Part 6

The occasion came only two days later. The man, who was well dressed, and always carried an ivory handled umbrella in his hand and a cigar in his mouth, stopped the old porter on the street, and in an off-hand way asked him if he could carry some crystal and china from a house at the south side to an address at the opposite end of the city. Of course the porter was eager and willing.

“The only awkward thing is that I won’t be there till nearly nine o’clock,” said the man; “would that be too late for you?”

“Sorra a bit, sur,” was the ready response. “Any hour will suit me, more by token there’s no wan likely to be needing me so late.”

Punctually at the hour named, Corny appeared at the place—a common stair in Clerk Street. As he was ascending the stair in search of the name furnished by his employer, that gentleman appeared descending the stair, and carrying in his arms a good-sized square parcel.

“I was beginning to think you had forgotten me,” he pleasantly observed to the old porter, “and was afraid I should have to send the things over in a cab, at the risk of getting half of them broken.”

Corny apologised for the trouble he had given, adjusted the bundle to his own shoulders, and prepared to go.

“You will get half-a-crown, which I left for you when you deliver them,” said the man graciously, “and there is little danger of you breaking anything, as they are all carefully packed in soft goods.”

Corny was pleased with the explanation, for the weight of the bundle did not suggest china or crystal to him, and in taking and adjusting it to his ropes, he had heard not a single clink or rattle from within. He went his way with the load, while his employer reascended the stair and was gone. Corny was not a robust man by any means, so it was past ten o’clock before he reached his destination. Then he found that there had been some mistake in the address, for he could not find any one who expected such a consignment, or answered to the name he sought. After trailing about for half an hour, Corny was reluctantly compelled to turn southward once more, with the intention of returning the load to its owner. But there a fresh difficulty awaited him. He found the stair easily, but in the whole land could discover no one answering to the name given him by his employer. Corny got a good deal of abuse, indeed, for rousing some of the tenants out of bed, and as he was now thoroughly knocked up with his weary trailing, he resolved to let the matter rest till morning, and turned his face homeward.

Now, at that moment, by a curious train of circumstances, I was sitting in Corny’s house patiently waiting for him. That very afternoon I had been passing down one of the closes, when my eye caught a bright-coloured and new shoulder shawl decorating a woman moving in the same direction.

“Hullo, Bess,” I said, stopping short, “let me have a look at your shawl.”

She stopped with wonderful willingness, saying—

“Ah, you think it’s one of the lot taken from that shawl shop on the Bridge, but you’re wrong. I bought it this morning in another place, and there’s the receipt,” and she produced one of those little flimsies which drapers give with their goods, showing that three shillings had been paid for the shawl that very day. “Would you like to know who did that job?” she added with suspicious loquacity.

“Yes—had you a hand in it?”

I was only chaffing her. I never expected to get a single grain of truth out of her, for she was bad to the very heart’s core.

“Me! No; but I heard about it, that’s all.”

“You’re an awful liar, Bess; but go on,” I calmly answered.

“Well, I believe an old porter called Corny Stephens had the big hand in it,” she boldly continued.

“I don’t believe it,” was my answer.

“Well, please yourself; I only heard it; but if you went to his house late to-night you might find something, that’s all,” and away she went, singing unmusically.

I knew very little of the old porter, but, had I put my impressions of him against my knowledge of Bess, her statements would at once have kicked the beam. Still I could not deny that the taint of Pat’s conviction and sentence extended in a certain sense to his relatives, and my duty was to act on any hint, however meagre, so that I decided to visit Corny the same night, at an hour when he was likely to be at home and in bed. I got there at ten o’clock, and was frankly received by his daughter, who told me he had a late job, and would not be in for an hour or so. She was preparing his supper, so I decided to accept her offer and sit down by the fire till he came.

In the ordinary course of events Corny should have appeared, bearing his undelivered load, about eleven o’clock, and this had probably been calculated upon, but I waited till midnight, and much to the concern of Annie his daughter, no Corny appeared. How that happened was simple enough, though not in the programme.

Corny was slowly trailing through Argyle Square with his load, on his way home, when he chanced to be met by M^cSweeny. My chum was in a good humour, for he had been spending a night jovially at a friend’s, where a widow had made a dead set at him; and M^cSweeny’s joy arose from the fact that at the last moment he had ingeniously saddled the widow on to an unsuspicious friend, while my chum took his way home in happy freedom alone. But though elated and exultant, at peace with all the world, and trying his best to merrily whistle “The Poor Married Man,” M^cSweeny’s duty was not so far from his mind as to allow him to pass Corny and the big bundle at such an hour.

“Stop, you!” he imperatively commanded. “What’s that you’re carrying on your back? and where are you going with it?”

