He made his preparations to capture that innocent accomplice; his scheme was now fully developed.
He had heard that this kind of fowl was of a very fierce and dangerous sort; but the plan must be pursued at all risks. He took his handkerchief from his pocket—a large bandanna of the noblest—and with a decision worthy of a better cause, whipped it round the gaudy coloured neck after the fashion of a cravat. A muffled protest proceeded from that insulted organ.
"You wait!" muttered Mr. Collop vindictively, as though the poor bird were his enemy. He looked about him. There was a large square of black cloth on his host's writing-table. With that he made a second deadener, hoodlike, entirely covering the animal's head, and tied it securely on; all that now penetrated from within was a faint, varying sound which one had to be in the closest neighbourhood to hear. Next he cut off a piece of tape from the coil neatly disposed by the side of the official papers, and bound the fierce talons securely. Then with infinite precaution he slipped off the chain from its ring, and held the exotic biped firmly in both hands.
The clipped wings fluttered a little, but they were contained by strong hands. Mr. Collop made for the window. He laid his living parcel down, where it struggled in vain; opened the shutters with infinite precautions for avoiding sound—above, Aunt Amelia, happily deaf, was deep in slumber; pulled up the sash so slowly that it seemed an age; went back on tiptoe, extinguished the light and—a stroke of genius—went noisily upstairs, bearing the parrot, to give full warning to anyone who might be still awake that he had gone to bed, after all. He tumbled his bed about. He returned.
He came down gingerly in shoeless feet, and stepped out into the night.
The stillness was awful, but all propitious to his plan. The thin snow lay even and spotless on the grass on either side of the avenue. The nearer trees were clear in the half light. The gravel walk, though well swept and clear of snow, leaving no trace of his passage, was bitterly cold to his thinly clad feet—for his socks were of silk, I am glad to say.
There was a wintry mist and beyond it the white suffused radiance of the moon.
He looked up cautiously. There was not a chink of light in any window. All slept, and the Holy One presided in the heavens above, beyond the fog in her blurred aureole of light. It was the hour for great deeds. And a great deed was done.
Mr. Collop, with infinite precautions, lifted up his captive and planted its two talons firmly upon the snow to the side of the swept alleyway and pointing at a small, most aged and somewhat stunted oak about thirty yards ahead of him on the edge of the swept path. He himself kept crouching on the swept gravel and holding poor Attaboy to the side above the snow. Then, still creeping noiselessly along, he planted the bird's claws down again about six inches further. And so on, hop by hop.
It was merciful in Providence to have spared that tropical exile any too sensitive nerves in its claws; but it protested. It thought the march an indignity, and it was abominably cold. The parrot squirmed. The parrot resisted. But the parrot was for it.