-----
When I came home from my fortnight's holiday, amongst Tom Brisket's
cows, in Huntingdonshire--once a year, for just fourteen days, do I
unbend from the cares of business and seek relaxation far away from
Bermondsey--and let myself in, with my patent latchkey, and walked with
my usual confidence into my front parlour, you might have knocked me
down with a feather. Any feather would have done it--a butterfly's,
say--I was thrown so completely off my guard. I had been so confident. I
was not in any way prepared for it.
[Illustration: "MY HOUSEKEEPER."]
The house was desolate enough, but that was not it. Mrs. Kibbey had
failed to put in an appearance at the end of her holiday, although I had
wired to her only yesterday that I should be home at precisely 8.15
p.m.; but it was not the unlooked for absence of Mrs. Kibbey--my
housekeeper--that upset me thoroughly, oh, no. The gas was not lighted,
and the supper was not likely to come off in the absence of Kibbey,
certainly, but these were only minor features of a colossal
surprise--bagatelles, or anything you may like to call them. Golden
Birch Villa, Streatham, S.E., was simply chaos--that is the mildest
and easiest way of explaining the matter to begin with. One word
suffices--Chaos. It will take a great many words to explain why my
little suburban retreat, on which I had prided myself for so many years
of my bachelor life, was a mass of conglomerated wreckage. I will be as
brief as I can. I am not a prolix man; I know the value of time, and of
other people's time. I should not have had a flourishing business in
Bermondsey, if I didn't know. Golden Birch Villa, Streatham, then, had
been _burgled_. Broken into, despoiled and defaced, was my little
country retreat from the turmoil of town, and it was this which had
confronted me after fourteen days of pastoral simplicity, during which I
had got very sick of Tom Brisket, and Tom's wife, and Tom's cows, and
Tom's children--especially his children--which palled upon one badly and
became unbearable, and beastly personal. The country soon tells upon me,
and I am not fond of children--yet a while--because--but this is mere
babbling of green fields and babies. In describing my return to Golden
Birch Villa that evening, I still feel a confusion in the brain which
whirls and whirls gently round with me. It was the greatest surprise of
my life, the first chapter in a series of surprises, the reader will say
presently. I shall leave the story in his hands, and a remarkable story
it is, take it altogether. It illustrates clearly the old axiom, that
one never knows what is for the best, and that to be robbed--"cleaned
out"--and one's premises generally done for, should turn out to be a
blessing in disguise, will not be very clearly apparent to the reader
until I have explained the whole affair and he has heard my story to the
end.
[Illustration: "TOM'S CHILDREN."]
At the precise moment of which I write now--8.15--I felt as if utter
ruin had overtaken me, as if there were no getting over this gigantic
trouble--this shock, as it were, of a moral earthquake. The usual kind
of earthquake would have been very much the same kind of article, things
a little more askew, perhaps, but not half so "messy." I staggered into
an easy chair--after lighting one of my gas-burners--and took a survey
of the situation, with my mouth open, my chin on my chest, my knees
knocking gently together, and my hair slowly rising upon my head. All
the doors had been locked before the departure of Mrs. Kibbey--my
housekeeper--and myself on our separate ways of recreation, and all the
doors were now wrenched open, and the locks hanging, as it were, by bits
of skin! Everything in the room of any real value had vanished like a
beautiful dream, and everything "of no value to anyone but the owner"
had been tilted into the middle of the room for the convenience of a
hasty analysis before departure. The contents of two desks, of my
carved oak sideboard ("late the property of a gentleman"), of my
bookcase (to make sure that nothing had been stowed away behind the
books), of all the drawers in all the tables, were in one large heap
upon the carpet; bills, letters, tablecloths, tablecovers, dinner
knives, decanters, chimney ornaments, books, purses, lead pencils,
corkscrews, my silver-mounted flute, with all the mounts gone, and the
cruets minus their silver tops. Also all the silver spoons, the electros
being turned out upon the heap as "non-negotiables." The piano had been
split open and gutted--it was an unredeemed Grand--the burglar or
burglars having been seized with the suspicion that I had secreted
articles of value in the body of the instrument. And so I had! one
valuable in particular being a favourite hand or carriage-clock mosaic,
and a mass of miniature dials, gold-mounted, the dials at one time
having been capable of giving all kinds of unnecessary information,
before the death of the manufacturer, who departed this life leaving no
one skilled enough in the world to undertake the repairs; but it was a
great curiosity, and I set great store by it. So did the burglars, for
they had found it and carried it away, along with a large quantity of
portable property too numerous to mention in the pages of this magazine
without changing their appearance to a kind of "Catalogue of Sale."
