Bertram turns his back on him; he feels again a great inclination to summon the constable who is walking in the street below.
The man having at last departed, he picks up the various objects and begins to replace them in the drawers of the cabinet. He is depressed and humiliated. For over twelve years he has implicitly trusted Critchett, believed in him, extolled him, and depended on him; taking his excellent service as a surety for moral excellence, as most of us do with our servants.
The cool impertinence with which the thief has quoted his own writings and sayings against him mortifies him; he is conscious that Critchett must have always considered him an ineffable idiot. It is not soothing to one’s self-respect to realise that for more than a dozen years one has been made a fool of successfully.
The sight of his mother’s jewels also saddens him; he had been her favourite son, and he had loved her tenderly.
“You will keep them for your wife, Wilfrid,” she had said to him, when she had given him the pearls and other ornaments on her death-bed.
What would his mother say, were she living, to such a wife for him as poor little Annie Brown? Poor Annie! Who said “as how” and “umberellar,” and who “liked to ’ear the growlers come rattlin’ ’ome o’ nights.”
“Mr. Bertram,” says the voice of Annie at that moment timidly. She has come through the anteroom of which Critchett has left the door open behind him. She wears the same clothes that she wore in the Park, but she carries no baskets on her arms.
Noticing Bertram’s preoccupied and distressed expression and the litter of objects on the floor, she is afraid she appears at an inopportune moment.
“Lord’s sakes, sir!” she murmurs, “what hev happened?”
“Critchett is a thief, Annie. I caught him in the act,” replies Bertram, with tragic force.