“Yes, Anders, get the dog-cart ready. I am going to town after dinner after all.”
Peter started. Brundin going into town! Here was an opportunity. He leaped after the bailiff through the mud. Outside the bailiff’s quarters he even sidled up to the object of his fear. And he was still like a great mountain when you came near him—a high mountain with mocking superior airs.
“I just wanted to come in and glance at the map for a moment,” muttered Peter.
Brundin hummed a little tune and good-humouredly led the boy into the office which lay to the right of the entrance hall in the bailiff’s wing.
Now Peter was actually in the lion’s den. The yellow cracked old plan of Selambshof hung over the sofa. For a long while Peter was tremendously interested in it. Then he began to glance round to right and left, and make strange trampling movements to and fro like a bear on a hot plate. Indeed he was not exactly beautiful to look at, but deserved perhaps a certain admiration. As a matter of fact he required a great deal of self-control to remain in Brundin’s room.
Peter looked for the accounts books of the estate. From outside he had often stolen a glance at them where they were lying on the writing desk. But now they were not there. They could not be anywhere else but in the big brown cupboard between the windows.
The key was in the lock.
Peter sat down on the sofa and turned over the pages of a price list. Brundin lit his pipe, looked over his papers and did not seem to be in a hurry. Peter perspired more and more.
At last the bailiff had to leave the room for a moment. Instantly Peter jumped up and took the key out of the cupboard. And he did more than that—he lifted off the hooks of one window, both the inner and the outer—Then another idea seized him: he took up another key from amongst the rubbish on the writing desk and pushed it into the keyhole of the cupboard so that nothing should be noticed. He was no fool.
Now the cracked old dinner gong sounded and with his booty in his damp hands, Peter stole out of the lion’s den.