“Hopkins! Oh! he’s a regular recluse. Steeped to his eyes in Italian art. Plays well, doesn’t he?”
“Don’t know. I’ve never heard him.”
Orchard looked at me in perplexity.
“Never heard him! That’s odd. Why, he was practicing until one this morning.”
Another night he came in, his pocket bulging with a book. He sat down in my saddle-bag chair with a groan. His face was clammy with emotion.
“I’ve—I’ve stolen this book,” he said, bringing out a fat volume with lots of plates. “Couldn’t help it for the life of me. What on earth am I to do? It was on a stall in front—that shop at the corner of the Turnstile. They’ll run me in. What do you advise?”
“That’s a matter for Hopkins. It’s on Italian art, isn’t it? The plates look good; no doubt he’ll be delighted. All’s fair in love and collecting, you know—but the policeman doesn’t admit that. I wouldn’t do it again.”
The third time I happened to go up to him. He answered the door to my knock. For a moment, before he recognized me, there was blank horror on his once carelessly cynical face.
“Hopkins in?” I asked, with a comprehensive movement of the head.
Hopkins was a nuisance, although—perhaps because—one never saw him. I had more than once asked Orchard why he had taken in an odd, churlish chap like that, and he had answered, in a short, matter-of-fact way, that it was a perfectly natural selection—they had tastes in common. That night he said, looking very relieved: