Part 10

I made no further comments on the new information. I was not anxious that he should prove correct in his surmise, but hoped that the case would be narrowed rather than broadened. With this end in view I thought proper to prime my companion well as to the questions he was to ask the gentleman we were on our way to see, leaving to myself rather the task of watching and analysing.

Mr Turner had a craze for buying fiddles which he never did, and never could, play upon, and I mentally placed him in the same position as a bibliomaniac, who would sell his soul to get hold of some old musty volume not worth reading, simply because it happened to be the only copy in existence. Such a man, I had no hesitation in deciding, would steal as readily as a man drunk with opium. My only difficulty was how to make sure that the fiddle had been stolen at his instigation, and, if that were made clear, how to get at the stolen article.

The cab stopped at a little hamlet about three miles from the city, and I was shown into the drawing-room of Mr Turner’s house, in which we were speedily joined by a dirty-looking man, very shabbily and raggedly attired, and evidently straight from digging in the garden, whom I had difficulty in believing to be the wealthy gentleman I had come to see.

The face was rather repulsive, on the whole, until my companion spoke of his rare fiddles, when it became animated and bright with the ruling passion of his life. Then he turned to a cabinet in the room, and unlocked it as solemnly as if it had been an iron safe full of diamonds and gold, and brought out several old fiddles, very much cracked and mended, and every one, if possible, uglier than another, and which were placed successively in my hands, with a triumphant look, which evidently meant, “Admire that, or be for ever condemned as ignorant and stupid.”

I examined them closely as I had been instructed by Mr Cleffton, and even brightened a little when I found one which had the printed ticket inside of which he had spoken, but on referring the matter to my companion, he only smiled and said—

“Oh, that’s a _Strad._, too, but it’s only a copy, and a very poor one. The other was a _real_ Cremona. By the by, Mr Turner,” he abruptly added aloud, in response to a signal from me, and while I pretended to bend over the fiddle in my hand in wrapt devotion and admiration, “Do you remember that _Stradivarius_ which Cleffton refused to sell you?”

“Yes; what of it?” The words were somewhat hastily thrown out, and I fancied I noticed a kind of nervous flutter in his voice as he spoke.

“It has been stolen.”

“Stolen? Impossible!”

These were his words, and natural enough under the circumstances, but it is impossible to convey in print the whole effect of the exclamation. There is more in the manner in which words are spoken than in the words themselves. The appearance of surprise and incredulity was—or appeared to me to be—manifestly forced; the eyes of the man had an absent and uneasy expression, as if, while he was mechanically pronouncing the words, he was saying to himself—“Is there any danger? Can any one have hinted to him that I might have been the thief?”

“It is not only possible, but a fact,” pursued my companion.

“And how was it done?” asked Mr Turner, with more coolness.

The fiddler briefly ran over the incidents of the theft, but when he came to explain that all the suspicion rested on the sham coachman, Mr Turner dissented warmly. “They’ll find that that has been a cock and bull story of the servants to screen themselves,” he said decidedly. “The whole thing is absurd; and my opinion is that the fiddle is safely hidden somewhere about the house in which it was missed.”

“The police don’t seem to think so,” I quietly observed.

“The police!” he scornfully echoed, “a parcel of blockheads—they’ll never lay hands on it, I’ll swear. When anything is stolen, of course, they have to make a show of activity, but it’s all humbug. They never recover the stolen thing.”

“I think you’re mistaken,” said I, with some truth, as the reader probably is aware.

“They’ll never see it,” he hotly and positively persisted. “I’ll stake twenty pounds on it.”

“Perhaps you’ll lose,” I laughingly returned. “Now, Mr ——, you bear witness that Mr Turner has promised to pay £20 to the—say the Royal Infirmary—if the police get back Mr Cleffton’s fiddle.”

