Chapter 3

"You'll find them perfect, wonderfully perfect. But don't breathe into them if you can help it. It affects the waltz movement particularly."

"Oh, does it, indeed?" I said, ironically.

I professed to be examining the works with the closest attention, but I was only resolving on my plan of future action. I was playing with my prey--an angler with his "catch," a cat with a mouse. This was the man who had broken into Golden Birch Villa, and walked off with the pick of the property. An ingenious burglar, who was an expert in clocks, and--I smiled grimly at the joke--who had actually put the article into my own hands again in perfect order. I could have imagined that it was a duplicate copy of mine, and in better condition altogether, had it not been for my private mark, which I was focussing now through a single-barrelled magnifier. I could talk to the man better in this fashion; had I looked him straight in his brazen chaps, my virtuous indignation would have betrayed me. And my policy was to dissemble, like the man in a melodrama.

"You have had this a long time in the family, I suppose?" I said quietly--very quietly--but tentatively.

"It's not new. Any fool can see that it is a Louis Seize clock, and of considerable value."

"It's a valuable thing in its way, no doubt, but it would suit a West End house better than my establishment."

"I know that, sir, as well as you do," was the testy reply, "but I haven't got the time to run to the other side of the water, and I want money in a hurry--in a great hurry, or I should not have come to you," he added bluntly.

"Are you living in this neighbourhood?"

"What business is that of yours?" he cried. "What--yes, I do live in the neighbourhood--round the corner in Tan Yard Road--if you want to know. No. 239 is my address, if it is likely to do you any good, and my name is Youson. I see you have your doubts as to my rightful possession of the article; pawnbrokers are all alike, have exactly the same tricks of the trade. I know their ways, no one better, and I know what you are going to say to me next."

"I really do not think that is possible."

"You'll tell me it is unsaleable--that not one in ten thousand would think of buying such a thing--that at the price of the metal it will be worth to you--well, what the devil is it worth? You have been staring at it long enough to know now."

"I am sorry you are in such a tremendous hurry," I said, nettled a little by his unceremonious deportment.

"I _am_ in a hurry. It is a question of life and death to me that I should have that money quickly, don't you see? No--you don't see--how can you see--how can you know anything about me, save that I want money? You see that fast enough. Well, sir, you are welcome to your knowledge," he went on excitedly, "and I am not clever enough to disguise it, though I know you'll take advantage of my extremity--a man of business, and in your line of business, is sure to do that. But give me a fair price. I--I--don't want the money for myself, I don't want a penny of it--shan't take a penny of it, by God!"

This was an odd way of trying to get rid of stolen goods, but it was ingenious, and there was a refreshing novelty in the style of it. But I was not the man to be done. I flattered myself that I was as shrewd as this artful and red-faced old fox, and that I held the trump card in my hand to play at any moment.

"I have a friend only a few doors off who will know the value of this article far better than I," I said; "he is a collector of--of clocks, and will give you a better price than I can afford. This is not in my line at all; I should never get a bid for it. Ten pounds would be too much for me to pay, or even to lend upon it."

"It's worth a hundred pounds, you know that well enough."

"I should not like to say what it is actually worth. I don't buy things like these without Bender's opinion; he's a sleeping partner of mine, and only just round the corner."

"Ah, is he?"

"Heaven forgive me these dreadful lies," I whispered softly to myself.

"Let us go to him," he said, snatching the clock suddenly from my hands. And I had never intended to let the property get out of my possession again! This man was adroit; he might be one too many for me after all, if I betrayed the slightest doubt of him, or made anything like a scene. He was fidgeting with something in the right pocket of his snuffy, old greatcoat too--perhaps there was a pistol there--I was almost sure there was a pistol!

"Yes, let us go to him, Mr. Youson," I said. "I'm sure he or I will make you a handsome offer; he's just the fellow to put down his hundreds. Isaac, get me my hat--any hat or cap, anything you can find--only look alive. I am going round to Mr. Bender's with this gentleman."