[Illustration: "I STAGGERED TO AN EASY CHAIR."]
Yes--I was robbed. And I had been so very sure that to leave the
premises to take care of themselves was so exceedingly wise an
expedient. "Cocksure Kippen" had been my nickname in Bermondsey since I
had been in the pawnbrokering, just because I had opinions of my own,
and did not call on other people to let me know _their_ views of a
question upon which I had made up my mind. What did I want with other
people's opinions, when I knew my own were ever so much better? But I
was a little crestfallen on the present occasion--I will say that. And
it was my own fault for going down to Tom's--I will say that too. What
did I want with country air? I had not been ailing anything. I had
always considered a fortnight in Tom Brisket's company a frightful waste
of time. I was never without an excellent appetite, and I measured
forty-one inches round the chest, one inch for every year of my life, I
had said jocosely, only yesterday, before I returned to town, but there
was no jocosity in me when I was at home again--if this bear-garden
could be called home, that is, or made to look like home ever any more!
[Illustration: "'IT WAS A CLEAN JOB,' THE POLICEMAN SAID."]
It was a clean job, the policeman said--quite admiringly--when I had
strength to reach the front door and call him in. Why had I not gone
round to the station-house, the policeman asked, and told the Inspector
I was off for a holiday, as other people generally did? Oh, yes, that
was very likely! Why had not I insured in a Burglary Company? Oh,
yes--and let no end of people know that there was a furnished house
at Streatham with nobody inside of it for a fortnight. Did I think I
could trust my housekeeper? Trust Martha Kibbey, who was my father's
housekeeper before me--dear, deaf, old, palsy-stricken Kibbey, with a
sister in the Cookshops Almshouses, Caterham, and with whom she spent
her holiday invariably. Kibbey, whom the policeman and I found upstairs
in a fit, in her own bedroom, having it all to herself, like a quiet,
unobtrusive old soul as she always was. She _had_ come into the house in
good time, and realising the position, had rushed upstairs to her room,
first of all, to see what had been taken of those worldly goods of her
own, in which she was more naturally interested than anybody else.
And when she discovered that her chest of drawers had been opened
with an indifferent chisel, and that a silver watch of her
grandfather's--weighing one pound and a quarter--had disappeared, along
with an apple-scoop, also of precious metal, belonging to her late
husband, who was "gummy," Mrs. Kibbey became a physical wreck, fit for
nothing, and comprehending next to nothing. When she understood that
I was in the house--safe and sound--she went into hysterics of
thankfulness of so violent a description that I had to leave her with
police-constable 906, and run across the road for the doctor.
The police made a great fuss over the robbery. The Inspector called
later on and entered all the particulars in a notebook, and looked at
the broken doors and the hole in the breakfast parlour shutters, through
which admittance had been obtained, and the general turn-out of
everything in the middle of each room, and then adding his testimony to
the neatness of the job, took his departure, promising to let me know
when anything turned up.
"We shall want a complete list of the articles you miss, so that we can
send round to the pawnbrokers," he had said before leaving me.
"I'm a pawnbroker myself," I replied.
"Ah! then you'll get one."
"Thankee. Perhaps I shall get one of the thieves too."
"Well, you'll know your own property, I expect, sir," he said, with a
most unbecoming grin, as he took himself off the premises. I did not see
him again. I hope I never shall, the unsympathetic beast.
Time passed on and brought no tidings of the robbers or the stolen
property. I was very much distressed over the whole affair, and my
neighbours tried to comfort me by telling me that I could afford the
loss, and that it was a good job it had not happened to a poorer man.
How did they know I could afford the loss, or that I was not utterly
ruined? I had never posed as a wealthy man--I was not wealthy, in the
strict sense of the term. I had been only careful, I had spent nothing
in waste, and I _had_ put by a little money for a rainy day. If people
in Bermondsey called me a money-grubber, it was no fault of my own; but
there were a few who did, because I held to the strict letter of the law
in my contracts. That was praiseworthy, but they could not see it. I
believe a few of them were actually glad that I had been robbed.
