[Illustration: "I STAGGERED TO AN EASY CHAIR."]
Yes--I was robbed. And I had been so very sure that to leave the premises to take care of themselves was so exceedingly wise an expedient. "Cocksure Kippen" had been my nickname in Bermondsey since I had been in the pawnbrokering, just because I had opinions of my own, and did not call on other people to let me know _their_ views of a question upon which I had made up my mind. What did I want with other people's opinions, when I knew my own were ever so much better? But I was a little crestfallen on the present occasion--I will say that. And it was my own fault for going down to Tom's--I will say that too. What did I want with country air? I had not been ailing anything. I had always considered a fortnight in Tom Brisket's company a frightful waste of time. I was never without an excellent appetite, and I measured forty-one inches round the chest, one inch for every year of my life, I had said jocosely, only yesterday, before I returned to town, but there was no jocosity in me when I was at home again--if this bear-garden could be called home, that is, or made to look like home ever any more!
[Illustration: "'IT WAS A CLEAN JOB,' THE POLICEMAN SAID."]
It was a clean job, the policeman said--quite admiringly--when I had strength to reach the front door and call him in. Why had I not gone round to the station-house, the policeman 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.