“I’m sure it has gone, sir,” I said eagerly. “I was looking for it yesterday.”
“Ah, well, you’ll see when we get downstairs,” said Mr Rowle, and he went on from room to room, always sending a few puffs of smoke into each, till we went downstairs, meeting Jane on the way, looking very hot and indignant as she carried up the little china candlesticks, and sure enough, to my great surprise, on entering the study, there was the pen-tray in its familiar place.
“There; what did I tell you?” said Mr Rowle, laughing. “It was underneath some papers, or p’raps Jane took it down to give it a rub or two.”
“That must have been it, sir,” I said; and I went out to have a walk round the garden. But somehow everything looked so different: the grass had not been cut for days, the beds were rapidly growing weedy, and the flowers and fruit looked so different, or seemed to look so different, that I was glad to go back into the house, where I found another stranger, a little dapper, red-faced man, who nodded to me familiarly, and then resumed a conversation with Mr Rowle.
“My clerk will be here directly,” I heard him say, “and we’ll soon run over the inventory.”
“The sooner the better, I say, Mr Jevins, sir,” said Mr Rowle, “and then we shall know what we’re at.”
“You don’t mean—” began the newcomer.
“No, sir, I don’t, because I’ve had too sharp a hye on ’em; but there’s one young lady here as wouldn’t take nothing out of her reach, and if I was Mr Blakeford I’d make a clean sweep out, and the sooner the better.”
The little man drew a silver pencil-case out of his pocket, slid out a pen, and then, taking a little ink-bottle from another pocket, he took out the cork and balanced it on the top of a china figure; then, securing the ink-bottle to one of the buttons of his coat by a little loop, he pulled out a long pocket-book, drew from it an elastic band with a snap, opened it, and fastened the leaves back with the band, just as a tall, gaunt, elderly man came in with a pen behind one ear, a pencil behind the other, making him look in profile like some peculiar kind of horned snail.
I watched their acts with boyish interest as they proceeded methodically to set down the contents of room after room, punching the chairs, turning up the settees, feeling the curtains, and tapping the mirrors, till at the end of the second day, all being done, they closed their books with a snap, nodded to me, and after a short chat with Mr Rowle took their departure.