Part 30

In making these investigations I was continually contrasting Brettle’s condition and evident inclinations with Dirty Dick’s prophecy, that I should soon have the ticket-of-leave man in my hands again, and with no success so far as a solution is concerned. The promised “tip” had never come, and even Dick was a mystery to me. I was at a loss to know whence came the money which Dick spent so freely upon himself. He did not work; he was too cowardly to engage in any act of plundering likely to produce much gain; and yet he had abundance, while Brettle was in great want. Dick had the reputation of being able to arrange a robbery very nicely, but would never risk his own liberty in the affair, however tempting the gain; but even knowing that to be a source of income to him, I was at a loss to account for his seeming wealth. Thus it chanced that my attention came to be more earnestly fixed upon Dick than upon the man he had promised to betray into my hands. When I saw Dick moving in a stealthy and cat-like way before me, one day when I was passing along Princes Street, and knew that he was quite unconscious of my presence, I was quickly roused to an interest in his movements. I had not watched him long, when I thought the solution of the whole mystery was in my hands. It seemed to me that Dick’s new line was pocket-picking, and that he was following a likely plant—an elderly gentleman and a lady—with the intention of exercising his new art. After a time it dawned upon me that Dick’s cowardice was against him. Several chances occurred which he did not attempt to make use of. At length the gentleman went into one of the shops alone, and then, to my surprise, the lady, who had remained standing at the window, turned slightly, noticed Dick standing near, moved a little closer to him, and addressed some words to him in a hurried and constrained manner, which Dick as swiftly answered. The lady then took out her purse, and, placing a coin in his hand, turned once more to look in at the window, while Dick passed on with the crowd as if nothing had happened. Now, had Dick been the first to speak, and had the lady’s manner been different, I should have considered it an ordinary case of begging, and had no scruple in following and taking Dick. But as it was I could only wonder what connection such a haughty and evidently wealthy person could have with a miserable coward like him. Instead of following Dick I followed the lady as soon as she had been rejoined by the white-haired gentleman, whom I took to be her husband. From the side glimpse which I had of her face she seemed to be quite young and very good-looking, though there was a nameless something in the expression of her face which told me that she had not always been in such a position. In order to get a better look at her, I got past the couple on the opposite side of the street, crossed over while they stood inspecting a window, and then, as soon as they moved, sauntered slowly forward and met them full in the face. Purposely I got directly in front of the lady, in seeming forgetfulness, and, as she stopped in haughty surprise, I had a good look into her eyes. Then I started and looked again, upon which her glance fell before mine as surely as those of one of “my bairns” ever did. In a moment more she was past, and I was left wondering. I was puzzled and bewildered. The face seemed strangely familiar to me; I could have sworn that I had known the owner of it long before, and yet I could not tell her name or recall a single circumstance in her history. I stood there cudgelling my brains till I had almost lost sight of the couple who had so interested me; then, unable to make a better of it, I roused myself and followed them for a full hour, till they entered one of the biggest hotels in the city and remained there. A waiter running out a moment or two after, on being stopped by me, said that the couple were “Mr and Mrs Harper, from Glasgow,” and that he understood that the gentleman was very wealthy. They were in Edinburgh on a pleasure trip, and, so far as he knew, had no children.

That was all I could get from the waiter, but the news did not banish that beautiful face—so full of sweetness and innocence, if a certain flash could have been taken from her fine eyes. That flash was the only thing to turn the scales, and it did that most effectually. It gave just such an expression to the whole face as I could imagine Lucrezia Borgia to have owned.

Later in the day, when thinking of Brettle and his affairs, by some queer turn of memory I recalled the name of Pretty Polly, and then her sweet-looking features rose before me as vividly as if I had seen them only the day before. But that was not all; for lo! as I looked, the fine features became somewhat stouter and coarser, and rapidly changed into those of Mrs Harper, whom I had that day followed along Princes Street.

“How like they are to each other!” was my mental exclamation. “It must have been that resemblance which puzzled me. But could they be the same person? Never! Brettle says Pretty Polly is dead.”

