Part 17

This knife, after some joking comments by me, was put away with Jim’s tobacco pipe and other treasures, to be returned to him when his term expired. But before that time came Jim had done something which quickened curiously the interest I already felt in his career. One of the warders had in some way excited the rancour of three prisoners, and they laid their heads together and recklessly resolved to “pitch into him.” By a most ingenious plot they managed to get him alone, and then ferociously attacked him with hammers. Jim, however, had taken a liking to the man, and, happening to be near, he at once, with that bull-dog bravery which had always distinguished him, took the part of the warder. He fought two of them single handed, though a good deal pounded and hurt in the struggle, and was seized with them, by mistake, and hurried off to the dark cell. As soon as matters had been explained by the rescued warder, Jim was brought forth and handsomely complimented by the governor, and from that day till the expiry of his sentence treated with marked lenience and favour. I was over in the jail shortly after this affair, and, chancing to see Jim among the workers, I took him aside for a word. “Jim,” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder and speaking with great earnestness, “you’re in the wrong line entirely. You are just the stuff a good soldier is made of. Get into that as soon as you are let out. It’ll be a new life—an honest one—and advancement is sure for you. It’s a sheer waste of material to have you herding here with these louts. Rise above them. These cowards are fit for nothing else, but you, you can be a man if you choose.”

While I spoke I saw his eyes—which were fixed somewhat shame-strickenly upon the ground—gradually light up. A new possibility had dawned upon him.

“I think you’re right, sir,” he said at last, very gratefully; then he added with great firmness—“I’ll enlist whenever I get out.”

He meant to do it, and would have done it, but for his mother. What fatality prompted her to veto the whole plan?—to abjure him with tears and clinging love, which were resistless, to remain at home and not trouble himself about the future while he had her to slave for him? She shuddered at the idea of her boy—her youngest, and the last of them all, going into a battle, and recklessly tearing through showers of bullets and walls of steel, as she knew he would do. But, could she have looked into the future, as I can now look back on the past, she would have seen there something more to be dreaded. So Jim continued to loaf about and live upon his wits, and when Joe Knevitt joined him, the old practices came as a natural result. I saw Jim once or twice and tried to reason with him, but his answer was always the same—

“Mother won’t let me list.”

“Then I’ll have you again soon,” I gravely remarked.

“I can’t help it,” was his cool reply, and I suppose he thought the event far off. With the confirmed thief it is always some one else who is to be taken, never himself. Jim had really not over-rated his cleverness. He had grown more cautious by experience, and might have eluded me but for his rock a-head—Joe Knevitt. I believe there was a woman in this rupture—one of those flashy shop girls who sell cigars and tobacco and flirt with everybody, and whom Joe wanted entirely to himself; but the ostensible reason was a difference about their respective shares in the plunder from a certain robbery down at Greenside which puzzled us not a little. There is a certain style in every thief’s work. In any kind of job where Jim’s old plumber experience helped him, he was perfectly at home, and had this affair shown any trace of that, I should have gone for him at once. But there was no trace of violence or tearing down of wood-work, or wrenching or unscrewing. It was a shop, and the door was found locked as usual when the owner entered it next morning and found the most valuable part of his stock gone, and about twenty pounds in silver as well, which he had thought too heavy to take home the night before. I searched the whole shop _carefully_, and found no trace of the thieves or clue to their identity; and candidly may now confess that I suspected the _owner_ was the thief, that for some purpose he had robbed himself. I was mistaken, of course, for the door had been opened and locked again with skeleton keys made by Knevitt.

Meanwhile Joe and Jim were quarrelling, and Joe proceeded to settle the dispute in a fashion of his own. On the second morning after the robbery, the shop boy in sweeping out the place found a big clasp knife, which he had not noticed before, in a dark corner behind the counter. The knife was shown to his master, and finally brought up to the office to me. The moment it was placed in my hands I exclaimed—“What! did you find that in the shop? How did I miss it when I was there? It’s Jim Hutson’s knife. I’ll soon have the thieves now, and possibly the plunder too.”

