Читать книгу Traced and Tracked; Or, Memoirs of a City Detective - James M'Govan - Страница 9

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The old street porter appeared at the Central Office one winter morning, but refused to reveal his business to any one but me. I had been delayed a little beyond my usual time by other work, but Corny Stephens patiently sat there the whole time. He appeared to know me, too, for the moment I entered the “reception-room” he rose and deferentially touched his forelock. He was an old man, very thin and bloodless, with poverty shining out of every bit of his meagre clothing and decayed boots. He wore at his lapel the polished badge of a licensed street porter, and over his shoulder had slung a hank of frayed rope, apparently as aged and weak as himself. It is not unlikely that I had seen him often before, but my interest is not so strong in honest folks, and, as he belonged to that healthy majority, I did not remember noticing him particularly. He was blue with cold, but the hand touching his forelock trembled violently, not so much with cold as strong excitement.

“It’s your help I want, sir,” he said, when I had tried to dispel the awe and dread with which he seemed to regard me, “and mebbe I can give you some news that’ll be of use to you; only I’m afeared I might get mixed up in it myself. I’ve been honest for sixty years now, and it would be mighty hard to be mistook for a thafe and a villain now.”

These words put me upon my guard, and while he was speaking them I was reading his face closely. Listening to the specious stories of rogues makes one suspicious of everything. He did not suffer under the ordeal, but I still made no sign, merely asking him to go on.

“Do you know a man called Micky Hill?” he abruptly resumed.

I started a little, for Micky had been in my thoughts more than once lately. I knew him, of course—a convict and ticket-of-leave man, who had already endured two long terms, and who knew me just as well as I did him, and never passed me without an impudent grin, as much as to say, “Your mighty smart arn’t you—why don’t you get hold of me?” Micky had small eyes set deep in his head, and every twinkle of them was full of cunning. I believe those eyes of his irritated me more than the man himself. I hated them from the depths of my soul.

“Yes,” I quietly answered, “what of him?”

“Well, it’s him I’d like to see with your bracelets on,” answered Corny with fearful energy, “to see booked for ten years, as he will be, I’ve no doubt, if you can prove a good case agin him.”

“You’ve quarrelled with him, then?” I remarked, with some surprise at the association of an honest man with a thief.

“Not me,” cried the old porter, with warmth. “Ye don’t think I’d speak to the likes of him? But he’s brought me bitter sorrow, and it’s only fair he should suffer for it. I think I can do that, and do you a good turn at the same time, sur, and him never be a bit the wiser. There was a grocer’s broke into down at Greenside last week, was’nt there? and a lot of brandy and things took?”

“Ah! did he do that?” I cried, for it was in connection with that very case that Micky’s name had cropped up in my mind, coupled with the fear, I confess, that I should never bring the crime home to him. Micky did a deal in shebeening, and who more likely to find a use for strong spirits which cost him nothing? but experience told me that he would never be the dolt to keep the plunder where any connection between it and himself could be traced.

“Will no harm come on me or mine if I tell ye all I know?” tremblingly inquired Corny.

“Had you anything to do with the affair yourself?” I sharply demanded.

“No, by me immortal sowl, no!” cried the old man, “I’d sooner drop dead with starvation than rob any one of a hap’orth. But my son Pat—he’s a labourer, sur, and been out for two months with the frost—he has been too much in Micky’s company—mebbe you’ve seen him—and it’s him I’m afeard for. He got fourteen days just for being in Micky’s company, yet he won’t keep away from the villain. My belief is, Micky has throw’d a charm over him, and Pat’s being led off his feet without the power to help himself. Oh, sur, it’s an awful thought to me and to his sister, that would give the very heart out of her own breast to keep him straight.”

There could be little doubt of his sincerity now, for his whole heart was in his eyes, and he had broken down pitifully as he spoke. I now dimly understood the case, for it was not the first by many dozens which had come in my way.

“Tell me all you know, and I will do what I can for you, though I can promise nothing,” I said, thinking that the son might be involved more than the father was aware.

“I’m content with that, sur,” he gratefully responded, “for I hear there’s thaves that think your word surer than the bank. But it’s not much I do know. There’s an empty place in the court down there where Micky lives. It used to be a coal-house, but nobody uses it now, and the roof’s nigh dropping to pieces. Well, I believe if you go to that place and get the door open, and dig up the dross, you’ll find a good deal of what was tuck out of the grocer’s. I think Micky did the job, but anyhow he has a key that opens that place, and nobody but him ever gets a finger near the stuff.”

“How did you find out all that?” I promptly demanded. “Did your son tell you?”