[Illustration: "HE WAS VERY LAME."]
Some six months after the burglary, in the dusk of an early winter's
afternoon, a tall, sunken-cheeked man, with a huge white moustache and
a vermilion face, which seemed put on expressly to show it up by, came
limping into my shop at Bermondsey. He was very lame, or pretended to
be, I thought, to throw me off my guard. As if I, Edwin Kippen, was
likely to be off guard in business hours, as if it were possible to be
off one's guard and get one's living, Bermondsey way.
I told my apprentice, who was behind the counter polishing up a few
window goods for next Saturday, to light up, though there was quite
half-an-hour's daylight left in the street. But, somehow--such is
instinct--I did not like the get-up of this man. I had never seen him
before; he did not look "made in Bermondsey," and he was seedy, and a
little nervous, though he talked in strident tones, in a Sir Anthony
Absolute kind of manner, which made the gas glasses jingle.
"Do you buy articles outright, Mr. Kippen, as well as lend money on
them?" he asked abruptly as he entered.
"Yes, sir, I do."
"And at a fair price?"
"Certainly. May I ask what----"
But he was an impetuous man, and so full of his own mission, that he did
not wait for me to conclude my inquiry.
[Illustration: "MY APPRENTICE."]
"Then what will you give me for this article, money down?" he asked,
producing from his pocket, to my complete astonishment, the identical
little carriage clock, all dials and complications and internal
irregularities, which I had hidden in my piano before going down to
Brisket's farm--the clock that had been stolen from my Streatham villa.
The same feeling came over me which I had had in that residence on the
night of my return. I was swimmy for a moment, and saw stars, and then
thought that a thick fog had broken out in Bermondsey. I recovered
myself by a mighty effort of will. Here was to be a battle of the wits.
Here was one item of my lost property within a hand's grasp of me. I
couldn't keep that hand from trembling as I took the clock from him.
"Don't shake it up like a bottle of medicine," said the old gentleman,
irritably; "it's a delicate piece of workmanship, and won't stand
bobbing up and down like that; it upsets the mechanism, and it isn't
easily set right."
"Is it in working order, then?" I inquired, with suppressed amazement.
"Yes, of course it is."
"Good gracious! is it though?" I said, nearly dropping it in my
surprise.
"It tells the days of the month, the dates of the month," he went on,
"the phases of the moon, the month of the year, the year of the century,
the variations in the weather; it chimes the quarters, halves, and
three-quarters; it plays a waltz after it strikes the hour; it acts as a
revolver--I mean as a repeater--and it is mounted in solid gold of 20
carat, almost pure gold. A timepiece fit for a prince, and belonged
originally to Louis Seize. What is it worth to you, money down--on the
nail--as you tradesmen say?"
"I shall want a little time to consider the matter."
"Take your own time, sir, only, for God's sake, look sharp," said the
old man irreverently, as he removed his hat and wiped his forehead with
a big, old-fashioned silk bandanna.
"A clock of this description cannot be reckoned up in a hurry," I said.
"I haven't examined the works yet."
"You'll find them perfect, wonderfully perfect. But don't breathe into
them if you can help it. It affects the waltz movement particularly."
[Illustration: "A TIMEPIECE FIT FOR A PRINCE."]
"Oh, does it, indeed?" I said, ironically.
I professed to be examining the works with the closest attention, but I
was only resolving on my plan of future action. I was playing with my
prey--an angler with his "catch," a cat with a mouse. This was the man
who had broken into Golden Birch Villa, and walked off with the pick of
the property. An ingenious burglar, who was an expert in clocks, and--I
smiled grimly at the joke--who had actually put the article into my own
hands again in perfect order. I could have imagined that it was a
duplicate copy of mine, and in better condition altogether, had it not
been for my private mark, which I was focussing now through a
single-barrelled magnifier. I could talk to the man better in this
fashion; had I looked him straight in his brazen chaps, my virtuous
indignation would have betrayed me. And my policy was to dissemble, like
the man in a melodrama.
"You have had this a long time in the family, I suppose?" I said
quietly--very quietly--but tentatively.
"It's not new. Any fool can see that it is a Louis Seize clock, and of
considerable value."
