Then throwing open the door I stood on the sill facing my visitor, and threw the glare of the lighted candle full upon him, as he lolled in a careless, easy attitude against the bannisters.
I had been prepared for a burglar—but I had looked for one attired according to the traditions of my ancestors. But here was a gentlemanly, mild-featured individual, such as I should have expected to find filling the position of a professor of Latin—perhaps of theology—in Oxford University.
There was no appearance of a jimmy, or tools of any kind. Evidently here was a type of criminal with which history was unacquainted.
“Madam!” he exclaimed, bowing with the grace of a French courtier, “you are punctuality itself. And how charming!—no hysterics—no distressing scenes. Allow me.” He took the candle from my hand, and holding it aloft preceded me down the great oaken stairs, talking fluently all the while, but pausing at every other step to glance over his shoulder at me with coquettish politeness.
“I wish to assure you,” he remarked, “that I am no ordinary house-breaker. Burglary is with me a profession, though not the one (I confess) chosen for me by my parents. I saw, at an early age, that I must either descend to the level of the burglar, or raise him to the level of an artist. Behold, my dear lady, the result.”
He stood at the foot of the stairs and looked up at me.
“Shall we proceed to the diningroom?” he asked airily; “and, as I wish to give you no unnecessary trouble, let me say that I do not dabble in plated spoons; nothing but solid silver.”
I opened the old mahogany sideboard, in which Griffiths had, for years, placed the family heirlooms at night, and beheld my gentlemanly burglar stow them, one after another, in a capacious felt sack, which he carried in his hand.
“Charming!” he cried. “I am a connoisseur, I assure you, and I know silver from plate. These articles are really worth the risk of the enterprise.”
You ask me if I was not alarmed. No, I was not. Personal violence was not in his professional line, unless opposed. I summoned all my energies to outwit him. I thought much and said little, for I had no intention of allowing him to carry off my mother's silver.