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<h2> THE HAMMERPOND PARK BURGLARY </h2>
<p>It is a moot point whether burglary is to be considered as a sport, a
trade, or an art. For a trade, the technique is scarcely rigid enough, and
its claims to be considered an art are vitiated by the mercenary element
that qualifies its triumphs. On the whole it seems to be most justly
ranked as sport, a sport for which no rules are at present formulated, and
of which the prizes are distributed in an extremely informal manner. It
was this informality of burglary that led to the regrettable extinction of
two promising beginners at Hammerpond Park.</p>
<p>The stakes offered in this affair consisted chiefly of diamonds and other
personal <i>bric-`-brac</i> belonging to the newly married Lady Aveling.
Lady Aveling, as the reader will remember, was the only daughter of Mrs
Montague Pangs, the well-known hostess. Her marriage to Lord Aveling was
extensively advertised in the papers, the quantity and quality of her
wedding presents, and the fact that the honeymoon was to be spent at
Hammerpond. The announcement of these valuable prizes created a
considerable sensation in the small circle in which Mr Teddy Watkins was
the undisputed leader, and it was decided that, accompanied by a duly
qualified assistant, he should visit the village of Hammerpond in his
professional capacity.</p>
<p>Being a man of naturally retiring and modest disposition, Mr Watkins
determined to make this visit <i>incog</i>., and after due consideration
of the conditions of his enterprise, he selected the role of a landscape
artist and the unassuming surname of Smith. He preceded his assistant,
who, it was decided, should join him only on the last afternoon of his
stay at Hammerpond. Now the village of Hammerpond is perhaps one of the
prettiest little corners in Sussex; many thatched houses still survive,
the flint-built church with its tall spire nestling under the down is one
of the finest and least restored in the county, and the beech-woods and
bracken jungles through which the road runs to the great house are
singularly rich in what the vulgar artist and photographer call “bits.”
So that Mr Watkins, on his arrival with two virgin canvases, a brand-new
easel, a paint-box, portmanteau, an ingenious little ladder made in
sections (after the pattern of the late lamented master Charles Peace),
crowbar, and wire coils, found himself welcomed with effusion and some
curiosity by half-a-dozen other brethren of the brush. It rendered the
disguise he had chosen unexpectedly plausible, but it inflicted upon him a
considerable amount of aesthetic conversation for which he was very
imperfectly prepared.</p>
<p>“Have you exhibited very much?” said Young Porson in the
bar-parlour of the “Coach and Horses,” where Mr Watkins was
skilfully accumulating local information on the night of his arrival.</p>
<p>“Very little,” said Mr Watkins, “just a snack here and
there.”</p>
<p>“Academy?”</p>
<p>“In course. <i>And</i> the Crystal Palace.”</p>
<p>“Did they hang you well?” said Porson.</p>
<p>“Don’t rot,” said Mr Watkins; “I don’t like
it.”</p>
<p>“I mean did they put you in a good place?”</p>
<p>“Whadyer mean?” said Mr Watkins suspiciously. “One
‘ud think you were trying to make out I’d been put away.”</p>
<p>Porson had been brought up by aunts, and was a gentlemanly young man even
for an artist; he did not know what being “put away” meant,
but he thought it best to explain that he intended nothing of the sort. As
the question of hanging seemed a sore point with Mr Watkins, he tried to
divert the conversation a little.</p>
<p>“Do you do figure-work at all?”</p>
<p>“No, never had a head for figures,” said Mr Watkins, “my
miss—Mrs Smith, I mean, does all that.”</p>
<p>“She paints too!” said Porson. “That’s rather
jolly.”</p>
<p>“Very,” said Mr Watkins, though he really did not think so,
and, feeling the conversation was drifting a little beyond his grasp,
added, “I came down here to paint Hammerpond House by moonlight.”</p>
<p>“Really!” said Porson. “That’s rather a novel
idea.”</p>
<p>“Yes,” said Mr Watkins, “I thought it rather a good
notion when it occurred to me. I expect to begin to-morrow night.”</p>
<p>“What! You don’t mean to paint in the open, by night?”</p>
<p>“I do, though.”</p>
<p>“But how will you see your canvas?”</p>
<p>“Have a bloomin’ cop’s—” began Mr Watkins,
rising too quickly to the question, and then realising this, bawled to
Miss Durgan for another glass of beer. “I’m goin’ to
have a thing called a dark lantern,” he said to Porson.</p>
<p>“But it’s about new moon now,” objected Porson. “There
won’t be any moon.”</p>
<p>“There’ll be the house,” said Watkins, “at any
rate. I’m goin’, you see, to paint the house first and the
moon afterwards.”</p>
<p>“Oh!” said Porson, too staggered to continue the conversation.</p>
<p>“They doo say,” said old Durgan, the landlord, who had
maintained a respectful silence during the technical conversation, “as
there’s no less than three p’licemen from ‘Azelworth on
dewty every night in the house—‘count of this Lady Aveling
‘n her jewellery. One’m won fower-and-six last night, off
second footman—tossin’.”</p>
<p>Towards sunset next day Mr Watkins, virgin canvas, easel, and a very
considerable case of other appliances in hand, strolled up the pleasant
pathway through the beech-woods to Hammerpond Park, and pitched his
apparatus in a strategic position commanding the house. Here he was
observed by Mr Raphael Sant, who was returning across the park from a
study of the chalk-pits. His curiosity having been fired by Porson’s
account of the new arrival, he turned aside with the idea of discussing
nocturnal art.</p>
<p>Mr Watkins was apparently unaware of his approach. A friendly conversation
with Lady Hammerpond’s butler had just terminated, and that
individual, surrounded by the three pet dogs which it was his duty to take
for an airing after dinner had been served, was receding in the distance.