Mr Turner appeared to think this a very good joke, and laughingly repeated his offer. We had by this time looked over every fiddle in his possession, as he averred, and as I had no search warrant, and no grounds for trying to get one, we had to take leave without any further discovery. But while we were being shown to the door by the shabby and ragged proprietor, I busied myself with inquiries as to the number of servants he employed. The house was a big one, and there was at least half an acre of garden ground attached to it, and I was in hope that he might keep a man, or hire one to help him to keep it in order. In this I was disappointed. He kept but two servants, and never hired a man for his garden, unless when actually forced to it by bad health. He kept neither horse nor machine, and always walked in to Edinburgh when business called him thither, so my sniffing after a horsey manservant went for nothing. I knew, however, that Mr Turner had been perfectly aware of Cleffton’s engagement to play at the Earl of ——’s, and was loath to believe that I was on the wrong scent.

I therefore bade the eccentric man rather an absent-minded good-bye, and had moodily settled myself in the cab for a good think, when a sudden thought came to me as we were leaving the hamlet behind. A little further down the road from the house we had visited was a wayside cottage with a few jars of sweets and biscuits and a couple of tobacco pipes stuck prominently in one of the windows, thus intimating that the place was meant for a shop. If any gossip—any news or information was to be collected regarding any one in the place, it was surely to be got in such a house as this, and my hand was on the check string in a moment.

When I got inside the cottage, a clean, tidy woman came bustling through from the back room, wiping her hands on her apron as she came. I was a little at a loss how to begin till I noticed some bottles of lemonade in a case behind the little counter, and asked to be served with two.

Chairs were handed us, and we decanted the lemonade in comfort, talking about the weather and roads as we did so, and then I indifferently turned the conversation to the strange customers that the good woman would be in the habit of noticing on the road.

“I suppose you never notice any men coming to see Mr Turner up the way there—a coarse, red-haired man, for instance, in a big coachman’s coat, and having a slight cast in his eyes?”

“Mr Turner’s no ane to hae mony folk coming aboot his hoose—he’s owre greedy for that,” was the answer, “but I think I did see a man like that a day or twa syne—no gaun to Mr Turner’s, but coming the other road. He cam’ in here and bocht a half-ounce o’ tobacco and a pipe.”

“Going in towards Edinburgh, you mean?”

“No that either, for he asked the nearest road to the railway station.”

“He couldn’t be going to Edinburgh, then, for the station is two miles farther on, and he would have been nearly as quick to have walked. Have you any idea if he had been at Mr Turner’s?”

“No me; I never clapped een on the man afore.”

“Was he carrying anything?—a fiddle case, for instance?”

“No, no—naething but a deal box, tied roond wi’ a string. It wasna sae big as a fiddle case. He laid it doon on the counter while he filled his pipe. I think there was a ticket on it—put on wi’ iron tacks—and a name on the ticket.”

“What name?”

“I never lookit. Maybe it wasna a name. I never like to be impident, and didna look very close.”

I questioned her closely on the man’s appearance, and found that it tallied very closely with that of the sham coachman. Yet I was anything but hopeful of the result. The description might have suited fifty innocent men who might pass her little shop in the course of a forenoon. Still I resolved to follow the clue a little further, and directed the cabman to turn his horse off at the first bye-road, and make for a railway station two miles further on. It was quite a small place, a branch from the main line, and to my satisfaction I found the booking clerk who had been on duty on the day named by the woman. This lad recollected the red-haired man perfectly, but when I said, “Where did he book for?” he looked at me with a puzzled expression, then thought a moment, and said—

“_Did_ he book for any place?”

It was now my turn to look puzzled.

“I don’t know—I suppose he did when he walked two miles to get to the station,” I said at last. “Why else would he come here?”

“He brought a parcel,” said the lad, turning to one of his ledgers and flapping over the leaves. “He booked _it_, I know, but I don’t think he took out a ticket or waited for the train.”

“What kind of a parcel?”

“A light box. I think he said it was to be kept dry, as there were artificial flowers and ribbons in it. Ah, here is the entry—it is not paid you see—he said we’d take greater care of it if it wasn’t prepaid—‘Sent by James Paterson, to Robert Marshall, Linlithgow. To lie at station till called for.’”

“Was the box big enough to have held a fiddle?”

“About that size, sir. I don’t think it would have held the fiddlestick too. The fiddlestick is longer, and would take more room.”

