n asked, and told the Inspector
I was off for a holiday, as other people generally did? Oh, yes, that
was very likely! Why had not I insured in a Burglary Company? Oh,
yes--and let no end of people know that there was a furnished house
at Streatham with nobody inside of it for a fortnight. Did I think I
could trust my housekeeper? Trust Martha Kibbey, who was my father's
housekeeper before me--dear, deaf, old, palsy-stricken Kibbey, with a
sister in the Cookshops Almshouses, Caterham, and with whom she spent
her holiday invariably. Kibbey, whom the policeman and I found upstairs
in a fit, in her own bedroom, having it all to herself, like a quiet,
unobtrusive old soul as she always was. She _had_ come into the house in
good time, and realising the position, had rushed upstairs to her room,
first of all, to see what had been taken of those worldly goods of her
own, in which she was more naturally interested than anybody else.
And when she discovered that her chest of drawers had been opened
with an indifferent chisel, and that a silver watch of her
grandfather's--weighing one pound and a quarter--had disappeared, along
with an apple-scoop, also of precious metal, belonging to her late
husband, who was "gummy," Mrs. Kibbey became a physical wreck, fit for
nothing, and comprehending next to nothing. When she understood that
I was in the house--safe and sound--she went into hysterics of
thankfulness of so violent a description that I had to leave her with
police-constable 906, and run across the road for the doctor.

The police made a great fuss over the robbery. The Inspector called
later on and entered all the particulars in a notebook, and looked at
the broken doors and the hole in the breakfast parlour shutters, through
which admittance had been obtained, and the general turn-out of
everything in the middle of each room, and then adding his testimony to
the neatness of the job, took his departure, promising to let me know
when anything turned up.

"We shall want a complete list of the articles you miss, so that we can
send round to the pawnbrokers," he had said before leaving me.

"I'm a pawnbroker myself," I replied.

"Ah! then you'll get one."

"Thankee. Perhaps I shall get one of the thieves too."

"Well, you'll know your own property, I expect, sir," he said, with a
most unbecoming grin, as he took himself off the premises. I did not see
him again. I hope I never shall, the unsympathetic beast.

Time passed