"What the devil is the use of that?" shouted Mr. Rogers. "I want my furniture, and it's not in my house. What are the police for?"
"I want my horse!" Eustace set up another howl. He, together with his six brothers and sisters and the nursemaid, were now ranged behind their father, looking with large-eyed wonder at the sergeant.
"Look at these!" Mr. Rogers turned and with a sweep of his hand indicated his progeny as if he were a barrister calling attention to a row of exhibits. "What am I to do with them to-night?"
There was another howl from Eustace, and a whimper from Muriel the youngest.
The sergeant had not been on duty when Bindle called for the key, but he had heard it said that the key of No. 131 had been handed to the bearer of a letter from a firm of furniture-removers. This he explained to Mr. Rogers, regretting that apparently the letter itself had been put aside. On Monday the whole matter should be threshed out and the guilty brought to justice.
He gave the assurance rather as an official formality than as the result of any inherent conviction of his own.
"Monday?" almost shrieked Mr. Rogers. "What am I to do until Monday?"
The sergeant suggested that perhaps the neighbours might extend hospitality.
"Who is going to take in eleven people?" shouted Mr. Rogers. "We shall all starve!"
At this announcement the Rogerses, who were all sturdy trenchermen, set up such a howl as to bring Mrs. Rogers and the other maid out of the omnibus.
Just at that moment Archie Clark, a precocious youth of twelve, rode up full of importance and information. He pushed his way through the mass of Rogerses, and without preliminary shouted, "33 Lebanon Avenue, Chiswick; that's where the van went."
The sergeant picked up a pen and began to take down the address.
"Get into the bus, get in, all of you," shouted Mr. Rogers. He saw that little help was to be obtained from the police. In the hurry of getting off, somehow or other and in spite of his protests, Archie Clark was bundled into the omnibus and Eustace was left howling on the pavement beside Archie's bicycle.
Bindle had discovered at the office that the new occupants of 33 Lebanon Avenue expected to reach Chiswick about six o'clock on the day following the move. It was nearly a quarter to seven before their taxi hove in sight. Bindle sauntered up the avenue whistling, and arrived just in time to see Mr. Daniel Granger open the front door with a key, enter, and suddenly bolt out very hurriedly and examine the number; then he looked in again and called to Mrs. Granger, a thin little woman, with round black eyes and a porcelain smile that deceived no one.