“It’s some chany and crystal I got to carry over to the New Town, and I couldn’t find the place, so I’m taking it home,” said Corny.

M^cSweeny suspiciously poked his fingers into the bundle, but could feel nothing like china or crystal.

“It’s uncommon soft,” he said, with a grunt. “Who gave it to you to carry?”

“The gintleman.”

“The gintleman, ye blockhead; hasn’t he got a name?” said M^cSweeny wrathfully.

“He has; it’s written on that paper; but I couldn’t find him when I took the load back.”

“I daresay not,” said M^cSweeny, dryly. “Well, you’ll need to come up to the Office wid me, till we see what’s in the bundle.”

“I’m an honest man,” said Corny indignantly. “Do you take me for a thafe?”

“Well, you don’t look like one of my bairns,” said M^cSweeny, in imitation of me; “but you’ll have to trot all the same. Mebbe you don’t know that I’m M^cSweeny, the detective, that all the books has been writ about?”

“I know the other one,” said Corny simply. “M^cGovan’ll spake a good word for me.”

“You’ll not need that if your bundle’s all right,” was the lofty reply, and to the Office they went.

The bundle unfortunately was not all right. It contained a deal of rubbish of no use to any one, but it also contained a number of bright-coloured shawls of a certain pattern, which were already down in our list as having been taken from a shop on the Bridge.

Corny seemed thunderstruck at the grave looks of every one about him, and wildly went over the details I have put down, but without impressing his hearers much. The story seemed such a poor one and so common. There is not a “smasher” taken with the counterfeits in his possession but volubly declares that he got the parcel from some one on the street, either to hold or to take to some address. Corny seemed to realise his position only when he was handed over to the man to be taken down to the cells. Then he dropped on his knees before the lieutenant, and, clasping his hands, besought them to spare him the disgrace.

“I’m not a thafe, sur, and though I’m sixty years of age I never was in a cell in my life. Send to the praist and ax him what he knows of poor owld Corny Stephens.”

The tears of the quivering old man, and his desperate energy might have had some effect, but just then one of the officers present, touching his cap to the lieutenant, said briefly—

“His son got eighteen months lately for shopbreaking.”

That settled the matter. It was the old doom reversed—the sins of the children coming back on the father.

Before Corny was locked up he besought them to send word to his daughter, so that his absence might be accounted for, and it was from the messenger thus sent that I learned these facts, and that further waiting was useless. I was considerably staggered by the news, and had now so much suspicion of Corny that I took the precaution of searching his house thoroughly before I left. That was the first impression. Next morning, after I had seen Corny, I began to think differently, though still puzzled. It was well on in the forenoon, and after Corny had been remitted to a higher Court, that I remembered about the warning of his son Pat. Curiously enough, the thing which brought it to my mind was the presence of Micky Hill among the audience of the Police Court, coupled with the fact that he left as soon as Corny had been removed.

“A plant! a plant, I believe!” was my mental exclamation, but I was too busy for some hours to give the matter further attention. Then I began my work. I found that Bess had followed me from the Office down the close in which I had addressed her about the shawl, and it now recurred to me that she and Micky were old acquaintances, and very likely to work into each other’s hands. Then she had volunteered the information about Corny, without my asking for it, and I knew her so well that I had not for a moment believed it until Corny was taken with the goods in his possession. I did not know very well how to act, but there was no time for delay, and I began by pouncing upon Bess. She was so frightened that she let out a word or two more than she intended, and in a short time I was at Micky’s house inquiring for him.

Micky was drunk—speechlessly drunk—to which state he had reduced himself, I think, in joy over the success of his scheme; but the capture of the shebeener was a trifle to the one which accompanied it.

In the same room with Micky, and not much more sober, was a swell-mobsman, who had been lodging there for some time. He had come down for the purpose of attending the races, and was a smart man altogether. He did not get to the races that year, for the old street porter easily identified him out of a dozen men as the man who employed him to carry the bundle to the New Town. His ivory-headed umbrella and his cigar case were also identified as promptly—a clear proof that a rogue should not indulge in easily recognisable finery.

Before the day of the trial we had also discovered a person living in the stair in Clerk Street who had seen the smart man loitering in the stair with the bundle and handing it over to Corny, and that, with a stolen shawl found on the back of Micky’s wife, served to successfully rivet the fetters on both.

The actual perpetrator of the robbery had really been the swell-mobsman, Micky having had no hand in it but the resetting of some of the things; but some of the evidence appeared to implicate him, and he was found guilty, and sentenced to the same term as his companion in the dock—seven years’ penal. Corny, of course, had been released as soon as we got Bess to make a clean breast of it, and he appeared as a witness at the trial, and got some handsome commendations from the presiding judge. His case attracted some attention, and a gentleman willing to help the old porter came to me for advice in the matter, to make sure that the case was a deserving one. The result was that Corny’s lot was made more easy; and when his son was released, they were all helped out of the country by the same generous hand, Pat proving one of the exceptions to the rule, “Once a thief, always a thief.”