“Was the box called for at the other end, do you know?” I asked, beginning to be more hopeful.

“I don’t know about that—it was sent away, and that’s all we have to do with it. These parcels are generally expected, and don’t lie long unclaimed.”

“You’ve got a telegraph handy—would you just send a message through, particularly asking if that box has been called for?” and I calmly sat down and motioned the clerk to his place at the instrument; and in a short time had the welcome news that the “box was there still, and had not been asked for.”

I looked at my watch and then consulted a time-table, and found that if I drove smartly into Edinburgh I could easily get a fast train to Linlithgow, without waiting for the slow connection with this out-of-the-way branch line. Afraid of looking foolish if I found myself mistaken, I dropped my companion at Edinburgh and took train for Linlithgow alone. The moment I got out, and the bustle of the train’s arrival and departure was over, I got the booking-clerk to turn out his parcel press, and easily found the box I was in search of. It was but roughly put together, and appeared to have been made out of the undressed spars of an old orange box; but by shaking it sharply I soon ascertained that it contained something harder than either flowers or ribbons. After a consultation, I was allowed to use a chisel to the lid, and easily prised it up sufficiently to pull out the paper and straw with which it was padded, and found snugly reposing underneath, a fiddle which in every respect answered the description of that stolen from Mr Cleffton.

I had little doubt that I had fairly recovered the stolen property, but I was just as anxious to get hold of the thief. It appeared to me that the sending of the fiddle by rail to this quiet station was merely the adoption of a safe hiding-place till the hue and cry of the robbery were over, and that as soon as the actual instigator felt safe he would appear to claim the box. I could not afford to wait so long; so I got permission to fasten up the box and leave it, while I returned to Edinburgh bearing the fiddle.

My first visit was to the gentleman who had introduced me to Mr Turner, and he identified the fiddle at a glance as Cleffton’s; but he did more. Getting out a fiddle bow, he ran his fingers over the strings in a testing way, and at last said decidedly—

“I could stake my life on it that that’s M——’s £50 Cremona that was stolen as I told you. Suppose we go along to his house and see?”

“I thought you said he was dead?”

“So he is; but his widow is alive, and may know the fiddle. We will not prompt her in any way, but just show it her and see if she has any suspicion of the truth.”

I was so pleased at the identification of the fiddle as that stolen from Cleffton—which was all I had been employed to find—that I offered no objection, and we walked through a street or two to a semi-genteel place, where I was introduced to the widow of the musician, and found her a shrewd and superior woman—one picked out of a hundred, I should say, for quick intelligence.

My companion opened the conversation by asking to see one of her late husband’s instruments to compare it with that we had with us, and in the course of the testing he managed that our fiddle should find its way into the widow’s hands. In a moment or two I saw her start and look at it more closely, then take it nearer the light and examine it closely at the scroll work close to the screwing pegs, and then she turned to my companion perfectly amazed, and said—

“Do you know what I’ve discovered?”

“What?”

“This is my fiddle—the one that was stolen from M———the £50 Cremona lost on the Penicuick road.”

“Impossible!—that one was bought in Newcastle.”

“That’s nothing. I don’t care though it had been bought in Australia—it’s his fiddle. Look here”—and she pointed to some scratching on the varnish in among the scroll carving—“what do you call that?”

We both looked very closely, and I said at last—

“It’s like the letter M scratched with a pin.”

“It is just that, and was scratched with a pin in this very room. He did it one night before me, saying, ‘If ever any one runs away with my fiddle I’ll know it by that whether they change the ticket or not.’ You need not take the fiddle away with you, for I claim it as mine.”

Here was a poser, but I was not to be so easily deprived of what was mine only on trust. I quietly took the instrument into my hands, saying—

“At present, Mrs M———, the fiddle is in the hands of the police, and as soon as you make good your claim to it I have no doubt it will be surrendered to you, but it seems to me that you will require to advance better evidence than that of a mere scratched letter.”

“I for one can swear to the instrument,” observed my companion.

“And half a dozen more, when they see it,” added the widow warmly. “I will raise an action for its recovery to-morrow.”