Mr Watkins was mixing colour with an air of great industry. Sant,
approaching more nearly, was surprised to see the colour in question was
as harsh and brilliant an emerald green as it is possible to imagine.
Having cultivated an extreme sensibility to colour from his earliest
years, he drew the air in sharply between his teeth at the very first
glimpse of this brew. Mr Watkins turned round. He looked annoyed.</p>
<p>“What on earth are you going to do with that <i>beastly</i> green?”
said Sant.</p>
<p>Mr Watkins realised that his zeal to appear busy in the eyes of the butler
had evidently betrayed him into some technical error. He looked at Sant
and hesitated.</p>
<p>“Pardon my rudeness,” said Sant; “but really, that green
is altogether too amazing. It came as a shock. What <i>do</i> you mean to
do with it?”</p>
<p>Mr Watkins was collecting his resources. Nothing could save the situation
but decision. “If you come here interrupting my work,” he
said, “I’m a-goin’ to paint your face with it.”</p>
<p>Sant retired, for he was a humourist and a peaceful man. Going down the
hill he met Porson and Wainwright. “Either that man is a genius or
he is a dangerous lunatic,” said he. “Just go up and look at
his green.” And he continued his way, his countenance brightened by
a pleasant anticipation of a cheerful affray round an easel in the
gloaming, and the shedding of much green paint.</p>
<p>But to Porson and Wainwright Mr Watkins was less aggressive, and explained
that the green was intended to be the first coating of his picture. It
was, he admitted in response to a remark, an absolutely new method,
invented by himself. But subsequently he became more reticent; he
explained he was not going to tell every passer-by the secret of his own
particular style, and added some scathing remarks upon the meanness of
people “hanging about” to pick up such tricks of the masters
as they could, which immediately relieved him of their company.</p>
<p>Twilight deepened, first one then another star appeared. The rooks amid
the tall trees to the left of the house had long since lapsed into
slumbrous silence, the house itself lost all the details of its
architecture and became a dark grey outline, and then the windows of the
salon shone out brilliantly, the conservatory was lighted up, and here and
there a bedroom window burnt yellow. Had anyone approached the easel in
the park it would have been found deserted. One brief uncivil word in
brilliant green sullied the purity of its canvas. Mr Watkins was busy in
the shrubbery with his assistant, who had discreetly joined him from the
carriage-drive.</p>
<p>Mr Watkins was inclined to be self-congratulatory upon the ingenious
device by which he had carried all his apparatus boldly, and in the sight
of all men, right up to the scene of operations. “That’s the
dressing-room,” he said to his assistant, “and, as soon as the
maid takes the candle away and goes down to supper, we’ll call in.
My! how nice the house do look, to be sure, against the starlight, and
with all its windows and lights! Swopme, Jim, I almost wish I <i>was</i> a
painter-chap. Have you fixed that there wire across the path from the
laundry?”</p>
<p>He cautiously approached the house until he stood below the dressing-room
window, and began to put together his folding ladder. He was much too
experienced a practitioner to feel any unusual excitement. Jim was
reconnoitring the smoking-room. Suddenly, close beside Mr Watkins in the
bushes, there was a violent crash and a stifled curse. Someone had tumbled
over the wire which his assistant had just arranged. He heard feet running
on the gravel pathway beyond. Mr Watkins, like all true artists, was a
singularly shy man, and he incontinently dropped his folding ladder and
began running circumspectly through the shrubbery. He was indistinctly
aware of two people hot upon his heels, and he fancied that he
distinguished the outline of his assistant in front of him. In another
moment he had vaulted the low stone wall bounding the shrubbery, and was
in the open park. Two thuds on the turf followed his own leap.</p>
<p>It was a close chase in the darkness through the trees. Mr Watkins was a
loosely-built man and in good training, and he gained hand-over-hand upon
the hoarsely panting figure in front. Neither spoke, but, as Mr Watkins
pulled up alongside, a qualm of awful doubt came over him. The other man
turned his head at the same moment and gave an exclamation of surprise.