Down I went to Jim’s home in College Wynd. He was not in.

“He’s got wark,” his mother explained.

“So I think,” was my dry rejoinder. I looked over the house, and finally under the bed found a parcel tied up in brown paper.

“He brocht it in last nicht,” his mother simply remarked. “He’s keeping it to obleege a freend.”

I opened the parcel, and found it contained part of the stolen goods. I was explaining this to the mother when Jim appeared in working garb for his breakfast. He changed colour at once, and sat down, or rather dropped down, into a seat by the fire.

“It’s all up, Jim,” I said with some pity. “I told you I’d have you soon.”

He stared at me, not in resentment, but with a strange, thoughtful look in his eyes. “Have I been sold?” he at last inquired, rather quietly. “Did he—I mean—did anyone betray me?”

“No,” I promptly answered, believing what I said. “Have you your knife about you?”

He dived his hand into his pocket, and then appeared to reflect.

“You needn’t look there for it,” I remarked. “I’ll find it for you when we get up to the office.”

“I had it yesterday—I’m sure I had it yesterday,” he said, after a horrible pause.

“I don’t think so,” I gently observed in correction. “You dropped it the night before.”

“What! do you mean to say you found it _there_?” he cried, his whole face becoming white with fury.

“It was found,” I oracularly returned; and then, taking my advice, he relapsed into silence, and quietly accompanied me.

Of course the mother had to go too, but she was speedily released, as it was quite evident, from her artless admission to me, that she knew nothing of the robbery, and her character was above suspicion.

Jim did not deny his knife. He only said occasionally under his breath—“He has done it! Wait; I’ll give it him back!”

His suspicion, which was probably sound, was that Joe had picked his pocket of the knife, and then made some errand into the shop, and so managed to drop the tell-tale article where it was likely to be found.

From these muttered imprecations I guessed that Joe was his partner in the crime, and went for him as soon as Jim was locked up. An ordinary thief would have betrayed his pal at once after such dastardly treatment, but, as I have indicated, there was about Jim a kind of manliness which scorned such a mean revenge. He remained absolutely silent regarding Joe’s complicity, and, as that rascal was cunning enough to take care of himself, we had no evidence against him, and he was released.

In order to have his sentence shortened Jim pleaded guilty, and got off with eighteen months’ imprisonment.

“When your term is up, Jim, go for a soldier,” I whispered to him as he was led down stairs.

“Maybe I will—it depends,” he grimly answered with set teeth, and so he disappeared for a year and a half’s moody reflection.

When the time came for his release he was fearfully excited for a little over the fact that his beloved knife could not be found among his treasures.

“My knife! my knife! I must have my knife!” he feverishly exclaimed, and he absolutely refused to stir out of the prison till he got it. When it was found and placed in his hands he appeared exuberantly happy, and as impatient for liberty as he had before been reluctant to leave.

At the gate, his mother, as usual, was there to receive him, but she found him a good deal changed. He was moody and strange, except when questioning her regarding Joe Knevitt. The little she knew of his old pal was eagerly devoured, but beyond that he had little to say. At home his first task was to get out his knife and grind its edge to a razor-like keenness. His mother noticed the fact, and fancied that he appeared specially careful with the point, but the only answer she got was—

