“Dear, yes, I expect so, sir,” said Mrs Porter, as she drew off the cloths. “Well, there!” she exclaimed the next moment, “if they ain’t shut! That’s the first time ever I’ve found ’em so. But it’s not for want of care on my part, I do assure you, gentlemen, if they wasn’t, for I felt the cloths the last thing before I shut up last week, when the gentleman had done photografting the heast winder, and every one was shut, and where there was ribbons left, I tied ’em. Now I think of it, I don’t remember ever to ’ave done that before, and per’aps, whoever it is, it just made the difference to ’em. Well, it only shows, don’t it? If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again.”
Meanwhile the two men had been examining the books, and now Davidson spoke.
“I’m sorry to say I’m afraid there’s something wrong here, Mrs Porter. These are not the same books.”
It would make too long a business to detail all Mrs Porter’s outcries, and the questionings that followed. The upshot was this. Early in January the gentleman had come to see over the Chapel, and thought a great deal of it, and said he must come back in the spring weather and take some photografts. And only a week ago he had drove up in his motoring car, and a very ’eavy box with the slides in it, and she had locked him in because he said something about a long explosion, and she was afraid of some damage happening; and he says, no, not explosion, but it appeared the lantern what they take the slides with worked very slow; and so he was in there the best part of an hour and she come and let him out, and he drove off with his box and all and gave her his visiting-card, and oh, dear, dear, to think of such a thing! he must have changed the books and took the old ones away with him in his box.
“What sort of man was he?”
“Oh, dear, he was a small-made gentleman, if you can call him so after the way he’ve behaved, with black hair, that is if it was hair, and gold eye-glasses, if they was gold; reely, one don’t know what to believe. Sometimes I doubt he weren’t a reel Englishman at all, and yet he seemed to know the language, and had the name on his visiting-card like anybody else might.”
“Just so; might we see the card? Yes; T. W. Henderson, and an address somewhere near Bristol. Well, Mrs Porter, it’s quite plain this Mr Henderson, as he calls himself, has walked off with your eight Prayer-Books and put eight others about the same size in place of them. Now listen to me. I suppose you must tell your husband about this, but neither you nor he must say one word about it to anyone else. If you’ll give me the address of the agent,—Mr Clark, isn’t it?—I will write to him and tell him exactly what has happened, and that it really is no fault of yours. But, you understand, we must keep it very quiet; and why? Because this man who has stolen the books will of course try to sell them one at a time—for I may tell you they are worth a good deal of money—and the only way we can bring it home to him is by keeping a sharp lookout and saying nothing.”
By dint of repeating the same advice in various forms, they succeeded in impressing Mrs Porter with the real need for silence, and were forced to make a concession only in the case of Mr Avery, who was expected on a visit shortly. “But you may be safe with father, sir,” said Mrs Porter. “Father ain’t a talkin’ man.”
It was not quite Mr Davidson’s experience of him; still, there were no neighbours at Brockstone, and even Mr Avery must be aware that gossip with anybody on such a subject would be likely to end in the Porters’ having to look out for another situation.
A last question was whether Mr Henderson, so-called, had anyone with him.