“You—you—ah—ah——choof!—you did that!” cried McSweeny, as soon as he could speak, ferociously fixing Sandy with his eye. “You’ll suffer for—ah—ah——choo—oof! Begorra, I’ve a good moind to stick your head in it, and make you swallow a bag of it before I let you out.”
“Me, sir!” cried Sandy, in pious horror. “May I never soop another lum if I ever thought o’ sic a thing. See, I’ll gie ye a brush doon, sir. It’s a kind o’ a pity ye had thae licht-coloured troosers on, but they’ll clean at the dyer’s, and never look a whit the waur.”
“Don’t thrubble yourself to brush me, for I’m not done wid the hole yet,” savagely responded McSweeny; “but for this I’d have let you off aisy, but now, sweet bad luck to you! I’m as black as I can be, and I’ll see to the bottom of this before I stir.”
McSweeny at the same moment seized a big shovel which he found in one corner of the soot-bin, and deliberately began to spade out the soot into the middle of the kitchen floor, carefully examining every shovelful before he pitched it over the partition. While he was thus engaged bending over a spadeful of the soot, Sandy managed to make a sign to his wife, who stooped to the floor, picked something up, and threw it over into the heap of soot rising in the middle of her kitchen.
McSweeny was just conscious of some swift movement having taken place, but saw neither the movement nor the direction of the pitch.
“What divil’s game are you two up to now?” he suspiciously growled, looking from one to the other. “I’ll have to take yez both. You throw’d something just now—what was it?”
The sweep and his wife raised their hands as if horrified at the accusation, and solemnly declared that McSweeny’s imagination had deceived him; that they had nothing to throw, and they would as soon attempt to fly in the air as to try to deceive such a world-renowned and keen-sighted detective as he. McSweeny, still suspicious, came out of the soot-bin and searched about for a little, but found nothing; and then, after a deal of snorting and swearing, went back to his work, and soon had all the loose soot out in the kitchen. There remained then only the sacks at the back to be removed, and McSweeny was diligently setting his brawny arms and shoulders to them when I descended the stair and stood before them. I stood transfixed with astonishment at the strange scene, till a familiar grin from the demon of darkness at work in the soot-bin made me look at him more closely, and then I faintly recognised my chum.
“Good heavens! what does all this mean?” I exclaimed, after a hearty laugh at McSweeny’s solemn face and the eloquent burst of abuse which he heaped upon the sweep and his wife.
“It means,” he responded, making a virtue of a necessity, “that I’m not afraid to do my duty properly, even though I do get a little black by it, and spoil a good suit of clothes into the bargain. Jamie, avick, I’ve found nothing, but we may take them both on suspicion, for a pair of bigger blackguards never walked the streets unhung.”
It seemed to me that had the sweep been an innocent and honest man, he would have resented this language hotly. He did not. He was all smoothness and politeness still, and officiously offered to help me in any way. What I liked worse was to observe that he was also all cheerfulness. There was even a twinkle of gloating and delight in the corners of his demurely drawn eyes over McSweeny’s grinning and discomfiture, or possibly over the consciousness that he was perfectly safe. Now, I had never believed that we should find the missing articles in that sooty den, and had hinted as much to McSweeny. Supposing the sweep to have nerve and effrontery enough to commit such a robbery, he would have been an arrant fool to have kept the stolen trinkets about his house. After a look round the place myself, and a short conversation in an undertone with McSweeny, I decided that we might go, and trust to tracing the missing articles elsewhere. But there was the sweep’s kitchen in a dreadful state of confusion, with a great pile of soot filling the centre of the floor; it would never do to leave the poor man’s house in that state, and I promptly said so.