“Ah, it’s been lying a long time unused, mother. Eighteen months is a long time—in prison;” and Jim’s teeth became set, and his two hands shook as he tested the keenness of the point of the knife with his thumb. His mother saw that she had touched a sore spot, and remained silent. As soon as Jim’s task was over he set out to look for Joe. He wanted him particularly, and was quite joyful when he learned that Joe was still about the city, and not in prison. But search as he could he did not find Joe, and at length learned that that cautious customer had left for Glasgow on the very day of Jim’s release. No matter, Jim thought distance a trifle, and followed as soon as he could scrape enough money together. He took his knife with him. On the second day he did see Joe for a moment or two—met him full in the face in an entry off the Gallowgate; but the moment their eyes met, and Jim’s hand went into his pocket, Knevitt ran like a hound, and managed to distance Jim completely and escape. Next day Knevitt left for Perth, after saying that he was off to Edinburgh; but Jim met a man who had seen Joe take a ticket for Perth, and he followed. At Perth he traced Knevitt without difficulty to a house known to them both. But the hunted man had seen him approach, and by slipping on a woman’s skirt and shawl and bonnet boldly passed him on the stair, and escaped. Jim fathomed the trick a few minutes later, and cursed his own stupidity in allowing the unnaturally tall female figure to pass him; but by that time Knevitt was on his way to Dundee. The next train took Jim there also. After a day’s hunting he met his man in Couttie’s Wynd.

“By G—d! your hour has come!” he cried, darting his hand into his breast pocket; but again Knevitt put on that fearful speed and ran for life. Not far from the place is a ferry across to Fife. The pier at which the boat starts is guarded by a gate which is closed when the boat is about to move. Knevitt managed to get within that gate just as it was being closed, and scrambled into the boat nearly dead with terror, while Jim was thundering and shouting in vain outside the gate in hope of admission. Knevitt had thus a whole hour’s start, and, besides, had more money in his pocket. Jim, when he reached the other side, was uncertain whether the hunted man had decided to walk or ride; and his own funds being low, he resolved to walk. He had no doubt as to the next goal.

“Edinburgh! he’ll be sure to land in Edinburgh!” he muttered to himself, and thus he confidently tramped through Fife, reserving the little money he had to pay the ferry at Burntisland. It was the dead of winter, and bitterly cold, and when Jim arrived at his mother’s house he was nearly dead beat. He had got over with a goods boat, and reached home early in the morning. He lay down and slept all day—a fevered, unrestful sleep, full of dreams and mutterings, and suppressed threats and deadly words, which filled his mother with terror. At night he awoke, and moodily consumed the meal placed before him, and then limped to the door.

“Where are you for now?” asked his mother with a palpitating heart.

“Just going out to look about me,” was the answer, and then he was gone. His mother thought she would look about her too, and threw a shawl over her head and followed. During the two hours’ wandering which followed, she never lost sight of him. At last she discovered that he was following a man—Joe Knevitt—who appeared quite unconscious of the fact. Knevitt made for a tumble-down rookery in a close a little below the Bridges. It was his home, and had the advantage of being accessible from two sides—by the two flights of wooden steps on one side, and by a back window on a level with a higher close beyond. The garret on the top flat was all Joe’s, and he clearly indicated to his foe that no one else was within by unlocking the door as he went in. Jim had his shoes off in a twinkling, and then crept up the first flight of steps and patiently waited in the dark, with his knife ready unclasped in his hand. The poor mother understood it all now, and, having before heard the place described, she slipped round to the next close, clambered upon an outhouse, and astonished Knevitt by tapping lightly at the window and madly motioning him to come out and fly for his life. Knevitt needed no explanation; her face was enough, and he was out at the window and gone before she had well got over her excitement and terror. She waited there for a full quarter of an hour to give him time to escape; and then resolved to go in, open the door, and go down and tell Jim that his plot was discovered and his intended victim far beyond his reach. The door was opened, and Jim, watching below with the knife in his hand, dimly saw a female figure descend where only a man had entered.

“That trick won’t deceive me!” he cried, as he dashed up the steps and drew back his right arm. “You’ve tried it once too often, Joe!”

One plunge of the sharp steel with all the strength of his powerful arm, one low groan as the poor victim sank back on the steps, and it was done, and Jim flying for life and liberty. His mother was not dead when she was found, but it was quite evident that she was mortally wounded. When her state was known, and preparations made to take her deposition, she persisted that she had been stabbed by Joe Knevitt. The knife found by her side was Jim Hutson’s, but his mother, innocently or knowingly—I cannot tell which—said—

“Jim was aye a gude laddie, and though he was led away he wadna lift his hand against his mother. Joe Knevitt did it, the ungrateful scoondrel, after me daeing him a gude turn. _But dinna tell Jim_ or he’ll kill him, and twa deaths winna mak’ ae life.”

