Читать книгу At War with Society; or, Tales of the Outcasts - James M'Levy - Страница 5

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THERE are apparently two reasons that influence some of our Edinburgh gentry in locking up their houses and ticketing a window with directions about keys when they go to the country. The first is, that they save the wages of a woman to take charge of the house; and the second, that they may tell their less lucky neighbours that they are able to go to the country and enjoy themselves. No doubt they trust to the watchfulness of a policeman, forgetting that the man has no more than two eyes and two legs, with too often a small portion of brains, which he uses in silent meditation—a kind of “night thoughts,” not always about housebreakers and thieves. I have heard of some of the latter making fun out of these inviting locked-up mansions. “Bill, there’s a ticket in the window about keys, but it’s too far off to be read, and besides, you know, we can’t read.” “No, and so we’ll use a key of our own; we can’t help them things.”

I don’t suppose that Mr. Jackson, of Coates Crescent, entertained any such notions when, in June 1843, he locked up his house on the occasion of a short absence of some five or six days; but certain it is, that when he returned he found all outside precisely as he had left it—blinds down, shutters close, doors locked. All right, he thought, as he applied the key and opened the door; but this confidence lasted no longer than a few minutes, when he discovered that his top-coats which hung in the lobby were gone. Now alarmed, he hurried through the house, and wherever he went he found almost every lock of press, cabinet, and drawer, either picked by skeleton keys or wrenched off, wood and all—the splinters of the torn mahogany lying on the carpets. All right! yes, outside. If he had been cool enough he might have thought of the good man’s cheese of three stones, laid upon the shelf for the christening, and when taken down (all right outside) weighed only the avoirdupois of the skin, the inside having been enjoyed by artists scarcely more velvet-footed; and yet the parallel would not have been true, for the thieves here had been most fastidious gentry—even refined, for, in place of carrying off most valuable articles of furniture, they had been contented with only the fine bits of jewellery, gold, and precious stones, such as they could easily carry away, and easily dispose of.

Finding his elegant lockfast pieces of furniture thus torn up, Mr. Jackson had no patience to make inquiry into the extent of the depredations before coming to the Office and reporting the state in which he had found his house. When I saw him he was wroth, not so much at what might turn out to have been stolen as at the reckless destruction; but the truth was, as I told him, that there was no unnecessary breakage. The thieves behoved to steal, and they behoved to get at what they wanted to steal. Few people understand the regular housebreaker. In almost all cases the clay is moulded, in infancy, moistened with the sap of stolen candy or fruit, and the glare of angry eyes only tends to harden it. We always forget that the thief-shape is the natural one, for can it be denied that we are all born thieves? I know at least that I was, and I suspect you were no better. If you are not a thief now, it’s because you were by good monitors twisted and torn out of that devil’s form; and how much pains were taken to get you into another, so that it is only at best a second nature with you to be honest. In short, the thief is a more natural being than you are, although you think him a monster. Nor is it any wonder he’s perfect, for your laws and habits have only wrought as a direct help of the character he got from the mother of us all, and probably his own mother in particular. Any obstruction he meets with is, therefore, something that ought to give way, simply because it shouldn’t be there; for how can you prove to him that an act of parliament has greater authority than the instinct with which he was born. No doubt he won’t argue with you. If you say you have a right to lock up, he won’t say that he has a right to unlock down, but he’ll do it, and not only without compunction, but with the same feeling of right that the tiger has when he seizes on an intruder upon the landmarks of his jungle and tears him to pieces.

On proceeding to Coates Crescent, I ascertained that the thieves had obtained entrance by opening the outer main-door with keys or pick-locks, and all the rest was easy. The scene inside was just what Mr. Jackson had described it—there wasn’t a lock to an escritoir or drawer that was not punched off. Every secret place intended for holding valuables had been searched; and it soon appeared that these artistes had been very assiduous, if not a long time at the work. It would not be easy for me to enumerate the booty—valuable gold rings, earrings with precious stones, brooches of fine material and workmanship, silver ornaments of price, pieces of plate, and articles of foreign bijouterie. They had wound up with things they stood in need of for personal wear—top-coats, boots, and stockings; and, to crown all, as many bottles of fine wine as would suffice to make a jolly bout when they reached their home. I have not mentioned a small musical box, because by bringing it in as I now do at the end, I want to lay some stress upon it, to the effect of getting it to play a tune.