A BIT OF TOBACCO PIPE.

Criminals vary in character and degree of guilt as much as the leaves of the forest do in form and colour, but there is always a large number whom no one of experience ever expects to reform. They are the descendants of generations of thieves; they have known nothing else from babyhood, and will know nothing else till they are shovelled into the earth. It would be far cheaper to the country to keep them in perpetual imprisonment, but so many objections can be raised to such a scheme that I question if it will ever become law.

To this class belonged Peter Boggin, otherwise known as “Shorty.” He had received this name not so much on account of his height, which was medium, as on account of his temper, which was of the shortest. I question, indeed, if Shorty would ever have been in prison at all but for his temper.

Shorty’s boon companion and working pal was a quiet, lumpish-looking fellow named Phineas O’Connor. Phineas, when his tongue was loosened by drink, was wont to assert that he was descended from the Irish Kings, and therefore had been derisively dubbed “The Fin.” He was a still man, rather sullen, and not lacking in deadly ingenuity, as will appear before I have done.

Among the many schemes proposed or tried by Shorty and The Fin was one for entering a big house in the New Town, occupied by a fashionable family much given to receiving company. The Fin had noted this circumstance, and had also ascertained beyond a doubt that the family were really, and not apparently, wealthy. By following the line of houses with his eye to one of the common streets of Stockbridge, close by, The Fin then decided that to enter the upper part of the major’s house would not be difficult. The place was marked and watched for some time before the opportunity occurred, as no intimation of his intention regarding parties was ever sent by the major to either Shorty or The Fin.

One evening, when the season was at its height, and the nights conveniently long and dark, the two, when taking their customary stroll for inspection, found the house lighted from top to bottom, and the longed-for party in full swing. The usual dinner hour they knew was six o’clock, and, as that hour was approaching, Shorty set out for a tour of inspection in the next street, while The Fin patiently waited for the dinner gong to sound.

The first warning had been given by the gong when Shorty returned and reported the road clear, and the two took their way to the next street, where they ascended a common stair, and by standing on the railing at the top managed to reach the hatch leading to the roof, by Shorty climbing up on The Fin’s shoulders and then pulling his helper up as soon as he had forced the hatch and reached the low den between that and the slates. There was another hatch yet to force—that which led out on to the slates—and to reach that the two had to crawl along in a stooping position, carefully feeling with their feet for the cross beams lest they should suddenly plunge through the lath and plaster into the room below. In crawling along thus they felt and passed the water cistern which supplied the whole tenement beneath them, which stood as close in under the slope of the roof as its height would admit of. Getting open the upper hatch proved no difficult task, and then they tossed up who should get out and make his way along the housetops to the major’s house.

The lot fell to Shorty, and he got out and patiently worked his way along the slates and over ranges of chimney cans to the more aristocratic street hard by. When he reached the attic windows of the major’s house he looked at his watch and decided that the whole household and all the guests must then be busy downstairs, the dinner in full swing, and the servants too excited and flurried to think of coming near the bedrooms or upper flats. One of the attics, presumably occupied by the servants, had its window open, and Shorty had merely to raise the sash a little higher to pass within and have the free range of the whole of the house but the area and first flat.

An experienced man, Shorty did not hurry with the task. He went over the trunks of the servants first, but found nothing worth lifting but a small gold brooch and a silver ring. The ring was not worth two shillings, and Shorty was at one moment inclined to toss it back into the box, but he changed his mind and took it with him. He should have left it. Leaving the servants’ room, with many an inward imprecation on them for keeping bank books instead of money in their boxes, Shorty softly ranged through all the other rooms and bedrooms within his reach, and soon had quite a respectable pile of plunder gathered into his capacious coloured cotton handkerchief. He took nothing but articles of jewellery and the contents of two ladies’ purses, which he found in one of the bedrooms; and among the articles there chanced to be a very heavy gold chain—either a bailie’s or a provost’s chain of office. Although the haul was a fair one, Shorty was dissatisfied, for he had expected to get something out of the plate chest in the tablemaid’s room. He found the room and the chest in it conveniently open, but inconveniently empty. All the plate was on the dinner table, or downstairs ready to be placed there, and Shorty, forgetting that he owed his ease and success to the dinner and guests, was ungrateful enough to curse both. Even thieves are never content.