"Where's Ben----" began that stupid ass of a boy, but I checked him with a malevolent and meaning glance, and the youth, looking frightened, dived into the back parlour in search of my head-gear. He came out with a straw hat, with a ticket on it, but I did not notice anything in my excitement. I pined to be in the open with this miscreant, who had put the clock into his pocket. With a policeman in view, on the far horizon at the end of the street, my happiest hour would have arrived.

We sallied forth together, I keeping very close to him, lest he should grow suspicious and make up his mind to run. Every minute did I expect that he would plunge into the middle of the road and tear madly down the street. And it was a trouble to keep by the side of him; the people were streaming home from work, were out marketing, looking for something cheap for tea or supper to be bought off the barrows which were flanking the kerbstones. Side by side, we got jostled occasionally, the pavement being narrow and the people thickish, and twice I caught surreptitiously at the hem of his garment when I thought that we were going to be separated. And, as usual, there was not a policeman on the beat anywhere--no sign of official force--nothing but men and women, boys and girls, the boys terribly in the way, and after the girls!

"Do you call this a few doors off?" said Youson, snappishly, at last.

"Comparatively--oh, yes."

"It looks like half-a-mile," he grumbled.

"Another minute or two, Mr. Youson. I am sorry you are so pressed for time."

"So am I. Not but what I have had about enough of your company, with that ridiculous hat of yours over your eyes," he added, ungraciously. "I wish I had never come near your infernal shop. You are about the slowest tradesman I have ever encountered."

"It does not pay to be too fast in my line of business."

"Oh, I don't blame you, I don't blame you, sir; I only say I wish----what are you jumping at? Ain't you well? Are you subject to anything?" he asked. "Spasms or twitches?"

I had seen a policeman on the other side of the way, standing under the shop-blind of a cheesemonger's shop, talking to the young man with the apron who was in charge, grinning from ear to ear with him, and grossly neglecting his duty, which was to keep a sharp look out at what was going on up and down the street.

"Where are you off to now?" asked Mr. Youson.

"Bender's is over the way."

"What, the butterman's?"

"No, no, but just by there. Come along. Mind this horse and cart; I should not like you to get run over with _that_ in your pocket," I said, almost incoherently.

Mr. Youson gave a short double-knock sort of a laugh.

"What, you are getting anxious about the clock, after all?"

"I am indeed."

We had reached the other side of the way, and the policeman had turned his back upon us--just like him!--and was staring straight into the shop. There was a row of egg-boxes full of eggs of all sizes and prices and ages in front of the premises. Suddenly, I sprang like a panther upon my prey, flung my arms round Youson's neck, and yelled, at the top of my lungs, for "Help!" and for the "Police!"

"Damn--confound it, sir--what!"--gurgled forth Youson, in his supreme astonishment; then we both staggered, our feet went from under us, and, locked in each other's arms, we sat down, all of a heap, in the "28 a shilling, not warranted," compartment, and a hideous crackling, as of a subdued and squashy landslip, went on beneath our writhing forms.

"Oh, good Lord!" exclaimed the young butterman, throwing up both arms in his despair, "here's a go!"

"Here--hullo--what the blazes are you two blokes hup to?" cried the policeman, catching us both by the collars of our coats and shaking us; "this is a nice place to begin larking, I must say."

"It is not larking," I exclaimed, getting on my feet, a hideous mass of egg-shells and indifferent egg-flip; "it's highway robbery! This man is in possession of my property--proceeds of a burglary--I'm Kippen, the pawnbroker, No. 319; he's got my clock in his pocket now. I--I give him in charge, constable, I give him in charge! Why don't you catch hold of him?"

"The man's mad!" ejaculated Mr. Youson, "raving mad. Somebody catch hold of _him_."

There was a big crowd round us--it doesn't take long to get up a mob in Bermondsey--and the proprietor of the cheesemonger's shop, who had emerged from his caves of double Gloucester, was wanting to make a case of his own out of it all, and run the two of us in. The policeman was bewildered, and Mr. Youson was beside himself with ungovernable rage.

