‘Hollo! what did you put out the light for?’ he angrily answered; and as she could just distinguish his white shirt sleeves, she sprang to him. Steps went hurriedly down the stairs. ‘Gone!’ they both cried at once; Mervyn, with an imprecation on the darkness, adding, ‘Go and ring the bell. I’ll watch here.’
She obeyed, but the alarm had been given, and the house was astir. Candle-light gleamed above—cries, steps, and exclamations were heard, and she was obliged to hurry down, to save herself from being run over. Two figures had joined Mervyn, the voice of one proclaiming her as Bertha, quivering with excitement. ‘In there? My emeralds are in there! Open the door, or he will make off with my—my emeralds!’
‘Safe, my child? Don’t stand before that door,’ cried Miss Fennimore, pulling Phœbe back with a fond, eager grasp.
‘Here, some of you,’ shouted Mervyn to the men, whose heads appeared behind the herd of maids, ‘come and lay hold of the fellow when I unlock the door.’
The women fell back with suppressed screams, and readily made way for the men, but they shuffled, backed, and talked of pistols, and the butler suggested the policeman.
‘The policeman—he lives two miles off,’ cried Bertha. ‘He’ll go out of window with my emeralds! Unlock the door, Mervyn.’
‘Unlock it yourself,’ said Mervyn, with an impatient stamp of his foot. ‘Pshaw! but thank you,’ as Miss Fennimore put into his hand his double-barrelled gun, the first weapon she had found—unloaded, indeed, but even as a club formidable enough to give him confidence to unlock the door, and call to the man to give himself up. The servants huddled together like sheep, but there was no answer. He called for a light. It was put into his hand by Phœbe, and as he opened the door, was blown out by a stream of cold air from the open window.
The thief was gone. Everybody was ready to press in and look for him in every impossible place, but he had evidently escaped by the leads of the portico beneath; not, however, with
‘my emeralds’—he had only attempted the lock of the jewel cabinet.
Phœbe hurried to see whether Maria had been frightened, and finding her happily asleep, followed the rest of the world down-stairs, where the servants seemed to be vying with each other in the magnitude of the losses they announced, while Mervyn was shouting himself hoarse with passionate orders that everything should be left alone—doors, windows, plate-chests, and all—for the inspection of the police; and human nature could not resist lifting up and displaying signs of the robbery every moment, in the midst of the storm of vituperation thus excited.