From one of the public journals we clipped the accompanying spicy
article; we have lost our notes, and have forgotten from which, or we
should duly credit it to the proper source. We discover that we have
"pencilled" it "1862," and presume that it first appeared in that year.
Our readers will pardon its somewhat "swelling" style in sundry places,
but it exemplifies Officer McWatters' quick and acute perceptions, and
his character as a detective, and we therefore give it place.
YOUNG MAN OF LARGE APPETITE AND SMALL CONSCIENCE.--The necessity of
eating is a strong one; the demands of appetite are peculiarly and
pertinaciously potent. There are many fleshy-looking young men in New
York whose appetital demands are largely ahead of their pecuniary
resources, the latter being of a limited nature, like their
consciences. Our leading hotel diners are appreciatively affected by
these unconscionably-stomached and conscienceless individuals; and it
requires all the devices of the proprietors, and ingenious watching of
sharp-sighted detectives, to guard against their stealthful
appropriation of dinners. In the multiplicity of guests daily arriving
at first-class hotels, and multiplied disguises assumed by the unpaying
diners, it is easy to conceive that the labor of watchfulness is no
light one, and the guarantee of detectives by no means sure. There is
no keener man in the Police Department to scent out a rogue than
Officer McWatters. He can tell a rascal by a sort of instinct. A
stranger to him is like a piece of coin in the hand of the skilful
medallist, who tells the spurious from the genuine by the feeling--by a
glance even.
Officer McWatters measures a man at a glance. He sees the latent
roguery peering out of the corner of the eyes, lurking in the smile,
hiding itself in the cultivated mustache and careful whiskers, strongly
and unconsciously developing even in the gorgeous watch-chain, flashy
vest, showy cravat, elaborately-checked pants, and brilliantly shining
patents, or, _vice versa_, suit of puritanical plainness. His
penetrative optics permeated, yesterday afternoon, the disguise of that
most notable and audacious of non-paying hotel diners, Jack Vinton.
Jack had taken dinner at the Metropolitan Hotel. His brassy impudence
had enabled him to pass muster, as a guest of the hotel, the Cerberus
at the dining-room door. Not to betray a dangerous haste in leaving, he
sank back leisurely into a soft-cushioned chair in the gentlemen's
parlor, and read a newspaper for a while. He was going out of the hall
door, when Officer McWatters spotted him.
"Are you stopping at this hotel?" asked the officer (who, by the way,
was in citizen's dress), in that tone of politeness, for which he is
remarkable.
"I am, sir."
"How long have you been stopping here?"
"Ever since I came here."
"Is your name registered?"
"Registered? I never heard of such a name. Mine begins with an initial
letter of higher alphabetical rank."
"You misunderstand me. Is your name on the hotel books?"
"The bookkeeper is the proper informant."
"Have you a suit of rooms here?"
"Am suited perfectly--all the rooms I want."
"What is the number of your room?"
"A No. 1--first-class, sir. First-class hotel has first-class rooms,
you see, sir. This is a first-class hotel--the _ergo_ as to the rooms
is conclusive."
"You are evasive."
"Only logical, sir!"
"You took dinner just now up stairs?"
"Ask your pardon. I took no dinner up stairs. I went up with an empty
stomach. An excruciating stomachical void. 'Nature abhors a vacuum,'
says philosophy; and, to borrow the apothegmatic utterance of that
philosopher, Dan Brown, 'Dat's what's de matter.'"
"I must be plain, I see. You are Jack Vinton, and are up to your old
tricks. You have come here, eaten a tip-top dinner, and were coolly
walking away, with no thought of paying for it."
Jack saw he was in for it. He offered to pay for his dinner, and
attempted by bribery to effect what he had hoped to effect by colossal
cheekiness of action and tongue; but his antecedental history was
self-crushing, like the mad ambition of the great Cæsar. He was
conveyed to the Second District Police Court, and committed to answer
this and other graver offences of swindling, of which he is supposed to
be guilty.
Jack is only twenty-three years old, and is a master-swindler. Of good
family, he has been well educated, and to fine looks adds the manners
of a polished gentleman; while in artistic culture and familiarity with
the classics, scientific studies and polite and poetical literature, he
has few equals of his years. His dashing form is often seen on
Broadway--the envied of his own sex and the admired of the opposite
sex. His career betrays a wonderful and perverse mingling of the finest
intellectual endowments and culture with the meanest and most pitiable
traits of low and dishonest natures. He is a sort of Lord Bacon, on a
vastly reduced scale of brilliancy. As philosophy delves the mysterious
problem, she finds only "darkness to shadow round about it."
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