We easily picked up Knevitt, but he denied the whole with such manifest horror, and gave such explanations, that we set out to hunt for Jim, and I was the one destined to unearth him; and also, I regret to say, to inform him of the fearful crime he had committed. That scene I can never describe. He dropped on his knees, rolled and writhed on the floor, tearing his hair in a frenzy of agony, moaning out but the two words—“My mother! My mother! My mother!” Of course he confessed the whole crime in every detail; but his mother was never told of the hand that gave her the death-blow. She lingered for some months, and, the doctors said, did not actually die of the wound, but of some trouble of the heart, brought on by the excitement and pain. Jim was tried and convicted of manslaughter only, and was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment. The sentence may seem light, but _that_ was not his punishment. He carried that within him. Joe Knevitt’s bones now lie in the prison yard, but Jim’s dust is in a foreign land, where he died on a battlefield in a way that made men call him a hero. They did not know the secret of his daring.

THE HERRING SCALES.

The hawker of the herrings was not of the class usually seen in the streets of Edinburgh, where they seldom own more than the wheel-barrow containing the fish. He was a man of some substance, having a donkey to draw his cart, and a number of pigs, and a big garden, in which he worked during his spare hours. The place in which he lived is a town some miles from Edinburgh, and the time when the quarrel began the month of July. The quarrellers were a baker named Dan Coglin, and the herring hawker aforesaid, Jamie Burfoot by name. The baker was also a man of some means, being in business for himself, and he would have prospered had it not been for his uncontrollable temper. Coglin had in his time threatened to murder every friend and acquaintance in the place, and doubtless in the heat of his passion really meant to do so, but fresh objects for his resentment constantly arose to divert him from his purpose. He was one of those unhappy beings who meet with mighty wrongs, and slights, and insults every day of their lives, and feel called upon to set the world right in that respect, no matter at how great a risk to themselves.

The quarrel took place at the bakehouse door, and was witnessed from a stairhead above by a tailor named Thomas Elder, who had already had more than one disagreement with the hot-headed baker.

Burfoot had stopped his donkey cart at the bakehouse door, and offered some of his herrings for sale. They were fresh herrings, but that was just the point on which the dispute began. Coglin said they were stale, and added that Burfoot had cheated him often in the same way before, adding some lively reflections on his character, from which it appeared that the herring hawker ought to have been hanged many years before.

Now, as often happens quite providentially in such cases, only one of the men was violent. Burfoot was a quiet, canny customer, who only laughed at the most outrageous of the baker’s remarks. His character was in no danger from the insane ravings of such a man, and the herrings were there to speak for themselves. He lifted one of the finest, and handed it to the baker, saying simply—

“If that isn’t fresh out of the sea this morning I’ll give you the whole load for nothing.”