“Tuts! do not be so hasty—save your money in the meantime,” I advised. “I may get the evidence for you quite easily, if I can get the thief to confess. But that will necessitate a journey to Newcastle, so it can hardly be done in a day.”

I said this pretty confident that the swindling Mackintosh who had sold the fiddle to Cleffton would turn out to be the original thief, and took away the instrument and made preparations to secure him. I had before this made an arrangement whereby any one calling for the box at Linlithgow station should be detained and arrested; and the whole case now presented the curious spectacle of two robberies, two claimants, and two thieves. A telegram to England, according to arrangement, brought Mr Cleffton down in joy and ecstacy to claim his beloved fiddle, but only to be all but heart-broken with the intelligence that it was believed to be stolen property, and could not be given up till all claims had been fully investigated. The day after, I managed to run down to Newcastle. I easily found the little shop of Mackintosh, and considerably startled him by saying—

“My name is M^cGovan, and I have come from Edinburgh about that affair of the Cremona. I want you to come with me.”

The name appeared to be known to him, for he became ashy white before I had done speaking, and then with chattering teeth managed to say—

“I can’t leave my business; but I’m willing to lose the money. I’ll pay Cleffton back the £40 out of my own pocket, if he gives me back the fiddle.”

“Out of your own pocket?” I growled. “Man, don’t try that on me. The whole thing was a regular plant. But, as it happens, it’s not that part of the business that has brought me here. It’s the way you got the fiddle—it was stolen.”

“Stolen? Then it wasn’t by me,” he cried, with fearful earnestness. “I can swear that with my hand on the Bible. I bought it from a broker in the Cowgate, in Edinburgh.”

“That’s a common story—you’ll have a receipt, I suppose?” I answered, with a grin.

“I have, and I’ll show it you,” and much to my surprise he very quickly produced a badly written and spelled receipt for £3, bearing a stamp, and signed “Patrick Finnigan.”

“Now, be cautious what you say,” I returned, after a long look at the paper. “I happen to know Finnigan, and know him to be an honest man. You declare that you bought the fiddle from him—the fiddle which Cleffton bought from you for £40?”

“I declare that solemnly.”

“Then how did he get it?”

“I don’t know; but it runs in my head that he said he bought it at a country auction sale. It was in two pieces when I got it—the neck was away from the body.”

All this seemed probable enough, but I thought proper to take Mackintosh with me to the Newcastle Central, and have him locked up, while I returned to investigate his statements. Taking the fiddle and receipt with me, I called on Finnigan and asked him to try and recall the circumstances of the sale. That he managed to do when prompted by several statements of Mackintosh to me—particularly one as to the fiddle being in a broken state, and having hung in the back shop in a green bag, when Mackintosh asked to see it. Questioned then as to how it came into his possession, he said—

“I was out in the country at an auction sale—it was at a farm about six miles from here—and there were two or three fiddles put up. This was the last, and as it was broke—though the auctioneer declared that it only needed a little glue and new strings to make it play beautiful—nobody would bid for it, and I got it for five shillings. I always meant to sort it up, but was afraid I mightn’t do it right. One day the man who bought it came in and looked at a fiddle I had in the window, and then asked if I had any more. I showed him that, and saw him look pleased and eager like, so when he asked the price of it I thought I’d drop on him, and said £5. He prigged me down to £3 and then took it away, saying he didn’t think it dear.”

“You can’t remember the name of the farm, I suppose?” I wearily remarked, beginning to despair of getting to the bottom of the strange complication.

“I don’t know the name of the farm, but I think the name of the farmer who had died, and who had owned the fiddle, was Gow, or something like that. I could take you to the place though, and maybe that would do as well.”

I thought the proposal a good one, and got a cab the same afternoon, and drove out towards Penicuick, then by some cross roads, through which the cabman was unerringly directed by Finnigan, we reached the farm in question. Here I was not surprised to learn that nothing was known of the Gows who had formerly occupied the farm. Gow himself was dead, and his surviving relations gone, none knew whither; but, in the course of my inquiries, I came across an old man—a ploughman or farm worker, who had served with Gow for many years, and to him I turned as a kind of forlorn hope, though, as it happened, I could not have hit upon a better if I had hunted for years.

