The Essential E. F. Benson: 53+ Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). E. F. Benson

upstairs, they all knew that the decisive moment had come. Perhaps he might be meditating (for indeed it was likely that he had a good deal to meditate about), but perhaps — Peppino called to him in his most sonorous tones, and said that he would be obliged to break his lock if no answer came, and presently the house resounded with knockings as terrible as those in Macbeth, and much louder. Then suddenly the lock gave, and the door was open.

      The room was empty, and as they had all conjectured by now, the bed was unslept in. They opened the drawers of the wardrobe and they were as empty as the room. Finally, Peppino unlocked the door of a large cupboard that stood in the corner, and with a clinking and crashing of glass there poured out a cataract of empty brandy bottles. Emptiness: that was the keynote of the whole scene, and blank consternation its effect.

      "My brandy!" said Mrs Quantock in a strangled voice. "There are fourteen or fifteen bottles. That accounts for the glazed look in his eyes which you, dear Lucia, thought was concentration. I call it distillation."

      "Did he take it from your cellar?" asked Lucia, too shattered to feel resentment, but still capable of intense curiosity.

      "No: he had a standing order from me to order any little things he might want from my tradesmen. I wish I had my bills sent in every week."

      "Yes, dear," said Lucia.

      Georgie's eyes sought hers.

      "I saw him buy the first bottle," he said. "I remember telling you about it. It was at Rush's"

      Peppino gathered up his hammer and chisel.

      "Well, it's no use sitting here and thinking of old times," he observed. "I shall ring up the police station and put the whole matter into their hands, as far as I am concerned. They'll soon lay hands on him, and he can do his postures in prison for the next few years."

      "But we don't know that it was he who committed all these burglaries yet," said Lucia.

      No one felt it was worth answering this, for the others had all tried and convicted him already.

      "I shall do the same," said Georgie.

      "My tankard," said Mrs Quantock.

      Lucia got up. "Peppino mio," she said, "and you, Georgie, and you, Daisy, I want you before you do anything at all to listen to me for five minutes. Just consider this. What sort of figure shall we all cut if we put the matter into the hands of the police? They will probably catch him, and it will all come out that we have been the dupes of a curry-cook. Think what we have all been doing for this last month, think of our classes, our exercises, our — everything. We have been made fools of, but for my part, I simply couldn't bear that everybody should know I had been made a fool of. Anything but that. What's a hundred pounds compared to that, or a tankard —"

      "My Louis XVI snuff box was worth at least that without the other things," said Georgie, still with a secret satisfaction in being the greatest sufferer.

      "And it was my hundred pounds, not yours, carissima," said Peppino. But it was clear that Lucia's words were working within him like leaven.

      "I'll go halves with you," she said. I'll give you a cheque for fifty pounds."

      "And who would like to go halves in my tankard?" said Daisy with bitter irony. "I want my tankard."

      Georgie said nothing, but his mind was extremely busy. There was Olga soon coming to Riseholme, and it would be awful if she found it ringing with the tale of the guru, and glancing across to Peppino, he saw a thoughtful and sympathetic look in his eyes, that seemed to indicate that his mind was working on parallel lines. Certainly Lucia had given them all something to meditate upon. He tried to imagine the whole story being shouted into Mrs Antrobus's ear-trumpet on the village green, and could not endure the idea. He tried to imagine Mrs Weston ever ceasing to talk about it, and could not picture her silence. No doubt they had all been taken in, too, but here in this empty bedroom were the original dupes, who encouraged the rest.

      After Mrs Quantock's enquiry a dead silence fell.

      "What do you propose, then?" asked Peppino, showing signs of surrender.

      Lucia exerted her utmost wiles.

      "Caro!" she said. "I want 'oo to propose. Daisy and me, we silly women, we want 'oo and Georgie to tell us what to do. But if Lucia must speak, I fink —"

      She paused a moment, and observing strong disgust at her playfulness on Mrs Quantock's face, reverted to ordinary English again.

      "I should do something of this sort," she said. "I should say that dear Daisy's guru had left us quite suddenly, and that he has had a call somewhere else. His work here was done; he had established our classes, and set all our feet upon the Way. He always said that something of the sort might happen to him —"

      "I believe he had planned it all along," said Georgie. "He knew the thing couldn't last for ever, and when my sisters recognised him, he concluded it was time to bolt."

      "With all the available property he could lay hands on," said Mrs Quantock.

      Lucia fingered her tassel.

      "Now about the burglaries," she said. "It won't do to let it be known that three burglaries were committed in one night, and that simultaneously Daisy's guru was called away —"

      "My guru, indeed!" said Mrs Quantock, fizzing with indignation at the repetition of this insult.

      "That might give rise to suspicion," continued Lucia calmly, disregarding the interruption, "and we must stop the news from spreading. Now with regard to our burglary . . . let me think a moment."

      She had got such complete control of them all now that no one spoke.

      "I have it," she said. "Only Boaler knows, for Peppino told her not to say a word till the police had been sent for. You must tell her, carissimo, that you have found the hundred pounds. That settles that. Now you, Georgie."

      "Foljambe knows," said Georgie.

      "Then tell her not to say a word about it. Put some more things out in your lovely treasure-case, no one will notice. And you, Daisy."

      "Robert is away," said she, quite meekly, for she had been thinking things over. "My maid knows."

      "And when he comes back, will he notice the loss of the tankard? Did you often use it?"

      "About once in ten years."

      "Chance it, then," said Lucia. "Just tell your maid to say nothing about it."

      She became deliciously modest again.

      "There!" she said. "That's just a little rough idea of mine and now Peppino and Georgie will put their wise heads together, and tell us what to do."

      That was easily done: they repeated what she had said, and she corrected them if they went wrong. Then once again she stood fingering the tassels of her Teacher's Robe.

      "About our studies," she said. "I for one should be very sorry to drop them altogether, because they made such a wonderful difference to me, and I think you all felt the same. Look at Georgie now: he looks ten years younger than he did a month ago, and as for Daisy, I wish I could trip about as she does. And it wouldn't do, would it, to drop everything just because Daisy's guru — I mean our guru — had been called away. It would look as if we weren't really interested in what he taught us, as if it was only the novelty of having a — a Brahmin among us that had attracted us."

      Lucia smiled benignly at them all.

      "Perhaps we shall find, by and by, that we can't progress much all by ourselves," she said, "and it will all drop quietly. But don't let us drop it with a bang. I shall certainly take my elementary class as usual this afternoon."

      She paused.

      "In my Robe, just as usual," she said.

      Chapter Nine

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