"It's a valuable thing in its way, no doubt, but it would suit a West
End house better than my establishment."
"I know that, sir, as well as you do," was the testy reply, "but I
haven't got the time to run to the other side of the water, and I want
money in a hurry--in a great hurry, or I should not have come to you,"
he added bluntly.
"Are you living in this neighbourhood?"
"What business is that of yours?" he cried. "What--yes, I do live in the
neighbourhood--round the corner in Tan Yard Road--if you want to know.
No. 239 is my address, if it is likely to do you any good, and my name
is Youson. I see you have your doubts as to my rightful possession of
the article; pawnbrokers are all alike, have exactly the same tricks of
the trade. I know their ways, no one better, and I know what you are
going to say to me next."
"I really do not think that is possible."
"You'll tell me it is unsaleable--that not one in ten thousand would
think of buying such a thing--that at the price of the metal it will be
worth to you--well, what the devil is it worth? You have been staring at
it long enough to know now."
"I am sorry you are in such a tremendous hurry," I said, nettled a
little by his unceremonious deportment.
"I _am_ in a hurry. It is a question of life and death to me that I
should have that money quickly, don't you see? No--you don't see--how
can you see--how can you know anything about me, save that I want money?
You see that fast enough. Well, sir, you are welcome to your knowledge,"
he went on excitedly, "and I am not clever enough to disguise it, though
I know you'll take advantage of my extremity--a man of business, and in
your line of business, is sure to do that. But give me a fair price.
I--I--don't want the money for myself, I don't want a penny of
it--shan't take a penny of it, by God!"
This was an odd way of trying to get rid of stolen goods, but it was
ingenious, and there was a refreshing novelty in the style of it. But I
was not the man to be done. I flattered myself that I was as shrewd as
this artful and red-faced old fox, and that I held the trump card in my
hand to play at any moment.
"I have a friend only a few doors off who will know the value of this
article far better than I," I said; "he is a collector of--of clocks,
and will give you a better price than I can afford. This is not in my
line at all; I should never get a bid for it. Ten pounds would be too
much for me to pay, or even to lend upon it."
"It's worth a hundred pounds, you know that well enough."
"I should not like to say what it is actually worth. I don't buy things
like these without Bender's opinion; he's a sleeping partner of mine,
and only just round the corner."
"Ah, is he?"
"Heaven forgive me these dreadful lies," I whispered softly to myself.
"Let us go to him," he said, snatching the clock suddenly from my hands.
And I had never intended to let the property get out of my possession
again! This man was adroit; he might be one too many for me after all,
if I betrayed the slightest doubt of him, or made anything like a scene.
He was fidgeting with something in the right pocket of his snuffy, old
greatcoat too--perhaps there was a pistol there--I was almost sure there
was a pistol!
"Yes, let us go to him, Mr. Youson," I said. "I'm sure he or I will make
you a handsome offer; he's just the fellow to put down his hundreds.
Isaac, get me my hat--any hat or cap, anything you can find--only look
alive. I am going round to Mr. Bender's with this gentleman."
"Where's Ben----" began that stupid ass of a boy, but I checked him with
a malevolent and meaning glance, and the youth, looking frightened,
dived into the back parlour in search of my head-gear. He came out with
a straw hat, with a ticket on it, but I did not notice anything in my
excitement. I pined to be in the open with this miscreant, who had put
the clock into his pocket. With a policeman in view, on the far horizon
at the end of the street, my happiest hour would have arrived.
[Illustration: "PEOPLE WERE STREAMING HOME FROM WORK."]
We sallied forth together, I keeping very close to him, lest he should
grow suspicious and make up his mind to run. Every minute did I expect
that he would plunge into the middle of the road and tear madly down the
street. And it was a trouble to keep by the side of him; the people were
streaming home from work, were out marketing, looking for something
cheap for tea or supper to be bought off the barrows which were
flanking the kerbstones. Side by side, we got jostled occasionally, the
pavement being narrow and the people thickish, and twice I caught
surreptitiously at the hem of his garment when I thought that we were
going to be separated. And, as usual, there was not a policeman on the
beat anywhere--no sign of official force--nothing but men and women,
boys and girls, the boys terribly in the way, and after the girls!
"Do you call this a few doors off?" said Youson, snappishly, at last.