This was said laughingly. Coglin took the herring, affected to sniff at it, and then, with an expression of disgust, threw it back. Burfoot’s mouth was open, and the pitched herring dived into the cavity as neatly as if it had really been, what the hawker asserted, “living.” Burfoot sputtered and choked, while the tailor above, though wishing the quarrel to go the other way, could not restrain a burst of laughter at the comical appearance the hawker cut. There is a limit even to the endurance of a peaceable man. Burfoot no sooner was free of the unexpected mouthful than he wildly grabbed a handful of herrings from the cart, and battered them, as fast as he could fire them, in the direction of the baker’s head. Coglin retreated and closed the bakehouse door, and after some storming and threatening Burfoot picked up the missiles he had used, tossed them back into the cart, and drove on, shouting “Fine fresh herrings!” Four or five of them, which had been dashed in at the open door at the retreating baker, that worthy gathered up and complacently put into a dish in the oven for his dinner. He was in a good temper, for he thought he had got decidedly the best of the quarrel. He was to change his mind next morning. Coglin’s business was a small one, and, except at specially busy times, he did all his baking himself. He was therefore the first and only one on the spot next morning. The hour was an early one, but it was quite light, and he noticed at once that something was wrong. The principal window to the bakehouse had been raised, and the lower sash left wide open. The circumstance excited his curiosity and surprise, but did not at first greatly concern him. There was little of value in the bakehouse for thieves to take, and he thought the raising of the sash might be only the trick of some mischievous boy. He unlocked the door and got inside, looked around the place, and then groaned and cursed to his heart’s content. The batch for his early baking had been carefully “set” the night before, that is, the dough had been carefully mixed in a wooden trough, covered over with a board and some empty sacks, and left to “rise.” It had not risen as he had expected, for the coverings had been removed; his bakehouse “bauchles” had been stuck into the soft mass, with all the shapes and biscuit markers, and a dirty can of sugar and water, with its paint-brush, with which he anointed cookies when they came hot from the oven, added on the top. That was not all. A bag half-full of flour, which generally stood in a corner, had been dragged forward and turned out on the floor, while into the white heap had been poured his whole supply of barm.

When he had quite exhausted his stock of language, Coglin rose, and, closing the window and door, made his way to the chief constable’s house, where he roused that worthy man out of bed, and insisted upon him dressing and coming to see the wreck.

The constable came and examined all, and then very naturally asked who had been quarrelling with the baker. With a man of Coglin’s disposition it would have been safer to ask whom he had not been quarrelling with. Coglin went over the names of some of his foes, but, having had the best of the slight affair with the herring hawker, he never thought of naming Burfoot.

The constable made no great progress with the case, and I suspect did not exert himself much, as there was general rejoicing over the baker’s calamity, which was thought to be well deserved. Finding this to be the case, Coglin insisted on having a detective brought from Edinburgh. The case was important, he declared—nothing but a conspiracy conceived and executed by half of the town’s folks, including a magistrate and several leading town councillors, and he would have the law to them though he should have to call in the aid of the Home Secretary himself. Accordingly I went down to look at the place, and was greatly amused by Coglin’s wild statements of his troubles and daily martyrdom. In looking over the bakehouse, I chanced to notice on the board which had been used to cover the “batch,” or “sponge,” a number of herring scales—almost enough to convey the idea of a hand-print.

I said nothing of the circumstance till I had examined the window sash, and found two similar hand-prints of herring scales there also.

“Are you in the habit of handling herring often?” I asked, to which he gave a prompt response in the affirmative.

“Oh, yes; there’s often as many as two dozen dishes of them here in the morning to be fired in the oven.”

“And you take toll of a herring out of each?” I laughingly observed.

“No, no, I never touch them,” he hastily returned; and then I showed him the herring scales on the board and the window sash. He looked grave enough for some moments, and then burst out into a ferocious “Aha!”

It was all he said for a few moments, but it clearly indicated that the herring scales had suggested a great idea to him. What the idea was I soon knew, for he proceeded to describe the encounter with Burfoot, and ended by boldly affirming that the herring man and no other was the author of the outrage. The inference seemed a very fair one, and after getting a description of the quarrel, I decided to see after the herring man. The result of my investigations in that direction was absolute failure, so far as bringing home the guilt to Burfoot was concerned. I not only got clear proof that Burfoot on the night and morning of the outrage had been out of the town altogether, but that he had been confined to bed and too ill to move out of the house. Nothing could be clearer than the evidence on this point; and when I had finished I was convinced that, whether Burfoot had planned the outrage or no, he at least could not have been the actual perpetrator.

Nothing more seemed to come of the herring scales, and I reported the result to Coglin, who received it with a burst of abuse.

“And you call yourself a detective?” he scornfully shouted, and his private opinions which followed are not worth recording.

“I believe that is what I am called, and what I earn my bread by,” I quietly returned.