The robber did: and while he turned them out, we looked at him. He was of the middle height, and clad in a black frock-coat and grey trousers. His boots were a little gone at the sides, and his shirt-cuffs were a bit frayed, but otherwise he was of gentlemanly demeanour. He had a thin, wrinkled face, with big, light eyes that sparkled, and then looked soft very queerly, and a short beard. In his youth it must have been of a fair golden colour, but now it was tinged with grey. Oswald was sorry for him, especially when he saw that one of his pockets had a large hole in it, and that he had nothing in his pockets but letters and string and three boxes of matches, and a pipe and a handkerchief and a thin tobacco pouch and two pennies. We made him put all the things on the table, and then he said—
“Well, you’ve caught me; what are you going to do with me? Police?”
Alice and H. O. had come down to be reinforcements, when they heard a shout, and when Alice saw that it was a Real Robber, and that he had surrendered, she clapped her hands and said, “Bravo, boys!” and so did H. O. And now she said, “If he gives his word of honour not to escape, I shouldn’t call the police: it seems a pity. Wait till Father comes home.”
The robber agreed to this, and gave his word of honour, and asked if he might put on a pipe, and we said “Yes,” and he sat in Father’s armchair and warmed his boots, which steamed, and I sent H. O. and Alice to put on some clothes and tell the others, and bring down Dicky’s and my knickerbockers, and the rest of the chestnuts.
And they all came, and we sat round the fire, and it was jolly. The robber was very friendly, and talked to us a great deal.
“I wasn’t always in this low way of business,” he said, when Noël said something about the things he had turned out of his pockets. “It’s a great comedown to a man like me. But, if I must be caught, it’s something to be caught by brave young heroes like you. My stars! How you did bolt into the room—‘Surrender, and up with your hands!’ You might have been born and bred to the thief-catching.”
Oswald is sorry if it was mean, but he could not own up just then that he did not think there was anyone in the study when he did that brave if rash act. He has told since.
“And what made you think there was anyone in the house?” the robber asked, when he had thrown his head back, and laughed for quite half a minute. So we told him. And he applauded our valour, and Alice and H. O. explained that they would have said “Surrender,” too, only they were reinforcements.
The robber ate some of the chestnuts—and we sat and wondered when Father would come home, and what he would say to us for our intrepid conduct. And the robber told us of all the things he had done before he began to break into houses. Dicky picked up the tools from the floor, and suddenly he said—
“Why, this is Father’s screwdriver and his gimlets, and all! Well, I do call it jolly cheek to pick a man’s locks with his own tools!”
“True, true,” said the robber. “It is cheek, of the jolliest! But you see I’ve come down in the world. I was a highway robber once, but horses are so expensive to hire—five shillings an hour, you know—and I couldn’t afford to keep them. The highwayman business isn’t what it was.”
“What about a bike?” said H. O.
But the robber thought cycles were low—and besides you couldn’t go across country with them when occasion arose, as you could with a trusty steed. And he talked of highwaymen as if he knew just how we liked hearing it.
Then he told us how he had been a pirate captain—and how he had sailed over waves mountains high, and gained rich prizes—and how he did begin to think that here he had found a profession to his mind.
“I don’t say there are no ups and downs in it,” he said, “especially in stormy weather. But what a trade! And a sword at your side, and the Jolly Roger flying at the peak, and a prize in sight. And all the black mouths of your guns pointed at the laden trader—and the wind in your favour, and your trusty crew ready to live and die for you! Oh—but it’s a grand life!”
I did feel so sorry for him. He used such nice words, and he had a gentleman’s voice.
“I’m sure you weren’t brought up to be a pirate,” said Dora. She had dressed even to her collar—and made Noël do it too—but the rest of us were in blankets with just a few odd things put on anyhow underneath.
The robber frowned and sighed.
“No,” he said, “I was brought up to the law. I was at Balliol, bless your hearts, and that’s true anyway.” He sighed again, and looked hard at the fire.
“That was my Father’s college,” H. O. was beginning, but Dicky said—
“Why did you leave off being a pirate?”
“A pirate?” he said, as if he had not been thinking of such things. “Oh, yes; why I gave it up because—because I could not get over the dreadful seasickness.”
“Nelson was seasick,” said Oswald.
“Ah,” said the robber; “but I hadn’t his luck or his pluck, or something. He stuck to it and won Trafalgar, didn’t he? ‘Kiss me, Hardy’—and all that, eh? I couldn’t stick to it—I had to resign. And nobody kissed me.”
I saw by his understanding about Nelson that he was really a man who had been to a good school as well as to Balliol.
Then we asked him,