“It’s about an old fiddle that was sold at the roup when the old man died,” I explained, in rather a loud key, for the old man was a little deaf. “It was broken at the time, and was sold for five shillings.”

“I mind o’d perfectly,” said the old man. “It was the fiddle that we fund on the road gaun to market. The maister was on ae cairt and me on the tither; and it was quite dark at the time, but there was a heavy rime on the grund, and the fiddle was in a black case, and I noticed it as we drave by, and stoppit my cairt to pick it up. The maister stoppit his too, and then when he had lookit at the fiddle, and tried hoo the strings soonded, he said, ‘Them ’at finds keeps, Sandy. I’ll gi’e ye five shillings to yoursel’, an we’ll say naething aboot this to naebody.’ So we shoved it in alow the strae, and there it lay till we got back frae Em’bro’. The maister played on it, and likit it better nor his ain; but on the Saturday after he cam’ to my hoose late at nicht, wi’ the case and fiddle in his hand, and said, kind o’ excited like, ‘Sandy, in case onybody should ask after this fiddle I think we’d better pit it ooten sicht for a wee. Get your shuill, and dig a hole ony place where it’s no likely to be disturbed.’”

“And you did it?”

“Deed did I. I dug a hole, and the fiddle and case lay there for mair nor a year. But it was never claimed, and we got it oot, and he played on it for a while, but the damp ground had spoiled it in some way, and he never likit it sae weel as at first. Then it gaed in twa ae day in his hands, and was put awa in a bag till the day o’ the sale.”

“And what became of the case?” I asked, with great eagerness.

“Ou, the maister used it for a long time to haud ane o’ his ain fiddles, and it went wi’ it at the sale to Thompson o’ the Mains.”

“Was there not a brass plate on it bearing a name?”

“A brass plate? I raither think there was a brass plate on it when we fund it, but I never saw it after. Maybe the maister had ta’en it aff.”

“Not unlikely,” I dryly observed. “Did you never hear of the fiddle being advertised for?”

“No me; I didna fash muckle wi’ papers at that time.”

“You must have known that you were as good as stealing the fiddle?—that it must have had an owner?” I sternly pursued.

“I said that at the time, and advised the maister to adverteese it in the papers, but he only laughed, and said he would tak’ a’ the risk.”

“Can this Mr Thompson who bought the case be found now?”

“Naething easier, sir,” the man readily returned. “The farm’s no a mile off.”

I began to see the end of my task now, and, with the old ploughman to lead the way, at once drove to the Mains and was introduced to Mr Thompson. The fiddle case was at once produced, and then I smiled as I discovered on the top of the lid a square indentation and two rivet holes, which had evidently at one time contained a brass name-plate. With little difficulty I got the fiddle case away with me, and drove back to Edinburgh, where it was identified by the widow at a glance as that of her husband’s lost instrument.

I now had the whole case traced out to its core, and lying clear as a written history before me, but as there was only one fiddle to give away among the claimants, it will be seen that the task before us was not only difficult, but almost certain to bring upon us the dissatisfaction of some of the so-called owners.

While I had been investigating, Mackintosh, thoroughly frightened, had sent a draft for £40 to Cleffton, asking him to return the fiddle at his leisure and say no more about it; but when he was set at liberty he had the doubtful satisfaction of finding that he had lost both the money and the fiddle. I waited patiently to see if the box at Linlithgow would be called for, but evidently the senders had become alarmed, for they never turned up. I then tried to ascertain from Mr Turner’s servants if a man like the sham coachman had been seen about that gentleman’s house, but they were too wary for me, and denied it point blank. I then turned to Mr Turner himself, and, hinting in no measured terms that he was the prime mover in the robbery, _commanded_ him to pay over to the Infirmary the sum of £20, which the grasping villain very reluctantly but abjectly consented to do.

There now remained but the two rival owners to deal with, and I am certain the case would have gone to the Court of Session but for a thought which struck me when Cleffton was one day arguing his view of the case to me.