John Burridge, one hundred guineas."
"You subscribe largely, Mr. Burridge," I said, handing him back the
paper.
He rubbed his big hands together. "The Lord will repay a
hundredfold," he answered.
"In which case it's just as well to have a note of the advance down
in black and white, eh?" I added.
His little eyes looked sharply at me; but he made no reply, and,
shaking hands, I left him.
THE HOBBY RIDER
Bump. Bump. Bump-bump. Bump.
I sat up in bed and listened intently. It seemed to me as if
someone with a muffled hammer were trying to knock bricks out of
the wall.
"Burglars," I said to myself (one assumes, as a matter of course,
that everything happening in this world after 1 a.m. is due to
burglars), and I reflected what a curiously literal, but at the
same time slow and cumbersome, method of housebreaking they had
adopted.
The bumping continued irregularly, yet uninterruptedly.
My bed was by the window. I reached out my hand and drew aside a
corner of the curtain. The sunlight streamed into the room. I
looked at my watch: it was ten minutes past five.
A most unbusinesslike hour for burglars, I thought.
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