I soon saw that I had a difficult case in hand, and I told Mr. Jackson as much. The thieves were of the regular mould. I had no personal traces to trust to, and the articles taken away were of so meltable or transferable a nature that it might not be easy to trace them. My best chance lay in the articles of dress, for, as I have already hinted, thieves deriving their right from nature have all a corresponding ambition to be gentlemen. There’s something curious here. Those who work their way up by honest industry seldom think of strutting about in fine clothes. Social feelings have taken the savage out of ’em. It is the natural-born gentleman who despises work that adorns our promenades and ball-rooms. ’Tis because they have a diploma from nature; and so the thieves who work by natural instinct come slap up to them and claim an equality. Certain it is, anyhow, I never knew a regular thief who didn’t think he was a gentleman, and as for getting him to forego a nobby coat from a pin, he would almost be hanged first. I have found this my cue pretty often.

I had, therefore, some hope from the coats, but while getting a description of them and the other articles I felt a kind of curiosity about the peculiarities of the musical box.

“A small thing,” said Mr. Jackson, “some six inches long and three broad.”

“Too like the others of its kind,” said I; and giving way to a whim at the moment, “What tunes does it play?”

“Why, I can hardly tell,” replied he, “for it belongs rather to the females. But I think I recollect that ‘The Blue-Bells of Scotland’ is among them.”

“Perhaps,” said I, keeping up the humour of the thing, “I may thereby get an answer to the question, ‘Where, tell me where, does my highland laddie dwell?’ ”

Mr. Jackson smiled even in the midst of the wreck of his house.

“I fear,” he said, “that unless you have some other clue than the tune, you won’t get me back my property.”

“I have done more by less than a tune,” said I, not very serious, but without giving up my hope, which I have never done in any case till it gave up me.

So with my list completed, and a promise to the gentleman that independently of the joke about the box I would do my best to get hold of the robbers, as well as the property, I left him. I felt that it was not a job to be taken lightly, or rather, I should say, that I considered my character somewhat at stake, insomuch as the gentleman seemed to place faith in my name. There is an amount of routine in all inquiries of this kind. The brokers, the ‘big uncles,’ (the large pawns,) and the ‘half uncles,’ (the wee pawns,) were all to be gone through, and they were with that dodging assiduity so necessary to the success of our calling. No trace in these places, and as for seeing one of my natural gentlemen in a grand blue beaver top-coat, I could encounter no such figure. I not only could not find where my highland laddie dwelt, but I did not even know my lover. Nor did I succeed any better with those who are fond of rings, for that the jewellery had found its way among the Fancies I had little doubt. How many very soft hands I took hold of in a laughing way, to know whether they were jewelled with my cornelians or torquoises, I can’t tell; but then their confidence as yet wanted the ripening of time, and I must wait upon a power that has no pity for detectives any more than for lovers.

And I did wait, yet not so long as that the tune of “The Blue-Bells of Scotland” had passed away, scared though it was by the hoarse screams and discords of crime and misery. One evening I was on the watch-saunter, still the old dodging way by which I have earned more than ever I did by sudden jerks of enthusiasm. I turned down Blackfriars’ Wynd, and proceeded till I came to the shop of Mr. Henry Devlin, who kept in that quarter a tavern, which, without reproach to the landlord, was haunted by those gentlemen who owe so much to nature. Now, I pray you, don’t think I am a miracle-monger. I make the statement deliberately, and defy your suspicions when I say, that just as I came to the door of the tavern, which was open, and by the door of which I could see into a small room off the bar, my attention was arrested by a low and delicate sound. I placed my head by the edge of the open door and listened. The sound was that of a musical box. The tune was so low and indistinct that I held my breath, as if thereby I could increase the watchfulness of my ear. “It is! it is!” I muttered. Yes, it was “The Blue-Bells of Scotland.” The charmed instrument ceased; and so enamoured had I been for the few seconds, that I found myself standing in the attitude of a statue for minutes after the cause of my enchantment had renounced its power.

With a knowledge of what you here anticipate, I claim the liberty of a pause, to enable me to remark, that though utterly unfit to touch questions of so ticklish a nature, I have had reason to think, in my blunt way, that in nine cases out of ten there is something mysterious in the way of Providence towards the discovery of crime. Just run up the history of almost any detective you please, and you will come to the semblance of a trace so very minute that you may view it either as a natural or a mysterious thing, just according to your temperament and your point of view. As a philosopher, and a little hardened against the supernatural, you may treat my credulity as you think proper. I don’t complain, provided you admit that I am entitled to my weakness; but bearing in mind at the same time, that there are always working powers which make a considerable fool of our reasoning. Take it as you may, and going no further than the musical box, explain to me how I should have that night gone down Blackfriars’ Wynd, and come to Henry Devlin’s door just as “The Blue-Bells of Scotland” was being played by that little bit of machinery. You may go on with your thoughts as I proceed to tell you, that recovering myself from my surprise I entered the house. I did not stop at the bar where Mrs. Devlin was, but proceeded direct into the room into which I could see from the door, and there, amidst empty tankards, I found the little instrument which had so entranced me, mute and tuneless, just as if it had been conscious that it had done some duty imposed upon it, and left the issue to the Power that watches over the fortunes of that ungrateful creature, man.