This reasoning did not convince me, for there still remained the curious fact that the haughty Mrs Harper had allowed her glance to fall before my own in that fashion so suggestive to me of “auld acquaintance.” Could Pretty Polly have had a sister who resembled her? I thought not; for had not Brettle himself said, “The like of her doesn’t walk the earth?” Besides, if she had a sister, and she in such a good position, I could scarcely believe that the lady would be so heartless as to allow her brother-in-law to almost perish of want while she revelled in luxury.

I was waited for by Dick at a street corner on the afternoon of the following day. When I saw him I was a little pleased, as I thought it possible that I might get out of him all I wanted in regard to the strange woman. But as Dick was full to the eyes with his own affairs, I let him chatter about them first.

“I can give you the straight tip about Brettle at last,” he eagerly began.

“Do you expect me to pay you for it?” I quietly interposed.

“No, no, not a penny.”

“You work for nothing, then—for the mere love of the thing?” I said, with a palpable sneer.

“Just that,” he said, swallowing the insult smilingly. “Brettle is to break into a shop in Leith Street to-night—Calderston’s, No.—. The place above enters from the Terrace, and the key of that is sent home every night by a drunken porter. Brettle will treat him on the way, get the key from him, and work inside all night. Perhaps he will stay there over the Sunday. He is to work the job single-handed, and take the plunder out by the Terrace stair in different lots.”

“And who arranged all this for him?” I asked, nailing Dick’s shifty glance with a steady stare.

“Oh, I don’t know—himself, I suppose,” he confusedly answered.

That was enough for me. I saw that Dick had arranged it all as a nice trap for Brettle. What could be his object?

“Dick,” I said suddenly, after noting down all he had revealed, “have you any idea what has become of Brettle’s wife, Pretty Polly?”

The start the man gave! and his face! I never thought that there was such a blush in him.

“Dead, I think,” he guiltily stammered, after a horrible pause.

I thought not, and said so.

“She couldn’t be married again, to a richer man?” I suggestively observed. “I understand she and Brettle were lawfully man and wife.”

Dick’s face was the picture of guilt and confusion. If the ground could have swallowed him at that moment I imagine he would have been thankful. I was reading all the answers to the questions which had puzzled me for days in his tell-tale features.

“You have seen her lately, then?”

“No,” he faltered, while his face said “Yes,” and cursed me into the bargain.

“And have you no idea where she could be found?”

“Not the least,” he said, with the lie almost choking him.

“Imphm! Well, that’s all I want with you just now,” I coldly remarked, and with a dive he was gone.

I saw the whole plot now, and felt sure that that beautiful devil of a woman was at the bottom of it all. But was I to allow that miserable man—that well-meaning convict who had actually made an effort towards a life of honesty—to walk into the shambles? No doubt it would look like a feather in my cap to take him in the act and walk him off for his certain ten years’ penal; every one would think it neat and clever, and speak of the vigilance and sharpness of the police, &c., but there would still be a voice within me crying out against the whole as a crime—an offence against a law that never was written. After giving the matter some thought, I went out to the Grange to a gentleman with a big heart and unbounded faith in myself.

“I want you to give me some money,” I said, as his hand grasped my own, “without asking any questions. It is to help a convict and ticket-of-leave man till he shall be able to help himself.”

“All right, Mr M^cGovan; you shall have it,” was the frank response. “Just say how much it is to be.”

I named the sum, and it was placed in my hands. Little more was said, and I left that wide-souled and big-hearted man to have a hunt for Bob Brettle. I expected to find him quite easily, but I did not; and what gave me more concern was to learn in the course of my search that Bob had broken out—that is, had been drinking hard, and was, when last seen, in a state of savage ferocity and excitement, which, I feared, would not help me greatly in my mission. Still it was no time to delay. I must see him then, or be forced to take him as a house-breaker a few hours later. I persevered till I found him in a public-house—savage and fierce as could be. He would scarcely answer me, and only consented to speak with me alone when I told him he _must_.

