"You aren't keeping me, sir," the butler assured him. "Oh, no, sir, you aren't keeping me. I've done my silver. It will be a pleasure to watch you, sir. Quite likely I can give you a hint or two if you've never made a robert hutch before. Many's the hutch I've made in my time. As a lad, I was very handy at that sort of thing."
A dull despair settled upon Soapy. It was plain to him now that he had unwittingly delivered himself over into the clutches of a bore who had probably been pining away for someone on whom to pour out his wealth of stored-up conversation. Words had begun to flutter out of this butler like bats out of a barn. He had become a sort of human Topical Talk on rabbits. He was speaking of rabbits he had known in his hot youth—their manners, customs, and the amount of lettuce they had consumed per diem. To a man interested in rabbits but too lazy to look the subject up in the encyclopædia the narrative would have been enthralling. It induced in Soapy a feverishness that touched the skirts of homicidal mania. The thought came into his mind that there are other uses to which a hatchet may be put besides the making of rabbit hutches. England trembled on the verge of being short one butler.
Sturgis had now become involved in a long story of his early manhood, and even had Soapy been less distrait he might have found it difficult to enjoy it to the full. It was about an acquaintance of his who had kept rabbits, and it suffered in lucidity from his unfortunate habit of pronouncing rabbits "roberts," combined with the fact that by a singular coincidence the acquaintance had been a Mr. Roberts. Roberts, it seemed, had been deeply attached to roberts. In fact, his practice of keeping roberts in his bedroom had led to trouble with Mrs. Roberts, and in the end Mrs. Roberts had drowned the roberts in the pond and Roberts, who thought the world of his roberts and not quite so highly of Mrs. Roberts, had never forgiven her.
Here Sturgis paused, apparently for comment.
"Is that so?" said Soapy, breathing heavily.
"Yes, sir."
"In the pond?"
"In the pond, sir."
Like some Open Sesame, the word suddenly touched a chord in Soapy's mind.
"Say, listen," he said. "All the while we've been talking I was forgetting that Mr. Carmody is out there on the pond."