"Comparatively--oh, yes."
"It looks like half-a-mile," he grumbled.
"Another minute or two, Mr. Youson. I am sorry you are so pressed for
time."
"So am I. Not but what I have had about enough of your company, with
that ridiculous hat of yours over your eyes," he added, ungraciously. "I
wish I had never come near your infernal shop. You are about the slowest
tradesman I have ever encountered."
"It does not pay to be too fast in my line of business."
"Oh, I don't blame you, I don't blame you, sir; I only say I
wish----what are you jumping at? Ain't you well? Are you subject to
anything?" he asked. "Spasms or twitches?"
I had seen a policeman on the other side of the way, standing under the
shop-blind of a cheesemonger's shop, talking to the young man with the
apron who was in charge, grinning from ear to ear with him, and grossly
neglecting his duty, which was to keep a sharp look out at what was
going on up and down the street.
"Where are you off to now?" asked Mr. Youson.
"Bender's is over the way."
"What, the butterman's?"
"No, no, but just by there. Come along. Mind this horse and cart; I
should not like you to get run over with _that_ in your pocket," I said,
almost incoherently.
Mr. Youson gave a short double-knock sort of a laugh.
"What, you are getting anxious about the clock, after all?"
"I am indeed."
We had reached the other side of the way, and the policeman had turned
his back upon us--just like him!--and was staring straight into the
shop. There was a row of egg-boxes full of eggs of all sizes and prices
and ages in front of the premises. Suddenly, I sprang like a panther
upon my prey, flung my arms round Youson's neck, and yelled, at the top
of my lungs, for "Help!" and for the "Police!"
"Damn--confound it, sir--what!"--gurgled forth Youson, in his supreme
astonishment; then we both staggered, our feet went from under us, and,
locked in each other's arms, we sat down, all of a heap, in the "28 a
shilling, not warranted," compartment, and a hideous crackling, as of a
subdued and squashy landslip, went on beneath our writhing forms.
"Oh, good Lord!" exclaimed the young butterman, throwing up both arms in
his despair, "here's a go!"
"Here--hullo--what the blazes are you two blokes hup to?" cried the
policeman, catching us both by the collars of our coats and shaking us;
"this is a nice place to begin larking, I must say."
"It is not larking," I exclaimed, getting on my feet, a hideous mass of
egg-shells and indifferent egg-flip; "it's highway robbery! This man is
in possession of my property--proceeds of a burglary--I'm Kippen, the
pawnbroker, No. 319; he's got my clock in his pocket now. I--I give him
in charge, constable, I give him in charge! Why don't you catch hold of
him?"
[Illustration: "OUR FEET WENT FROM UNDER US."]
"The man's mad!" ejaculated Mr. Youson, "raving mad. Somebody catch hold
of _him_."
There was a big crowd round us--it doesn't take long to get up a mob in
Bermondsey--and the proprietor of the cheesemonger's shop, who had
emerged from his caves of double Gloucester, was wanting to make a case
of his own out of it all, and run the two of us in. The policeman was
bewildered, and Mr. Youson was beside himself with ungovernable rage.
"He has got the clock in his pocket," I repeated.
"Yes, I know I have a clock in my pocket," he spluttered, "you--you
rascal--you unmitigated----"
"It's my clock. I can swear to it," I yelled. "I've plenty of witnesses
to prove it's mine."
"You'd better both come round to the station-house," said the policeman;
"do you charge him with taking your clock, sir?" he added to me.
"I do."
"Very well."
We went off to the station-house, Mr. Youson and I, the policeman and
the cheesemonger, and a grand procession in the rear of about fifteen
hundred persons with nothing to do. The cheesemonger and I conversed
amicably _en route_, when he had become thoroughly convinced that I
was a brother tradesman, resident at the far end of the street. He
understood the case then--he grasped the situation--but he could not for
the life of him make out, he said, why we had sat down in the middle of
his eggs to argue the point. Who was answerable for all the damage, he
should like to know? I didn't know, I told him, and I was damaged
materially so far as wearing apparel went, I delicately intimated, by
the indifferent quality of his eggs. That you cannot get reliable eggs
for twenty-eight a shilling in the winter season, in Bermondsey, is a
miserable fact, and discreditable to the reputation of French poultry.