“You’ve had a struggle lately, and I promised to prove that I had no interest in you remaining in the old line,” I quietly began. “I’ve brought you some money which a gentleman has given, on my assurance that it would not be thrown away, to help you till you get work.”

“Take it back to him then—I don’t need it now,” he angrily returned. “I’ve got work, or at least expect to get it.”

“Yes, I can guess what kind of work you mean,” I pointedly answered. “Do you know what your next sentence will be, Bob, if you’re taken at the old game?”

“I’m not taken yet,” he confidently answered, with an oath and a thundering blow of his fist on the little table of the box in which we were secluded. “He’ll be a clever man that will take me; ay, and he’ll need to be a strong man too!”

“Bob Brettle!” I cried, starting up and leaning across the table towards him, “you’re a fool!”

“What!” and his big fist was clenched as if to let drive at my face.

“A fool—a perfect baby—a blind idiot, who would walk into a trap chuckling all the while over his own cleverness and daring. Man alive! what is all your bravery or daring against the wiles of a wicked woman?”

“A woman! what woman?” he faltered, apparently pulled up by my very abuse.

“Why, the woman you call your wife—Pretty Polly—who is now in this city with a wealthy man to whom she is married. Her name is Mrs Harper now, and I suppose she feared that your claims on her might be awkward, and so employed Dirty Dick to prepare a job for you—that Leith Street affair which you mean to go to as soon as you leave this place, and at which I am to take you in the act, so that you may be booked for ten years at least. Now, smash out at me now, and say I’ve an interest in keeping you on the cross!”

“My wife—Pretty Polly—living and married to another man!” he breathed, with a look positively frightful settling on his heavy features. “I—don’t—believe—a—word—of—it!”

I folded my arms and said nothing. The idea was a new one to him; I would let it work. I had not long to wait. I could see the workings of the demon Jealousy in his face, in his twitching lips and flushed cheeks, in his clouded brow and clenched hands.

“You’ve got a name for telling the truth,” he at last hoarsely observed, with a look of piteous agony on his haggard face, “but I must see the woman before I believe it. Tell me where she lives, or take me to her. The she-devil! Oh, if it’s only true!”

“Rest content with my word. I shall not give you her address—at least not now. It wouldn’t be safe. When you are sober and calm you shall have it.”

“I am sober,” he quickly returned; and he seemed to speak the truth, for every trace of drink had vanished like a flash, “and I am calm—as death. Give me her address!”

I refused most positively, and at length he rose, deliberately put on his cap, and quietly walked out of the shop with the simple remark that he would see me again. I knew enough of Brettle’s character to warn me that the sooner Pretty Polly was got out of his reach the better it would be for her.

I therefore hurried over to the hotel, and learned that she and her husband had gone out about six o’clock, and not yet returned. I sat down to wait for them, little guessing that I was to remain there till nearly eleven o’clock, they being at the theatre, as I afterwards learned. While I was thus waiting at the hotel, Bob Brettle had taken action in a style characteristic of him and his passionate nature. He hunted through all the dens till he came upon Dirty Dick singing songs in a half-gleeful and half-fuddled condition. Dick remained gleeful not one moment after he saw Brettle’s face. The house-breaker invited him out to the darkness of the stair-head, and there brought out a long-bladed clasp-knife, at the same moment throttling Dick with his left hand, and forcing him down on his knees. There, with the point of the knife at Dick’s heart, he dragged out of the quaking wretch a full and abject confession of the plot, and also of the name of the hotel at which Pretty Polly and her wealthy husband had put up. When Dick had finished, Bob simply swung round his powerful left hand, and in a moment Dick lay groaning on the landing below with a broken leg and fractured rib. Paying no attention to the injured wretch or his cries, Brettle ran down the stair and made for the hotel.

A waiter at the portico told him that the Harpers were not in, but were expected shortly. Brettle stood sentry there at the door or near it for a full half hour, and at length was rewarded by seeing a cab drive up, and a gentleman get out and hand forth a sweet-faced and elegantly dressed lady—the veritable Pretty Polly.

