The burglar looked at him uncertainly. ‘I suppose I’d better make sure,’ he said, half to himself, and before Sigi realized what was happening he found himself gagged and trussed up.
‘There you see. English burglars sausage people too sometimes,’ said the young man, putting Sigi gently on the floor. ‘I’m sorry, old fellow, it won’t be for long, but really to leave you keeping cave would be carrying amateurishness too far.’
Sigi was perfectly outraged. ‘All right then,’ he said to himself.
The burglar went into the cupboard and began to examine its contents. Sigi waited a moment, then he rolled under the pantry table and kicked a certain catch he knew of. The cupboard door clanged to, and the burglar was trapped. Then Sigi began to roll and wriggle through the green baize swing-door into the dining-room, through the dining-room door, which luckily was open, into the hall, where he lay kicking the big gong until Sir Conrad appeared at the top of the stairs.
‘Good gracious,’ he said, when he saw Sigi rolling and wriggling like a little eel. ‘My dear child,’ he said, untying him, ‘whatever have you been up to?’
‘Ugh! That tasted awful. Grandfather, grandfather, I’ve got a burglar, in the silver cupboard.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Yes, I promise. I did it with Mr Atkin’s patent catch – he’s in there now. Come and see.’
‘I say! Good boy!’
‘And he’s got a dummy gun.’
‘Never mind. He won’t dare use that. Go and get Atkin for me, will you?’
‘Mr Atkin – Mr Atkin – Grandfather wants you – I’ve got a burglar in the silver cupboard! Mummy, Mummy, I’ve caught a burglar! Nanny, Nanny, I’ve got a burglar. I did it all by myself.’
Nanny, hurrying into her dressing-gown, said, ‘Tut-tut, all this excitement in the middle of the night is very bad for little boys. You’re coming straight back to bed, my child.’
But Sigi was off again in a flash, down to the pantry, where Sir Conrad was sitting on the edge of the table talking to the burglar and surrounded by quite a little crowd. Hughie now put in an appearance.
‘Hullo, Hughie,’ said the burglar.
‘Oh! Hullo, Ozzie. It’s you, is it?’
‘That your nipper?’
‘No. I wish he were.’
‘Wouldn’t mind having him for a partner. The child’s an expert.’
‘I was your partner till you sausaged me,’ Sigi said furiously.
‘The milk train,’ said Sir Conrad, looking at the pantry clock, ‘leaves at 6.15. Perhaps you’d better be off, it’s more than an hour’s walk. Or would you suggest that I should send you in the motor?’
‘I wouldn’t hear of it,’ said the burglar. ‘Good-bye,’ he said, rather in the manner of one who, leaving a party first, says a general good-bye in order not to break it up. He climbed out through the open window and was gone.
‘Grandfather! He was my burglar – I caught him, and now you’ve let him go. It is unfair.’
‘Yes, well you couldn’t keep him as a pet, you know.’
‘I wanted to see the coppers put the bracelets on and drag him off in a Black Maria.’
‘Sigismond, will you come back to bed this instant, please?’
‘You were a very good, clever boy,’ said Sir Conrad, ‘and tomorrow I’ll get you a bike with three speeds.’
‘I don’t want any old bike at all.’
‘There you are, these high jinks always end in tears. Now come along, and look sharp about it.’
‘Really Papa,’ said Grace, when a dejected Sigi had padded off with Nanny, ‘I’m not sure you ought to have turned him loose on the community like that, you know.’
‘Oh, my dear child, he hadn’t done any harm. On the contrary, he spoke very nicely of my article on Turenne in the Cornhill, before you came down.’
3
The long, cold, light summer came to an end. As soon as autumn began, warm, mellow, and golden, the Bunbury household removed itself to Queen Anne’s Gate.
It was now agreed between Charles-Edouard and Grace, through the medium of Sir Conrad, that they had better be divorced. Sir Conrad told Grace that the situation must be regularized one way or the other.
‘You must choose,’ he said, ‘between going back to France and living with your husband – far the best solution, in my view – or divorcing the poor chap. It’s too unsatisfactory to spend the rest of your lives married and yet not married, impossible, really. Besides, I want to make certain financial arrangements for you. I know you never think about money, you’ve never had to, so far, but you might as well know that I can’t live on my income any more. I’m eating up my capital like everybody else, and before it’s all gone I propose to make some over to you and some to Sigismond, in the hopes that you’ll be able to keep Bunbury when I am dead. Now I must have a word with Charles-Edouard about all this. We had better arrange the divorce at the same time.’
‘Oh – oh –!’
‘Darling Grace, you know what I think about it, don’t you? But if you really can’t live with him you’ll have to make up your mind to it, I’m afraid. It has to be one thing or the other.’
‘Papa, I couldn’t just go back like that, it’s not so easy. For one thing he hasn’t asked me to.’
‘He didn’t ask you to go away. He assumes that you will go back when you feel like it. He wants you to, I know.’
‘It was he who made it impossible for me to stay. If he really wants me he must come over and ask me, beg me, in fact, show that he is serious, and promise –’
‘Promise what?’ Sir Conrad gave her a very unsympathetic look. How could Charles-Edouard promise what she would want him to? He thought his daughter was being utterly unreasonable.
Grace burst into tears and left the room.
Sir Conrad went to Paris. Charles-Edouard was most friendly, and
