“You all seem very busy,” he remarked.

“Some bloke from the country’s taken the ’ouse,” the man grumbled, “and wants to move in before the blooming paint’s dry.  Nobody can’t do impossibilities, mister,” he continued, “leaving out the Unions, which can’t bear to see us over-exert ourselves.  They’ve always got a particular eye on me, knowing I’m a bit too rapid for most of them when I start.”

“Give yourself a rest for a moment,” Burton begged.  “Tell me, what’s become of the rugs and oddments of furniture from that little room opposite?”

The man produced a pipe, contemplated it for a moment thoughtfully, and squeezed down a portion of blackened tobacco with his thumb.

“Poor smoking,” he complained.  “Got such a family I can’t afford more than one ounce a week.  Nothing but dust here.”

“I haven’t any tobacco with me,” Burton regretted, “but I’ll stand a couple of ounces, with pleasure,” he added, producing a shilling.

The man pocketed the coin without undue exhilaration, struck a vilely smelling match, and lit the fragment of filth at the bottom of his pipe.

“About those oddments of furniture?” Burton reminded him.

“Stolen,” the man asserted gloomily,—­“stolen under our very eyes, as it were.  Some one must have nipped in just as you did this morning, and whisked them off.  Easy done with a covered truck outside and us so wrapped up in our work, so to speak.”

“When was this?” Burton demanded, eagerly.

“Day afore yesterday.”

“Does Mr. Waddington know about it?”

The man removed his pipe from his teeth and gazed intently at his questioner.

“Is this Mr. Waddington you’re a-speaking of a red-faced gentleman—­kind of auctioneer or agent?  Looks as though he could shift a drop?”

Burton recognized the description.

“That,” he assented, “is Mr. Waddington.”

The workman replaced the pipe in the corner of his mouth and nodded deliberately.

“He knows right enough, he does.  Came down here yesterday afternoon with a friend.  Seemed, from what I could hear, to want to give him something to eat out of that room.  I put him down as dotty, but my! you should have heard him when he found out that the stuff had been lifted!”

“Was he disappointed?” Burton asked.

Words seemed to fail the plasterer.  He nodded his head a great many times and spat upon the floor.

“That may be the word I was looking for,” he admitted.  “Can’t say as I should have thought of it myself.  Anyway, the bloke never stopped for close on five minutes, and old Joe—­him on the ladder there—­he came all the way down and listened with his mouth open, and he don’t want no laming neither when there’s things to be said.  Kind of auctioneer they said he was.  Comes easy to that sort, I suppose.”

“Did he—­did Mr. Waddington obtain any clue as to the whereabouts of the missing property?” Burton asked, with some eagerness.