With a bound like that of a tiger Brettle was upon her, and had her taper wrist clenched in his hand, and her face swung round to the light of the street lamps with a force that almost crushed the delicate bones.

“You jewelled serpent!” he hissed, “you would sell me to the shambles! Look at me, you beautiful devil, and say, if you can, that it is not true!”

A shriek—appalling enough to reach my ears above, and bring me rushing down—was Pretty Polly’s only answer.

Her husband, however, laid a hand on Brettle’s shoulder—

“How dare you, sir? Who are you?”

“Her husband!” shouted the infuriated house-breaker; and at the same moment there was the flash of a knife and an agonising cry from the wounded woman, and a rush upon the assailant from all sides. I was among the number, and Brettle recognised me with a quiet nod.

“I’m not going to struggle or bolt,” he quietly observed, as Pretty Polly was lifted from the pavement and borne insensible into the hotel, with the blood gushing from a deep wound in her breast. “I’m satisfied now. I have paid her off. I’ve taken it out of her, and she was the only woman I ever loved!”

Bob’s grief, however, seemed quiet and tame compared with that of Polly’s second husband, upon whom the revelation came with a shock which nearly proved fatal. Mr Harper quietly slipped away out of Edinburgh without once asking to look on the face of the woman who had deceived him. Brettle went to prison, of course, and Pretty Polly, as soon as she could be moved, was sent to the Infirmary. She lingered long, but did not die. In about six months she was pronounced able to leave the hospital. She appeared as witness against Brettle, and helped to fix a year’s imprisonment on him, and then she drifted out to a life of hardship and degradation which ended her before Brettle’s sentence had expired. Brettle heard the news unmoved when he was liberated, and then disappeared. I have never heard of him since.

M^cSWEENY AND THE CHIMNEY-SWEEP.

The things were missed from one of the rooms in a house in George Square not many hours after the sweeps had been there, and of course suspicion at once fell upon these men. Who ever trusted a chimney-sweep the length of his own nose? The blackness of their faces is supposed to be nothing to that of their souls, and what was the old and popular portrait of the devil but a chimney-sweep with a tail tacked on? There were three articles taken—a gold bracelet, a very valuable necklet and pendant, and one gold ear-ring.

The leaving behind of one of the ear-rings gave the robbery an odd look, for the whole of the things had been taken from the drawer or a dressing-table, and the ear-ring left was the first article which caught the eye of the owner when she opened the drawer.

Either the thief had wanted only one ear-ring, or had been scared in grasping at the plunder, and so left the odd trinket. The drawer had been locked, but the key had been left in the lock, and must have been made use of by the thief both to open and refasten that receptacle. Mrs Nolten, the lady of the house, was the first to make the discovery, and, not knowing that the sweeps had been in the house, fancied that one of the servants might have taken the use of the jewels.

A furious ring at the bell brought the two girls up in great consternation, and then the truth was known. Neither of them had been near the drawer of the dressing-table, and one of them, while admitting that the sweeps had been there, declared that she had “kept her eye on them” all the time, and so could scarcely conceive it possible for them to be the thieves.

Mrs Nolten paid no heed to the remark, but wisely sent word to us in all haste. When the report arrived it was about eleven o’clock in the forenoon, and I was on the point of starting off to look after a much more important case. However, as I had to go southwards, I decided to take George Square on the way, and then let M^cSweeny do the rest. We soon got to the house, and were shown into the dressing-room from which the articles had vanished.

The two servants were brought up, and from one of them I learned that the sweeps had been simply a man and a boy. They had both been in the room for a little, and after the man had helped to lift out the grate and fasten up a blanket in the fire-place, he had gone up on the roof to complete the work, leaving the boy in the room alone. They believed that the boy was the sweep’s own son. I examined the carpet in front of the dressing-table. It showed no marks of sooty feet. I then looked at the drawer in which the articles had been secured, and finally took the key from the lock and smelt it. There was a distinct smell of soot about it, but then the whole room had a flavour of the kind just then, and the smell on the key might mean nothing. After taking down a minute description of the articles missing, and getting the sweep’s address, we left the house, and I directed M^cSweeny to go to the chimney-sweep and see what he could make of the case. We then parted, with the understanding that I also was to call at the sweep’s on my return. The man’s name was Sandy Brimely, and his place only a couple of streets from the spot.

