Adventsläsning

 

”There are servants on the stairs below and should you attempt the way you came, there are three constables just around the corner. I hired them to regulate the carriage traffic: but now that the last guest has arrived, they will be cooling their heels for a spell, and I have a whistle. I have also à pistol.” With a turn of his hand he flung open a door in a dark armoire beside the window, dived a hand into its recesses, and produced the weapon. “And it is loaded,” he added, still in the ”same business-like voice, in which, after his first brief exclamation, my ear detected no tremor.”

Lite snopet att bli tagen på bar gärning just som man plockat ned en mängd dyrbarheter i sin säck.

Nu visade sig den rike, och rättmätige ägare av tingen, vara en okonventionell herre, och den unge brottslingen avslutar sin kväll på ett vis han inte kunnat drömma om bara någon timme tidigare.

Den lilla novellen ”My Christmas Burglary” skrevs av Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch, den

välkände litteraturkritikern, poeten, roman- och novellförfattaren — det var han som rekommenderade författare in spe att ”kill your darlings”:

"If you here require a practical rule of me, I will present you with this: ‘Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.'"