She had suspected the maid, she had suspected the clerk. She even suspected Jason Philip himself; she thought that he was appropriating money to pay his drinking expenses. And she suspected Philippina. But in no case could she produce the evidence; her spying and investigating were in vain. Then the thieving stopped again.
For Philippina, who had been doing all the stealing, feared she might be discovered, and adopted a less hazardous method of making herself a rich woman: she stole books, and sold them to the second-hand dealer. She was sly enough to take books that had been on the shelves for a long while, and not to do all her business with one dealer: she would go first to one and then to another.
The money which she scraped together in this way, as secretly and greedily as a jack-daw, she hid in the attic. There was a loose brick in the wall near the chimney. This she removed; and in time she removed other bricks. And once her treasures were safely stored in the hole, she would replace the bricks and set a board up against them.
When everything had become perfectly quiet and she felt wholly at ease, she would sit down, fold her hands, and give herself up to speechless meditation, an evil and fanatic dream playing over her features as she did.
One evening in February, Theresa and Philippina chanced to be sitting by the lamp mending the week's wash. Jason Philip entered the room; there was a sheepish expression on his face; he rubbed his hands.
Since Theresa did not consider it worth her trouble to ask him why he was in such a good humour, he suddenly laughed out loud and said: "Now we can pack up, my dear. I see it in writing: The wonder of the age, or the humiliated relatives. A touching tableau presented by Herr Daniel Nothafft of the Schimmelweis family."
"I do not understand you; you are talking like a harlequin again," said Theresa.
"Compositions by Daniel are going to be played in a public concert," Philippina informed her mother with that old, harsh voice of hers.
"How do you know?" asked Theresa, in a tone of evident distrust.
"The miracle is to take place in the Harmony Society," said Jason Philip, by way of confirming Philippina's remark, with an expression of enigmatic malevolence. "There is to be a public rehearsal on Thursday, and there is nothing on earth that can keep me away. The music dealer, Zierfuss, has given me two tickets, and if you want to, why, you can come along and see how they make a local hero out of a plain loafer."