"Yours," said Hugo, puffing smoke meditatively, "has been a very happy life, Twist. Day after day you have had the privilege of seeing my uncle Lester doing just what you're doing now, and it must have beaten a circus hollow. It's funny enough even when you do it, and you haven't anything like his personality and appeal. If you could see what a priceless ass you look it would keep you giggling for weeks. I know," said Hugo, receiving an inspiration; "do the one where you touch your toes without bending the knees."
In all human affairs the semblance of any given thing is bound to vary considerably with the point of view. To Chimp Twist, as he endeavoured to comply with this request, it seemed incredible that what he was doing could strike anyone as humorous. To Hugo, on the other hand, it appeared as if the entertainment had now reached its apex of wholesome fun. As Mr. Twist's purple face came up for the third time, he abandoned himself whole-heartedly to mirth. He rocked in his chair, and, rashly trying to inhale cigarette smoke at the same time, found himself suddenly overcome by a paroxysm of coughing.
It was the moment for which Chimp Twist had been waiting. There is, as Ronnie Fish would have observed in the village hall an hour or so earlier if the audience had had the self-restraint to let him get as far as that, a tide in the affairs of men which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. Chimp did not neglect the opportunity which Fate had granted him. With an agile bound he was at the window, and, rendered supple, no doubt, by his recent exercises, leaped smartly through it.
He descended heavily on the dog Emily. Emily, wandering out for a last stroll before turning in, had just paused beneath the window to investigate a smell which had been called to her attention on the gravel. She was trying to make up her mind whether it was rats or the ghost of a long-lost bone when the skies suddenly started raining heavy bodies on her.
V
Emily was a dog who, as a rule, took things as they came, her guiding motto in life being the old Horatian nil admirari, but she could lose her poise. She lost it now. A startled oath escaped her, and for a brief instant she was completely unequal to the situation. In this instant, Chimp, equally startled but far too busy to stop, had disengaged himself and was vanishing into the darkness.
A moment later Hugo came through the window. His coughing fit had spent itself, and he was now in good voice again. He was shouting.
At once Emily became herself again. All her sporting blood stirred in answer to these shouts. She forgot her agony. Her sense of grievance left her. Recognizing Hugo, she saw all things clearly, and realized in a flash that here at last was the burglar for whom she had been waiting ever since her conversation with that wire-haired terrier over at Webleigh Manor.
John had taken her to lunch there one day and, fraternizing with the Webleigh dog under the table, she had immediately noticed in his manner something aloof and distinctly patronizing. It had then come out in conversation that they had had a burglary at the Manor a couple of nights ago, and the wire-haired terrier, according to his own story, had been the hero of the occasion. He spoke with an ill-assumed offhandedness of barking and bitings and chasings in the night, and, though he did not say it in so many words, gave Emily plainly to understand that it took an unusual dog to grapple with such a situation, and that in a similar crisis she herself would inevitably be found wanting. Ever since that day she had been longing for a chance to show her mettle, and now it had come. Calling instructions in a high voice, she raced for the bushes into which Chimp had disappeared. Hugo, a bad third, brought up the rear of the procession.