"He has got the clock in his pocket," I repeated.

"Yes, I know I have a clock in my pocket," he spluttered, "you--you rascal--you unmitigated----"

"It's my clock. I can swear to it," I yelled. "I've plenty of witnesses to prove it's mine."

"You'd better both come round to the station-house," said the policeman; "do you charge him with taking your clock, sir?" he added to me.

"I do."

"Very well."

We went off to the station-house, Mr. Youson and I, the policeman and the cheesemonger, and a grand procession in the rear of about fifteen hundred persons with nothing to do. The cheesemonger and I conversed amicably _en route_, when he had become thoroughly convinced that I was a brother tradesman, resident at the far end of the street. He understood the case then--he grasped the situation--but he could not for the life of him make out, he said, why we had sat down in the middle of his eggs to argue the point. Who was answerable for all the damage, he should like to know? I didn't know, I told him, and I was damaged materially so far as wearing apparel went, I delicately intimated, by the indifferent quality of his eggs. That you cannot get reliable eggs for twenty-eight a shilling in the winter season, in Bermondsey, is a miserable fact, and discreditable to the reputation of French poultry.

I had never been in such a mess in my life, but I was in a greater mess the next day. It's a long story, that of the examination at the police station, and I will spare the reader the harassing details. Mr. Youson, in his confusion, made a very rambling statement of how he came into possession of the clock, prejudiced the Inspector against him, and got himself locked up, and I was told to call the next day at the Police Court in Blackman Street and explain matters, and bring my witnesses. I did so, and brought a neighbour or two who had seen the clock upon my mantelpiece at Streatham, and I clinched the argument with Mrs. Kibbey, who shed copious tears during the evidence, till the magistrate asked her sharply what she was snivelling at, when she fainted dead away under the reproof, and had to be carried from the witness-box into the fresh air to recover.

It was a clear case, however, against Mr. Youson, everybody considered, and he was remanded for a week, without bail, whilst enquiries as to his antecedents were to be vigorously made. There was a very grave suspicion, the Inspector whispered confidentially into my ear, along with some strong puffs of gin and peppermint which impregnated his breathing apparatus dreadfully, that Youson was one of a desperate gang of Lambeth burglars, for whom the police had been searching for some time.

There was a woman's scream in court when Youson was remanded, and the magistrate, who was certainly in a bad temper that morning, said that he would commit anybody for contempt who made such a noise as that again, and then the next case was called, and I was outside in Blackman Street, Borough.

I had, with some difficulty and a little pleasure, lodged the hysterical Mrs. Kibbey in a Streatham omnibus, and was making my way thoughtfully down King Street to my Bermondsey premises, when someone touched me on the arm. I looked round, and was considerably surprised to find a pale, grave young woman of some thirty years of age, poorly but neatly clad, keeping step with me on the narrow pavement.

"I beg pardon, sir, but you are Mr. Kippen, I think?"

"Yes, my name is Kippen."

"I wanted to speak to you. I wanted so much to see you before this case came on. My name is Youson, Lucinda Youson," she said, hurriedly.

"God bless me, is it though? You are----"

"Mr. Youson's daughter."

"My good woman, I hope you are not going to bother me," I said, imploringly; "the case is out of my hands. I am bound over to prosecute. It was a shameful robbery."

"My father did not rob you, Mr. Kippen. Does he look like a thief?"

"I don't know what he looks like."

"You don't know the truth," she said quickly. "Perhaps you don't know what kindness is, or charity--some people don't. You would not wait for him to explain, and you have nearly killed us with anxiety. We--we did not know what had become of him."

"Killed _us_," I repeated, vacantly; "are there many of you?"

"My sister-in-law and her little boy, and myself. And the boy is dying--that's the worst of it--oh! poor little chap, that is the worst of it! And his grandfather was so fond of him; he was selling the clock so that the boy and his mother should go away to Madeira, the only chance to save him, sir. The only chance that was left.