I had never been in such a mess in my life, but I was in a greater mess
the next day. It's a long story, that of the examination at the police
station, and I will spare the reader the harassing details. Mr. Youson,
in his confusion, made a very rambling statement of how he came into
possession of the clock, prejudiced the Inspector against him, and got
himself locked up, and I was told to call the next day at the Police
Court in Blackman Street and explain matters, and bring my witnesses. I
did so, and brought a neighbour or two who had seen the clock upon my
mantelpiece at Streatham, and I clinched the argument with Mrs. Kibbey,
who shed copious tears during the evidence, till the magistrate asked
her sharply what she was snivelling at, when she fainted dead away under
the reproof, and had to be carried from the witness-box into the fresh
air to recover.
[Illustration: "MRS. KIBBEY SHED COPIOUS TEARS."]
It was a clear case, however, against Mr. Youson, everybody considered,
and he was remanded for a week, without bail, whilst enquiries as to
his antecedents were to be vigorously made. There was a very grave
suspicion, the Inspector whispered confidentially into my ear, along
with some strong puffs of gin and peppermint which impregnated his
breathing apparatus dreadfully, that Youson was one of a desperate gang
of Lambeth burglars, for whom the police had been searching for some
time.
There was a woman's scream in court when Youson was remanded, and the
magistrate, who was certainly in a bad temper that morning, said that he
would commit anybody for contempt who made such a noise as that again,
and then the next case was called, and I was outside in Blackman Street,
Borough.
I had, with some difficulty and a little pleasure, lodged the hysterical
Mrs. Kibbey in a Streatham omnibus, and was making my way thoughtfully
down King Street to my Bermondsey premises, when someone touched me on
the arm. I looked round, and was considerably surprised to find a pale,
grave young woman of some thirty years of age, poorly but neatly clad,
keeping step with me on the narrow pavement.
"I beg pardon, sir, but you are Mr. Kippen, I think?"
"Yes, my name is Kippen."
"I wanted to speak to you. I wanted so much to see you before this case
came on. My name is Youson, Lucinda Youson," she said, hurriedly.
"God bless me, is it though? You are----"
"Mr. Youson's daughter."
"My good woman, I hope you are not going to bother me," I said,
imploringly; "the case is out of my hands. I am bound over to prosecute.
It was a shameful robbery."
"My father did not rob you, Mr. Kippen. Does he look like a thief?"
"I don't know what he looks like."
[Illustration: "MR. YOUSON'S DAUGHTER."]
"You don't know the truth," she said quickly. "Perhaps you don't know
what kindness is, or charity--some people don't. You would not wait for
him to explain, and you have nearly killed us with anxiety. We--we did
not know what had become of him."
"Killed _us_," I repeated, vacantly; "are there many of you?"
"My sister-in-law and her little boy, and myself. And the boy is
dying--that's the worst of it--oh! poor little chap, that is the worst
of it! And his grandfather was so fond of him; he was selling the clock
so that the boy and his mother should go away to Madeira, the only
chance to save him, sir. The only chance that was left.
[Illustration: "THE BOY IS DYING."]
"And so he thought he would sell something valuable that did not belong
to him, and go to Madeira at my expense, and----"
"You must not say my father stole it--you dare not!" she cried, and her
eyes literally flashed fire at me. This young woman was as impulsive as
her felonious father. Here was another scene likely to spring up in the
street if I were not particularly careful, and I had had enough of
demonstrations in the public highway.
"My good woman, what is it that you want with me?"
"I want you to hear how that clock came into my father's possession, and
then--and then prosecute him if you can. And at your peril, sir--please
to understand, at your peril, though I utter no threats."
"It strikes me you do."
"No--no--I don't mean that," she cried. "Heaven help me, I am almost
distracted, I am not myself to-day, and you will listen? It will not
cost you anything to listen to me, sir, will it?"
She laid her hand upon my arm entreatingly--she had very earnest brown
eyes, and I was not, as I thought, wholly unsusceptible to the influence
of brown eyes upon the nervous system. And as she had delicately
intimated that listening would not cost me anything, why should I object
to listen to her? We were both going the same way. Of course, I should
hear a good roundabout story--a second edition of her father's rigmarole
which had prejudiced the magistrate against him--but I was not bound in
any way to believe a word that she said.
