“How uncommonly stupid it was of you to do so!” said Bywater, pretending to take the remark literally. “I would not keep a duplicate pair of keys by me—I should make sure they’d bring me to grief. What do you say? You did not keep duplicate keys—they were false ones! Why, that’s just what we all told you last night. The bishop told you so. He said he knew you had made a mistake, and taken out the wrong keys for the right. My belief is, that you went out without any keys at all. You left them hanging upon the nail, and you found them there. You had not got a second pair!”
“You just wait!” raved old Ketch. “I’m a-coming round to the head-master, and I’ll bring the keys with me. He’ll let you boys know whether there’s two pairs, or one. Horrid old rusty things they be; as rusty as you!”
“Who says they are rusty?”
“Who says it! They are rusty!” shrieked the old man. “You’d like to get me into a madhouse, you boys would, worrying me! I’ll show you whether they’re rusty! I’ll show you whether there’s a second brace o’ keys or not. I’ll show ‘em to the head-master! I’ll show ‘em to the dean! I’ll show ‘em again to his lordship the bi—What’s gone of the keys?”
The last sentence was uttered in a different tone and in apparent perplexity. With shaking hands, excited by passion, Mr. Ketch was rummaging the knife-box—an old, deep, mahogany tray, dark with age, divided by a partition—rummaging for the rusty keys. He could not find them. He searched on this side, he searched on that; he pulled out the contents, one by one: a black-handled knife, a white-handled fork, a green-handled knife with a broken point, and a brown-handled fork with one prong, which comprised his household cutlery; a small whetstone, a comb and a blacking-brush, a gimlet and a small hammer, some leather shoe-strings, three or four tallow candles, a match-box and an extinguisher, the key of his door, the bolt of his casement window, and a few other miscellanies. He could not come upon the false keys, and, finally, he made a snatch at the tray, and turned it upside down. The keys were not there.
When he had fully taken in the fact—it cost him some little time to do it—he turned his anger upon Bywater.
“You have took ‘em, you have! you have turned thief, and stole ‘em! I put ‘em here in the knife-box, and they are gone! What have you done with ‘em?”
“Come, that’s good!” exclaimed Bywater, in too genuine a tone to admit a suspicion of its truth. “I have not been near your knife-box; I have not put my foot inside the door.”
In point of fact, Bywater had not. He had stood outside, bending his head and body inwards, his hands grasping either door-post.
“What’s gone with ‘em? who ‘as took ‘em off? I’ll swear I put ‘em there, and I have never looked at ‘em nor touched ‘em since! There’s an infamous conspiracy forming against me! I’m going to be blowed up, like Guy Fawkes!”