"And so he thought he would sell something valuable that did not belong to him, and go to Madeira at my expense, and----"

"You must not say my father stole it--you dare not!" she cried, and her eyes literally flashed fire at me. This young woman was as impulsive as her felonious father. Here was another scene likely to spring up in the street if I were not particularly careful, and I had had enough of demonstrations in the public highway.

"My good woman, what is it that you want with me?"

"I want you to hear how that clock came into my father's possession, and then--and then prosecute him if you can. And at your peril, sir--please to understand, at your peril, though I utter no threats."

"It strikes me you do."

"No--no--I don't mean that," she cried. "Heaven help me, I am almost distracted, I am not myself to-day, and you will listen? It will not cost you anything to listen to me, sir, will it?"

She laid her hand upon my arm entreatingly--she had very earnest brown eyes, and I was not, as I thought, wholly unsusceptible to the influence of brown eyes upon the nervous system. And as she had delicately intimated that listening would not cost me anything, why should I object to listen to her? We were both going the same way. Of course, I should hear a good roundabout story--a second edition of her father's rigmarole which had prejudiced the magistrate against him--but I was not bound in any way to believe a word that she said.

It sounded uncommonly like truth though, and took me very much aback when she said suddenly--

"Yes, that clock was stolen from you. We knew it was stolen--and who stole it."

"But you just said----"

"That my father did not steal it. God bless him, no. He did not know--did not dream that we knew--did not know anything about it in any way--does not to this day. It was his property, he thought--all that was left of any value in the world to him; and it had belonged to his son--his eldest son, my half-brother, who----"

"Who was the thief. The infernal----"

"Please don't, sir. He is dead."

"Oh! I beg your pardon. I didn't--know," I found myself saying in an apologetic manner which really surprised myself.

"Yes, sir, he was the thief," she said, sinking her voice into a whisper almost. "He committed suicide two months ago abroad, but we have kept the truth back from father. He wasn't to know--it would have broken his heart, he was so proud of his son, always. But before my half-brother died--he had gone to Canada, to make a home for Kitty and her boy, he said--he wrote to Kitty that he was a repentant man, and that, unknown to any of us, he had been for years in bad hands, working with them, stealing with them. Our poor father thought he was a traveller for a Manchester firm, and so did we, until that terrible confession came across the sea to us. We were not to tell father--we were to make all the restitution that we could presently; he would send full instructions what we were to do by the next mail, he wrote, and the next mail only told us of his death."

"And your father?"

"Kitty and I have fought hard to keep the truth from him--the truth would have broken his heart. Why the news of his son's death nearly did, sir. And he has had so much trouble--so many losses too--and we have been for the last six months so very hard driven to live. Of late days father wished to sell this clock, but we would not let him--we were sure it had been stolen, and we hoped to find the owner some day."

"But not like this, I suppose?"

"Oh! no, not like this. But when little Willie got very ill; when residence abroad for a few months might save him, the doctor said--it was only yesterday he told us that--father took the clock out of the house unknown to us, and--and came at once to you. He is so very impetuous, poor father."

"Ah! is he? And who put the clock in working order, may I ask?"

"I did."

"You!"

"I was brought up to the watch-making--I am rather clever at it, they say."

"Clever. By George, I should think you were! Why, in a business like mine you would be invaluable."

"I was always handy with my fingers."

"So was your half-brother--it seems to run in the family."

"Oh!"

"I beg pardon," I said, for the second time. "I--I did not mean to say that. It slipped out promiscuously."

"Never mind, sir--never mind," she said hurriedly. "What are you going to do? Pray tell me what you think of doing when I prove the truth of this."

"If it's all true--and I believe it is already, Miss Youson--I--I am going to withdraw from the prosecution, and ask your father to bring an action against me for illegal detention."

"Oh! he would never think of such a thing."

And he never did. The story was quite true, every word of it, and we arranged to keep it from the old man, so far as the peculiar profession of his first-born was concerned. He never knew _that_. I got rather intimate with the Youson family by degrees, although our acquaintance had begun so inauspiciously. Rather intimate, I say--well, very intimate, rather! would be a clear expression, if a trifle inelegant.