In leaving by the attic window Shorty was careful to close the window after him, a circumstance which afterwards led to some confusion on our part, as the servants, finding it thus closed, declared most positively—probably to screen themselves from blame—that the window had not only been closed, but firmly fastened on the inside. This statement led us to think that, during the confusion of the party, the thief might have entered by the front door and made his escape in the same manner. There was some hunting and examination in the direction of the roof, and the hatch in the adjoining street was found to have been forced, but at the time that led to nothing. Had we even guessed at the curious incident which had followed Shorty’s exit on to the roof our action would have been very different. It is these unlooked-for events which continually trip up the most astute. We suffered by the slip, but we did not suffer alone.

When Shorty got out on the slates, carrying his handkerchief of valuables, he found something more deserving of cursing than the dinner—namely, a clear sky and a tolerably bright moon. Speaking rapidly and energetically under his breath, he crawled along, keeping on the safest side of the roof till he could do so no longer, having to go forward to make his way over a range of chimney cans. As chance would have it, at the same time he glanced anxiously down on the steep street running down towards that spot, and saw the policeman of the beat looking, as he fancied, in his direction. Not only did the officer look, but he made some motion with his hand, and crossed the road as if to come nearer.

“Spotted!” cried Shorty, with an oath; and the rest of the journey across the roofs to the hatch where The Fin awaited him was performed in “the best time on record.” As a matter of fact the policeman had neither seen Shorty nor made a motion in his direction, but Shorty hurriedly explained the position to his chum, and after a brief council of war they rid themselves of the plunder, dropped through the inner hatch, and escaped downstairs, by the backdoor, across some greens. They took separate routes, certain that they were being hotly pursued, and got into hiding at once.

A few hours later the robbery was discovered and reported at the Office. As in few cases of the kind, we were able to take down a pretty full and accurate list of the articles stolen, including, of course, the silver ring of the servant and the heavy gold chain already noticed.

With this list, and the knowledge that so many of the articles were easily identifiable, I had little doubt but we should soon lay hands on either the thief or part of the plunder. I was mistaken. None of my “bairns” showed an overflow of money; not the slightest sign of “a great success” appeared anywhere; and none of those had up on suspicion had heard of the deed. Some of them strongly asserted that the whole thing was a sham, and really done by an amateur—one of the servants or some of her followers. One of the boldest to assert this was Shorty himself, whom I had invited to accompany me to the Office, and who had followed me with an alacrity which caused my hopes to sink at once to zero. As for The Fin, he was not a man of words, and only scowled, and told us to hurry with our investigations, as he did not care for the Lock-up, and wanted back to his den. We did not hurry particularly, knowing that both were safer and more harmless under lock and key than at liberty, but events hurried for us in a manner anticipated neither by them nor us. While the two worthies were still in our keeping, I chanced one day to call upon an honest jeweller who dealt in the precious metals, and was shown by him a piece of a heavy gold chain which he had that day bought from a lad whose name and address was in his book. The piece was about eighteen inches long, and at one end showed a clean cut, as if it had been either clipped through with strong shears or cut with a chisel, half of the severed link being still attached to the chain. It was fine 22 carat gold, and so uncommon-looking that the jeweller had questioned the seller closely as to how it came into his possession.

“He said that it had belonged to his mother, and they had had it for years locked away, but, seeing that it was of no use, they thought of having it made into a brooch,” continued the jeweller. “He was just a working lad,—not at all like a thief,—so I believed him, and paid him for it according to weight and quality.”

“Why did he not have it made into a brooch?” I sceptically inquired.

“Because there was not enough of it to make one such as he desired, and none of those I offered him in exchange pleased him.”

“I daresay not,” I dryly returned, and then I decided to take the piece of chain over to the major’s, and at the same time hunt up the lad who had sold the old gold. The result of my visit to the major’s was that the piece of chain was strongly believed by that gentleman to be part of that taken from his house, and the hunt for the lad who had sold it proved only that the young rascal had given a false name and address.

So much was gained, however, for we were a step nearer the criminal, as we imagined. We had a full description of his age and appearance, and there was a strong probability that, being a novice, he would not stop short at his first attempt to dispose of the plunder. A very stringent order was issued to all the jewellers likely to be visited, but as it turned out, the order was not needed, for, not many days later, the lad again appeared with another piece of gold chain to sell.

“We’ve found the other piece at the bottom of a drawer,” he said, “and we thought you might give more for it, as it might be joined on to the first piece and sold as a chain, instead of being melted down as old gold.”

Scarcely able to believe his eyes, the jeweller asked him to sit down while he went into the back shop to assay the gold. He did not set about the task with great alacrity, but contented himself with sending an apprentice out by a side door with a message to the Central Office, while he stood and watched the lad through the glass door. The message was handed to me, and I went to the shop at my smartest.

As I entered I saw the lad seated in the front shop in the overalls of a working joiner. At the same moment the jeweller came from the back shop with the piece of chain in his hand.