as it happened, sir,” said he. “When Horner had been arrested, it

seemed to me that it would be best for me to get away with the stone at once,

for I did not know at what moment the police might not take it into their heads

to search me and my room. There was no place about the hotel where it would be

safe. I went out, as if on some commission, and I made for my sister’s

house. She had married a man named Oakshott, and lived in Brixton Road, where

she fattened fowls for the market. All the way there every man I met seemed to

me to be a policeman or a detective; and, for all that it was a cold night, the

sweat was pouring down my face before I came to the Brixton Road. My sister

asked me what was the matter, and why I was so pale; but I told her that I had

been upset by the jewel robbery at the hotel. Then I went into the back yard

and smoked a pipe and wondered what it would be best to do.


“I had a friend once called Maudsley, who went to the bad, and has just

been serving his time in Pentonville. One day he had met me, and fell into talk

about the ways of thieves, and how they could get rid of what they stole. I

knew that he would be true to me, for I knew one or two things about him; so I

made up my mind to go right on to Kilburn, where he lived, and take him into my

confidence. He would show me how to turn the stone into money. But how to get

to him in safety? I thought of the agonies I had gone through in coming from

the hotel. I might at any moment be seized and searched, and there would be the

stone in my waistcoat pocket. I was leaning against the wall at the time and

looking at the geese which were waddling about round my feet, and suddenly an

idea came into my head which showed me how I could beat the best detective that

ever lived.


“My sister had told me some weeks before that I might have the pick of

her geese for a Christmas present, and I knew that she was always as good as