“Him tell me? Do you think Pat ’ud betray any one, even a black-hearted villain like Micky Hill? No, he’s too honourable, though Micky, I’ll swear, wouldn’t have any such scruples. Must I tell you how I found it out?”

“You’d better, if only to save your own character, and take all suspicion away from yourself.”

“Well, then, his sister Annie heard him speak it all in his sleep.”

I whistled aloud, and the glance I turned on the trembling old man was one more of pity than pleasure. Before the son could have been so full of the knowledge as to be oppressed by it in his dreams, he must have been very deeply involved—probably one of the actual perpetrators—and in that case how could I possibly save him? At the moment I heartily wished that the old man had never come near me. If only he and Micky were in the job, and I nipped up the elder rogue, I knew for certain that he would at once suspect treachery, denounce Pat, and put proof in our hands as well. And then another difficulty immediately occurred to me—even if we searched the cellar and found there the stolen goods, how would that bring conviction on Micky? He had not the shed rented, but had cunningly taken possession unknown to any one, and probably entered it only by night when no one was likely to see him. Altogether the case seemed a knotty problem, and I had to send away Corny with less encouragement and hope than he had looked for. If the old porter had known what awaited him outside, his trembling and fears would have been increased rather than diminished, for in an entry in the close was snugly ensconced the very man he had been denouncing.

Micky did not allow himself to be seen, but followed the old man down to the Cowgate, and there allowed him to be some distance along before he made up to him and addressed him.

“Fine morning, Corny,” he said, with a wicked leer, which struck the old man with a nameless dread.

“Is it, then?” he hotly retorted; “then you’ll see to keep away from me.”

“Where have you been so early?” asked Micky, smiling and looking more wicked than ever.

“Where you’ll——” The Irish blood of the old man was up, and the two words were out before he knew. He checked himself, however, and walked off without a word more.

But the worst was now known to Micky. He now knew that he had in some way, incomprehensible to himself, been betrayed. His suspicions could fall on none but his partner, the porter’s son, and on him he resolved should fall the full brunt of the punishment. He abused himself roundly for taking such a greenhorn into his confidence, but, on the whole, thought that he had so managed matters as to keep his own skin safe. The porter’s son being out of work, was not difficult to find; but Micky was rather surprised to find that his most ingenious hints and questionings did not for a moment disconcert or disturb Pat Stephens. He began to think the labourer more cunning than himself, when in reality the other was a perfect child in comparison. The apparent innocence of Pat only added to Micky’s rage and hatred, and, taking the labourer home with him, he told him vaguely of some one having seen him going to his hide, and pressed upon Pat the key of the cellar, with the request that as soon as it was dark he would go to the shed and bring out certain bottles which Micky was in need of for the concoction of the peculiar “fire water” which he doled out as whisky. Quite unsuspicious, Pat took the key and carried it about with him all day; and late that night, when all was quiet in the court, he went to the shed, unlocked the door, and was busy digging up the stuff when we entered and offered to help him. He dropped the spade at once, and then dropped himself right into the grave of coal dross he had made, where he sat helplessly staring at us, speechless with astonishment and terror. We had been watching the place since nightfall from a safe hide close by, and were as much astonished at our capture as the cowering culprit himself.

I had made sure that none but Micky himself would have the run of that cellar, and was intensely chagrined to find in our clutches only a rather stupid-looking fellow, who had not even the daring to attempt resistance or make a dash for liberty.

“What’s your name?” I demanded, while the others rapidly unearthed the contents of the hide.

“Patrick Stephens,” he nervously answered.

“Good gracious! you don’t mean to say that you are the porter’s son?” I exclaimed, more vexed than I cared to show.

He nodded, but then perhaps conscious that he had said too much, he took refuge in silence. Behold the stupidity of the man; just when speaking would have benefited him he closed his mouth. I asked him what he was doing there; if he had been sent by any one, and how he accounted for some of the bottles bearing the address of a Greenside grocer; but to all these questions he remained perversely dumb. He had not the slightest suspicion that Micky had betrayed him, still less that he owed his capture to his own tongue and his anxious father. His idea was that he had been suspected by us, watched and followed to the place, and thus captured in the ordinary course of events. Finding him so stubborn, I sent him to the Office in charge of the others, leaving a man to guard the plunder till it could be taken away in a barrow, while I went up to Micky’s house and considerably surprised him by telling him to get up and come with me—for the cunning rascal had, for the sake of appearances, got into bed, where he stared at me, the very picture of virtuous innocence.

He showed every one of his yellow teeth in that devil’s grin of his when I sharply repeated the command, and then I inwardly guessed that I should have some trouble in getting him convicted. My hope, however, was strong in the porter’s son, who, I was convinced, was by far the more innocent of the two, so I snapped the bracelets on Micky with apparent zest, and he was locked up till morning, when I again visited Pat, and found him as obdurate as before. I had still one resource—the old porter, and to him I went as soon as I could get away.