It sounded uncommonly like truth though, and took me very much aback
when she said suddenly--
"Yes, that clock was stolen from you. We knew it was stolen--and who
stole it."
"But you just said----"
"That my father did not steal it. God bless him, no. He did not
know--did not dream that we knew--did not know anything about it in any
way--does not to this day. It was his property, he thought--all that was
left of any value in the world to him; and it had belonged to his
son--his eldest son, my half-brother, who----"
"Who was the thief. The infernal----"
"Please don't, sir. He is dead."
"Oh! I beg your pardon. I didn't--know," I found myself saying in an
apologetic manner which really surprised myself.
"Yes, sir, he was the thief," she said, sinking her voice into a whisper
almost. "He committed suicide two months ago abroad, but we have kept
the truth back from father. He wasn't to know--it would have broken his
heart, he was so proud of his son, always. But before my half-brother
died--he had gone to Canada, to make a home for Kitty and her boy, he
said--he wrote to Kitty that he was a repentant man, and that, unknown
to any of us, he had been for years in bad hands, working with them,
stealing with them. Our poor father thought he was a traveller for a
Manchester firm, and so did we, until that terrible confession came
across the sea to us. We were not to tell father--we were to make all
the restitution that we could presently; he would send full instructions
what we were to do by the next mail, he wrote, and the next mail only
told us of his death."
[Illustration: "I WAS ALWAYS HANDY WITH MY FINGERS."]
"And your father?"
"Kitty and I have fought hard to keep the truth from him--the truth
would have broken his heart. Why the news of his son's death nearly
did, sir. And he has had so much trouble--so many losses too--and we
have been for the last six months so very hard driven to live. Of late
days father wished to sell this clock, but we would not let him--we were
sure it had been stolen, and we hoped to find the owner some day."
"But not like this, I suppose?"
"Oh! no, not like this. But when little Willie got very ill; when
residence abroad for a few months might save him, the doctor said--it
was only yesterday he told us that--father took the clock out of the
house unknown to us, and--and came at once to you. He is so very
impetuous, poor father."
"Ah! is he? And who put the clock in working order, may I ask?"
"I did."
"You!"
"I was brought up to the watch-making--I am rather clever at it, they
say."
[Illustration: "WENT TO MADEIRA WITH KITTY AND THE BOY."]
"Clever. By George, I should think you were! Why, in a business like
mine you would be invaluable."
"I was always handy with my fingers."
"So was your half-brother--it seems to run in the family."
"Oh!"
"I beg pardon," I said, for the second time. "I--I did not mean to say
that. It slipped out promiscuously."
"Never mind, sir--never mind," she said hurriedly. "What are you going
to do? Pray tell me what you think of doing when I prove the truth of
this."
"If it's all true--and I believe it is already, Miss Youson--I--I am
going to withdraw from the prosecution, and ask your father to bring an
action against me for illegal detention."
"Oh! he would never think of such a thing."
And he never did. The story was quite true, every word of it, and we
arranged to keep it from the old man, so far as the peculiar profession
of his first-born was concerned. He never knew _that_. I got rather
intimate with the Youson family by degrees, although our acquaintance
had begun so inauspiciously. Rather intimate, I say--well, very
intimate, rather! would be a clear expression, if a trifle inelegant.
For I married that girl, and pensioned off Mrs. Kibbey, and I never did
such a fine stroke of business in all my life. The old man--he was a
fine old fellow, too--went to Madeira with Kitty and the boy, and I bore
Lucinda off to Streatham. She is one of the best of wives, and so very
handy in the business too--saves me a heap of money. It was a lucky day
for me when that rascal of a half-brother of hers broke burglariously
into Golden Birch Villa, and took away everything that had an atom's
worth of precious metal in its composition. It was a blessing very much
in disguise, but it has answered its purpose thoroughly well. I am as
happy as the day is long--and so is Lucinda. Everybody tells me that I
secured a treasure when I took her for better, for worse. Everybody but
Mrs. Kibbey--past housekeeper, and living with her sister now in the
Cookshops Almshouses at Caterham--and she says I could have done much
better for myself, long before, if I had only looked about me in a
sensible and practical sort of way.
[Illustration: "LIVING WITH HER SISTER NOW."]
[Illustration: MR. GEORGE NEWNES.]
"Lions in Their Dens."
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