XXXIIIMY TRUTHFUL BURGLAR
I
I had an experience with a burglar night before last. My family are all away, and I have been living alone in the house, a detached villa in New Jersey, for upward of a month. Several burglaries have occurred in the vicinity.
Night before last I was awakened about four o’clock by a noise made by a clicking door, and opening my eyes, I saw a smooth-faced, determined-looking man at my bedside. I did not cry out, nor hide under the bedclothes, nor do any of the conventional things that one does when a burglar comes to him.
I looked at him calmly for a moment, and then I said, “How d’ do?”
An expression of surprise passed overhis intelligent features, but he said mechanically, “Pretty well, thank you. And you?”
“Oh, I’m as well as could be expected under the circumstances. Are you the burglar who has been doing this village?”
“I am,” said he, drawing up a chair and sitting down.
“Why don’t you deny it?” I asked. I wasn’t afraid. He amused me, this nonchalant burglar.
“Well, because I’m not ashamed of my profession, for one reason, and mainly because I was brought up by my father to tell the truth.”
“You tell the truth, and yet you are a burglar. How can you reconcile those facts?”
“They are not irreconcilable,” said he, taking a corn-cob pipe out of his pocket and filling it. “I am a burglar, and my father was one before me, but he was a perfectly honorable man. He never lied, and I never lie. I steal because that is my profession, but I make it a rule to tell the truth upon all occasions. Why, if thesuccess of my venture to-night depended upon my lying to you, I’d immediately leave this place, as innocent of plunder as when I came in. Where’s the silver?”
“Top drawer of the sideboard.” There was a magnetism, a bonhomie, about the man that captivated me.
“Are you armed?” asked he, as he puffed at his pipe.
“If I had been I’d have winged you before this,” said I, laughing.
“I believe you, and I honor you for being perfectly frank with me.”
“Why, as to that, I’m not to be outdone in frankness by a thief.”
“That will make my task so much the easier. After I’ve finished this pipe I want you to give me your word that you’ll lie still until I’ve taken all I want.”
I admired the man’s nerve, and I said: “For the time being I consider you my guest, and, Spanish fashion, my house is at your disposal.”
“Don’t put it on that basis, or I will leave at once. This is no time for aping the Spanish.”
“You are right. But I tell you candidly that I would far rather have found out that you were a liar than a burglar. Your lies would not be likely to injure me, but I’ll be out just so much by what you take. I’d much rather you were a liar.”
“And I would not. If I steal, I do but take something that, to paraphrase Shakspere, was yours, is mine, and has been slave to thousands; but to lie would be to ‘lay perjury to my soul,’ and that I would not do, ‘no, not for Venice’!”
“I see you know Shakspere,” said I, punching my pillow so that I could be more comfortable. I was reading this odd fellow, and I believed that I could dissuade him from his purpose.
“Know Shakspere? I was an actor once.”
I felt that I had him, for I know actors better than he knew Shakspere.
“Did you ever play Hamlet?” I asked, sitting up in bed.
“I did; and I made such a hit that if it hadn’t been for the venality of the press and my sense of honor, I would have been adjudged one of the greatest Hamlets of the day.”
“Give me the soliloquy. I give you my word that ordinarily I’d rather be robbed than hear it, but I like your voice and I believe that you can do it justice.”
A self-satisfied smile illuminated his face. He laid down the pipe and gave me the soliloquy, and it wasn’t bad.
“Bully!” I said, when he had finished. “Why, man, you make an indifferent thief, else you would have decamped long ago; but the stage has lost an actor that would have in time compelled the unwilling admiration of the press.”
And so I jollied him, and he gave me the trial scene from “The Merchant ofVenice,” and other selections, until dawn began to show in the east, when he picked up his bag and said, “It would be a shame to rob a white man like you.” Then he bade me good-by and left.
And I congratulated myself upon my knowledge of human nature, until I began to dress, when I found that the fellow had finished his burgling before I woke, and he has all my silver.