His distress—and that of his daughter, who appeared to keep house for them—was overwhelming, and, not unnaturally, the heaviest of their reproaches fell upon me.

“You tuck him away after promising that you would do your best to save him and ketch the other villain!” cried the old man, with bitter tears. “Saints above us! and I’ve been the means of sending me own heart’s blood to prison. Och! och! the curse of Heaven be on me for that, and may the tongue that betrayed him wither in me head!”

“I may save him yet, if you can only get him to speak—if you can get him to denounce Micky. Could you not prove an alibi for the night of the robbery?”

The old man paused in his lamentations to think for a moment, and then honestly confessed that the night of the robbery and that which followed were two on which he was certain his son was not at home. I had therefore no doubt but Pat had actually been engaged in the robbery, which had been executed in a clumsy and haphazard fashion, quite in keeping with the two men in custody. I got the porter to see his son in prison, but the effort was made in vain, for Pat would not open his mouth. Tears, prayers, and entreaties were showered upon him in vain, and the only thing which moved him was his old father lifting his hands to invoke the curse of heaven upon his ungrateful head.

“Don’t, father, dear!—don’t,” he piteously cried, grasping through the bars at the feeble arms of his father as they were about to be upraised; “don’t say the black words, for sure I’ve an oath on me sowl, and I can’t break it!”

“Well, well, poor lad!” and the father struggled no more. “May the Almighty give ye strinth to throw id off;” and so they parted, and the misguided victim went unflinchingly to his trial. There was not the smallest tittle of evidence to connect Micky with the crime, and after a short detention he was liberated. Pat was tried shortly after at the High Court, and sentenced to eighteen months’ imprisonment.

“Oh, Patrick dear! it’s somebody else should be in your shoes this day,” came like a “keen” from among the audience as he was led out; and the cry seemed to unman him a little, for it came from his sister.

Some time after, when the circumstances had faded a little in my memory, I was over in the jail seeing a prisoner who worked near Pat. I noticed the porter’s son, whose head was now closely cropped, and his appearance considerably changed by the prison dress, and, half recognising him, I said dubiously—

“Well, what are you in for?”

“It’s yourself should know that, sur,” he said, with a sad smile. “I’m Patrick Stephens. Could I have a word with you, sur?”

“Yes, if you look sharp about it,” was my answer, for my time had nearly expired.

I expected that he had thought better of the case which had landed him there, and was ready to denounce Micky, but in that I was mistaken. He had not a word to say on that point; his sole concern was for his father and sister.

“When Micky was in on suspicion he found out that it wasn’ me, but my father or my sister, that betrayed the hiding-place,” he said to me in a hurried whisper. “He’s sorry now that I was took, but he’s mad agin them, and has sworn to be even with them. You’ve no idea what a divil he is when he takes it into his head. Now, sur, if you’d only take the hint and watch him and them, for though they are as honest as the babe unborn, he’ll get them into a scrape as sure as he’s sworn it.”

“Ah, it’s easy getting into scrapes,” I significantly rejoined, glancing at his oakum heap and his prison garb; “the difficulty is to get out of them.”

“Sure, I know what ye mane, sur,” he returned, with a slight flush of shame, “but since I’ve been in here I’ve got a mighty load off me sowl, and, if I’m spared to get out, please the Lord, I’ll never take it on again.”

I thought of a certain road being paved with good intentions, but said nothing. There was one chance in a thousand that Pat’s might hold good. Even if the thought only comforted him in his seclusion, a blessing was gained.

I questioned him further on the matter he had placed before me, and learned that the information had reached him through a newly-incarcerated prisoner. I could not but admire through the whole revelation the quick intelligence of Micky in piecing together facts which to anyone else would have indicated nothing. From the mere excited exclamation of old Corny, and that of the sister in the Court-room, he had gathered that it had been intended to trap him and save the porter’s son. He knew that as well as if I had revealed to him the whole particulars of my interview with Corny. I began to envy Micky his quickness. But though he was just the man to thirst for revenge, I did not think that he would interfere with the old street porter, and it is probable I said so to Pat at the time, and his warning would speedily have been forgotten but for the curious events which followed.

A month or two after my interview with Pat his father was accosted while on his stance by a well-dressed man having the appearance of a commercial traveller, and asked to carry a rather heavy portmanteau to a certain address. The job was executed with alacrity, and liberally paid for. A few days later the same man hired Corny, after dark, to carry a box to another part of the town, paid him with the same liberality, and told him he might need him again soon.

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.”