Taking up the monitor, which on the instant became dead to me,

“How came this here?” I said to the landlady, who seemed to be watching my movements.

“Indeed, I can hardly tell, Mr. M‘Levy,” replied she, “unless it was left by the twa callants wha were in drinking, and gaed out just before you cam in. Did you no meet them?”

“No.”

“Then they maun hae gaen towards the Cowgate as you cam by the High Street.”

I paused an instant as an inconsistency occurred to me.

“But they couldn’t have forgotten a thing that was making sounds at the very moment they left?”

“Aye, but they did though,” replied the woman. “The thing had been kept playin’ a’ the time they were drinking, and was playin’ when they paid their score, and the sound being drowned in the clatter o’ the payment, they had just forgotten it even as I did. It plays twa or three tunes,” she added, “and among the lave ‘The Blue-Bells of Scotland,’ a tune I aye liked, for ye ken I’m Scotch.”

“And I like it too,” replied I, “though I’m Irish; but do you know the lads?”

“Weel—I do, and I dinna. Ane o’ them has been here afore, and if you were to mention his name, I think I could tell you if it was the right ane.”

“Shields,” said I.

“The very name,” said she, “and if I kenned whaur he lived I would send the box to him.”

“I will save you that trouble, Mrs. Devlin,” said I, as I put it in my pocket.

“I never took you for a thief, Mr. M‘Levy,” said she, in a half humorous way. “I aye took ye for a thief catcher.”

“And it’s just to catch the thief I take the box,” said I. “You can speak to the men if I bring them here?”

“Brawly.”

And so I left the tavern. I had got my trace, and knew where to go for my men, and I had, moreover, a well-grounded suspicion not only as regarded him whose name I had mentioned, but also his companion. I sent immediately for two constables, and having procured these, and been joined by my assistant, I proceeded to Brodie’s Close in the Cowgate. Arriving at the foot of a stair, I planted there my constables, and mounted till I came to a door familiar to me on prior occasions. I gave my quiet knock—a signal so regular, that, as I have sometimes heard, it was known as “M‘Levy’s warning.” Whether known as such now, or not, I cannot say, but it was quickly enough responded to by no less a personage than the famous Lucky Shields herself. The moment she saw me she recoiled, but only for an instant, and then tried to detain me—the ordinary sign that I should be in. Without saying a word I pushed her back, and making my way forward, got at once into the middle of one of those scenes of which the quiet normal people of the world have no more idea than they have of what is going on in the molten regions of the middle of the earth, on the surface of which they are plucking roses. A large room, where the grandees of a former time drank their claret to the tune of “Lewie Gordon;” all about the sides a number of beds—one or two rattled up of pine stumps—another with black carved legs, which had supported fair dames long since passed away, alongside another with no more pretensions to decayed grandeur than could be put forth by a sack of chaff and a horsecloth. Close to that a ragged arm-chair, with a bundle of hay rolled up in an old napkin, to serve when there was an additional lodger. A number of chairs, marrowless, broken, and rickety; a white table in the midst of all, covered with glasses and tankards, all replete with the ring of drinking echoes, and shining in the haze of tobacco smoke, illuminated by bright gas.

My ears were more bewildered than my eyes; for the room, with its strange furniture, was familiar enough to me; but I had some difficulty for a minute or two in distinguishing the living articles. Round the fir table sat my hero of the box, Patrick Shields; alongside of him, Henry Preger—so true an associate of Shields, as to render it impossible for me to doubt his participation in the affair at Coates Crescent; and along with these Daniel O’Hara, a gentleman with a peculiar turn of thought, which induced him to believe that a watch in another man’s pocket was out of its proper place. The two first were still fuming with the effects of Mrs. Devlin’s whisky, and O’Hara seemed to be great, as master of the new-brewed potation, whisky-punch, which he had been handing round to the young women. I don’t want to paint vividly, in my slap-dash way, where picturesqueness is only to be effected at the expense of the decencies of life, and you don’t want pictures of vice. Then, what boots it to describe such women. Their variety is only a combination of traces which are as uniform as the features of sensuality. Yes, these young women, who were quite familiar to me—Agnes Marshall, Jessie Ronald, Elizabeth Livingstone, Hannah Martin, Julia Shields—were simply representatives of thousands bearing the same marks—one, a demure but cunning catcher of hearts and purses; another, a fair and comely living temple, with a Dagon of vice stuck up in it; another, never sober except when in a police cell, and never silent except when asleep, and scarcely then, for I have heard the cry of her wild spirit as it floated in drunken dreams; and another, the best resetter in the city, from whom a century of years in prison would not have extorted a Brummagem ring of the value of a glass of whisky. If I force so much of a picture upon you, it is because, as a part of society, you deserve to know what your laws and usages produce.