“It’s not Jim,” thought Mr Watkins, and simultaneously
the stranger flung himself, as it were, at Watkin’s knees, and they
were forthwith grappling on the ground together. “Lend a hand, Bill,”
cried the stranger as the third man came up. And Bill did—two hands
in fact, and some accentuated feet. The fourth man, presumably Jim, had
apparently turned aside and made off in a different direction. At any
rate, he did not join the trio.</p>
<p>Mr Watkins’ memory of the incidents of the next two minutes is
extremely vague. He has a dim recollection of having his thumb in the
corner of the mouth of the first man, and feeling anxious about its
safety, and for some seconds at least he held the head of the gentleman
answering to the name of Bill, to the ground by the hair. He was also
kicked in a great number of different places, apparently by a vast
multitude of people. Then the gentleman who was not Bill got his knee
below Mr Watkins’ diaphragm, and tried to curl him up upon it.</p>
<p>When his sensations became less entangled he was sitting upon the turf,
and eight or ten men—the night was dark, and he was rather too
confused to count—standing round him, apparently waiting for him to
recover. He mournfully assumed that he was captured, and would probably
have made some philosophical reflections on the fickleness of fortune, had
not his internal sensations disinclined him for speech.</p>
<p>He noticed very quickly that his wrists were not handcuffed, and then a
flask of brandy was put in his hands. This touched him a little—it
was such unexpected kindness.</p>
<p>“He’s a-comin’ round,” said a voice which he
fancied he recognised as belonging to the Hammerpond second footman.</p>
<p>“We’ve got ’em, sir, both of ’em,” said the
Hammerpond butler, the man who had handed him the flask. “Thanks to
<i>you</i>.”</p>
<p>No one answered this remark. Yet he failed to see how it applied to him.</p>
<p>“He’s fair dazed,” said a strange voice; “the
villains half-murdered him.”</p>
<p>Mr Teddy Watkins decided to remain fair dazed until he had a better grasp
of the situation. He perceived that two of the black figures round him
stood side-by-side with a dejected air, and there was something in the
carriage of their shoulders that suggested to his experienced eye hands
that were bound together. Two! In a flash he rose to his position. He
emptied the little flask and staggered—obsequious hands assisting
him—to his feet. There was a sympathetic murmur.</p>
<p>“Shake hands, sir, shake hands,” said one of the figures near
him. “Permit me to introduce myself. I am very greatly indebted to
you. It was the jewels of my wife, Lady Aveling, which attracted these
scoundrels to the house.”</p>
<p>“Very glad to make your lordship’s acquaintance,” said
Teddy Watkins.</p>
<p>“I presume you saw the rascals making for the shrubbery, and dropped
down on them?”</p>
<p>“That’s exactly how it happened,” said Mr Watkins.</p>
<p>“You should have waited till they got in at the window,” said
Lord Aveling; “they would get it hotter if they had actually
committed the burglary. And it was lucky for you two of the policemen were
out by the gates, and followed up the three of you. I doubt if you could
have secured the two of them—though it was confoundedly plucky of
you, all the same.”</p>
<p>“Yes, I ought to have thought of all that,” said Mr Watkins;
“but one can’t think of everythink.”</p>
<p>“Certainly not,” said Lord Aveling. “I am afraid they
have mauled you a little,” he added. The party was now moving
towards the house. “You walk rather lame. May I offer you my arm?”</p>
<p>And instead of entering Hammerpond House by the dressing-room window, Mr
Watkins entered it—slightly intoxicated, and inclined now to
cheerfulness again—on the arm of a real live peer, and by the front
door. “This,” thought Mr Watkins, “is burgling in style!”
The “scoundrels,” seen by the gaslight, proved to be mere
local amateurs unknown to Mr Watkins, and they were taken down into the
pantry and there watched over by the three policemen, two gamekeepers with
loaded guns, the butler, an ostler, and a carman, until the dawn allowed
of their removal to Hazelhurst police-station. Mr Watkins was made much of
in the saloon. They devoted a sofa to him, and would not hear of a return
to the village that night. Lady Aveling was sure he was brilliantly
original, and said her idea of Turner was just such another rough,
half-inebriated, deep-eyed, brave, and clever man. Some one brought up a
remarkable little folding-ladder that had been picked up in the shrubbery,
and showed him how it was put together. They also described how wires had
been found in the shrubbery, evidently placed there to trip-up unwary
pursuers. It was lucky he had escaped these snares. And they showed him
the jewels.</p>
<p>Mr Watkins had the sense not to talk too much, and in any conversational
difficulty fell back on his internal pains. At last he was seized with
stiffness in the back, and yawning. Everyone suddenly awoke to the fact
that it was a shame to keep him talking after his affray, so he retired
early to his room, the little red room next to Lord Aveling’s suite.</p>
<p>The dawn found a deserted easel bearing a canvas with a green inscription,
in the Hammerpond Park, and it found Hammerpond House in commotion. But if
the dawn found Mr Teddy Watkins and the Aveling diamonds, it did not
communicate the information to the police.</p>
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