It was a dark dingy hole below the level of the street, and consisted of three rooms or cellars, lighted through gratings on the pavement. One place was used as a kitchen and sleeping-place, another smaller place was also used as a bedroom, and the third hole was used as a store-room for soot. This third place was in reality part of the first, but had been divided off by the wooden partition which kept the soot from sliding all over their living room.

Sandy was standing at the head of the stair leading down to this sooty abode when M^cSweeny arrived. His work was generally over by that time, except when a godsend came in shape of a chimney afire, and Sandy leant against the wall enjoying his pipe as peacefully as if there had been no such beings as detectives in the world. He was a sly, oily tongued fellow, but so far as I know had never been convicted of any worse crime than beating his wife, or occasionally taking more whisky than he could carry unassisted.

After a little preliminary blarney on both sides, during which it appeared that Sandy knew both M^cSweeny’s face and his profession, my chum considerably startled him by saying abruptly—

“You were at Mrs Nolten’s, in George Square, this morning?”

The sweep took the pipe from his mouth, with his pleased look effectually banished. If he had not been so sooty he might have been said to turn pale, so constrained and almost scared did he become.

“Let me see. Yes—yes, I was there,” he awkwardly answered. “I was there doing two vents.”

“Did you take anything away wid ye?” said M^cSweeny, pointedly.

He expected the man, if guilty, to show signs of concern or confusion; but, if anything, the sweep looked brighter after the question.

“Away with me?” he echoed, to gain time for the answer. “Of course I did. I took the soot.”

“Nothing else?” suspiciously pursued M^cSweeny.

“Nothing else, sir, as I’m a living man,” energetically returned Sandy. “I hope you don’t think I would touch an article belonging to any one else?”

The question was a delicate one, and M^cSweeny did not attempt an answer, further than to state that some things had been missed, and that he was there in his official capacity to investigate the case, and try to find the articles missing.

Sandy allowed him to talk on, drinking it all in and becoming brighter and more beaming at every word.

“I hope you’ll search every hole and corner in my place, sir,” he fervently exclaimed, when M^cSweeny had done. “I want my character cleared, and my honesty established. What,” he added grandly, “what is dearer to a poor man than his good name? and what would become of my business if folks took me for a thief? I insist on you searching my place—never mind about a warrant, or anything else—my honour is at stake, and I must have it done at once.”

He led the way downstairs to his abode, in which M^cSweeny found quite a crowd of small sooty children scrambling about the earthen floor in noisy glee. These were all sent outside, and then Sandy explained to his wife with much warmth the absurd suspicion which had been raised against his character.

“I see it all now! I see it all now!” he suddenly exclaimed, smiting his sooty brow with tragic force. “Could anybody believe they would be so cunning?”

M^cSweeny hinted that an explanation would be acceptable.

“Why, don’t you see, sir—the servants—the servants; they’re at the bottom of this. They’ve taken the chance while we were there to steal the things, knowing the blame would fall on me. You’ve no idea,” he continued, waxing pathetic, “what sweeps have to put up with. There’s scarcely a house we go into that we’re not watched like glaziers on tramp. You can see it in their eyes. It’s hard to be looked at like a thief when you’re doing your best to earn an honest living.”

“Are you quite sure now that the boy you had with you mightn’t help himself if he got a dacent chance?” suggested M^cSweeny, by way of appearing to sympathise with the sweep.

“Him? Why, he’s my own son!” exclaimed the sweep, as if that quite settled the matter. “But he’s just out in the square there playing at the bools. I’ll send for him, and you can question him yourself.”

This was done, and the sooty apprentice appeared, and denied all knowledge of the missing articles.