For I married that girl, and pensioned off Mrs. Kibbey, and I never did such a fine stroke of business in all my life. The old man--he was a fine old fellow, too--went to Madeira with Kitty and the boy, and I bore Lucinda off to Streatham. She is one of the best of wives, and so very handy in the business too--saves me a heap of money. It was a lucky day for me when that rascal of a half-brother of hers broke burglariously into Golden Birch Villa, and took away everything that had an atom's worth of precious metal in its composition. It was a blessing very much in disguise, but it has answered its purpose thoroughly well. I am as happy as the day is long--and so is Lucinda. Everybody tells me that I secured a treasure when I took her for better, for worse. Everybody but Mrs. Kibbey--past housekeeper, and living with her sister now in the Cookshops Almshouses at Caterham--and she says I could have done much better for myself, long before, if I had only looked about me in a sensible and practical sort of way.

"Lions in Their Dens."

III.--GEORGE NEWNES AT PUTNEY.

BY RAYMOND BLATHWAYT.

ILLUSTRATIONS BY GEO. HUTCHINSON.

(_Photographs by Messrs. Fradelle & Young._)

As I toiled up the hill which leads to Putney Heath, I met a small boy, of whom I asked the way to Mr. George Newnes's house. To my astonishment he did not know where it was. I gazed at him more in sorrow than in anger. "What! not know where _Tit-Bits_ lives!" a smart lad standing by ejaculated, as he pointed out to me the right direction in which to go. "George Newnes! 'im wot writes _Tit-Bits_! wy I thought everyone knowed w'ere 'ee lived!" I thanked him, and wandered on half-a-mile or so until I reached the beautiful house which the "writer" of _Tit-Bits_ built for himself some years ago. Here I was received by Mr. George Newnes with a welcome which left nothing to be desired in the way of hearty kindness. Mr. Newnes is a man of middle height, very good-looking, with auburn beard, and hair dashed with grey. Though exceedingly wealthy, he is not, as somebody has well expressed it, "beastly rich." No feeling of the oppression of newly-acquired wealth flooded my soul as I walked about the pretty house and grounds in his company. He and his surroundings have the good taste not to obtrude themselves upon the casual visitor. The man is simplicity itself, and the most genial and cordial of hosts. I thoroughly enjoyed my visit, nor was it without infinite interest, for George Newnes is a companion always amusing, and with always something new and original to say. As we wandered through the beautiful grounds, some of which are reclaimed from the wild heath which stretches for miles round the house, he pointed out to me the curious obelisk, grey and time-worn, which still perpetuates the memory of the historic mansion once known as "Fireproof." For it was here that George III. and Queen Charlotte once breakfasted in peace in the drawing room upstairs, whilst the dining-room below was purposely ignited to prove that the house was really fireproof. Upon one side of the house stand the stables, just beyond them a beautiful covered lawn-tennis court lighted by electricity and heated with hot water, in which play can go on by night as well as by day, in winter just as much as in summer. "We miss this tennis court dreadfully when we are in Devonshire," said Mr. Newnes, as we quitted the beautiful hall for the house. "I am myself devoted to tennis and golfing, and, indeed, I sometimes think it is that that has helped me to get through so much work. Good players generally make good workers," he added, with a laugh. "Now will you come and join our party at luncheon?" and as he spoke he led the way into a handsome dining-room. At luncheon the conversation dealt chiefly with sport and games, to my own great relief be it added, for the dweller in the tents of the literary world hears but little of the ordinary topics of conversation, and becomes suffocated, if he be not to the manner born, with the nauseating cant and self-sufficiency which is so typical of the literary world of to-day, and more especially typical of its younger members. But at George Newnes's house you hear but little shop. We discussed golf and its rapidly increasing popularity, the newest "serve" at tennis, and some of the most remarkable cricket scores made during the past season.