“Have you? Well, look here, Frank, I was up in the loft last night, and I forgot to lock up the bin.”
It was just as I thought.
“I forgot it once or twice before, thinking about something else; and now some one has been and locked it up, and taken the key away.”
“Indeed?” I said coldly.
“Yes. Don’t look at a fellow that way. I didn’t say you’d taken it, because, of course, if you had, you would have put it up on the beam. I say, who could it have been?”
“Ah! who could it have been?” I said.
“What’s the matter with you? How queer you are! I tell you, I don’t think it was you, but old fatty Dicksee; I’ve seen him sneaking about the yard a good deal lately, watching me, and he must have found out where we kept the key, and he has nailed it for some lark, or to tease me. Yes, that’s it. You see if, next time we go, we don’t find a dead dog, or a dead cat, or something nasty, tucked in the bin. Some of ’em served me that way before, when Bob Hopley’s old donkey died, and they put in its head. What shall we do?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I have the key.”
“You have? Oh, I am glad!”
“I went up and found the key there, so I locked it and put it in my pocket.”