it, in England, anyhow.”
“Just so—I suppose that’s it,” he assented. “I’ve no knowledge of that sort of thing myself. But those two little images, now, that went at the same time, Mr. Ben? Do you think—you’ll have had opportunities of hearing things that I haven’t—do you think, now, that they’d be worth anything? Anything handsome, I mean, of course.”
“Can’t say, Mr. Carsie,” I replied. “I’ve no means of knowing.”
He nodded again, as if fully accepting my statement, and went on punching holes in the turf.
“Just so—just so!” he said. “Well, it’s an odd thing, Mr. Ben, and perhaps what should be called a coincidence, that those little images—ugly things they are, too!—had only been there in that cabinet cupboard a day or two when they were stolen! I saw the mistress put them there myself. She was dusting out that cabinet one day when I was in the drawing-room, and she says, all of a sudden, ‘That shelf would do with something more on it, I think, Carsie,’ she says. ‘And I believe I’ve got the very things locked up somewhere.’ And she went out of the room and presently came back with those two images, and put them in the cabinet, one on each side that Chinese vase. ‘That looks better,’ she said, as if she admired the effect. Couldn’t see it myself, you know, Mr. Ben!—foul and loathsome objects I call those figures, one of ’em particularly.”
“I never saw them,” said I, seeing him pause for my opinion.
“Well, they’re not in accordance with what you may style English taste,” he continued. “One of ’em—why, it had ever so many heads and arms—a monstrosity, I call it! And t’other had some animal’s head instead of a human being’s! But there’s no accounting for taste, and of course the mistress has lived in India, and she’s used to seeing such objects, no doubt. However, there was a queer thing happened that day she put those images in the open cabinet, Mr. Ben. I chanced to go into the drawing-room that afternoon while the mistress was playing lawn-tennis with young Mr. Bryce in the garden, and lo! and behold, there was that Indian fellow, Mandhu Khan, a-worshipping of those images! Fact, Mr. Ben! Anyway, he was bending down in front of ’em, making queer motions with his hands and arms; it gave me quite a turn! Made me think of a line of Mr. Kipling’s poetry, which I’m partial to—