It is not long since the cleverest of these strangely constituted men
called detectives [_entre nous_ myself] went up to his superintendent
with a very rueful face, and told him that all his energies were vain in
discovering a clue to an extensive robbery of plate which had occurred
in ---- Street some short time before.
"I confess myself fairly baffled," he said; and could say no more.
"With that singular foxhound organ of yours?" replied his superior. "The
herring must have been well smoked."
"At the devil's own fire of pitch and brimstone," said the detective.
"But the worst is, I have had no trail to be taken off. I never was so
disconcerted before. Generally some object to point direction, if even
only a dead crow or smothered sheep; but here, not even that."
"No trace of P---- or any of the English gang?"
"None; all beyond the bounds, or up chimneys, or down in cellars, or
covered up in coal-bunkers. I am beginning to think the job to be of
home manufacture."
"Generally a clumsy affair; and therefore very easy for a man of your
parts. What reason have you?"
"Absolutely none."
"That is, I fancy," said the superintendent, "the thousand pounds of
good silver, watches, and rings, are absolutely gone."
"You know my conditions," said the officer: "give me the thing stolen,
and I will find to a living certainty the man who stole it; or give me
the man who stole it, and I will find you to a dead certainty the thing
stolen. But it's a deuced unfortunate thing that a man can't get even a
sniff."
"Yes, especially when, as in your case, all his soul is in his nose."
"And with such a reward!" continued the chagrined officer; "scarcely
anything so liberal has been offered in my time; but, after all, the
reward is nothing--it is the honour of the force and one's character. It
is well up for the night anyhow, and I rather think altogether, unless
some flash come by telegraph."
"You have no other place you can go to now?" said the superintendent
musingly, and not altogether satisfied.
"None," replied the officer resolutely. "I have been out of bed for ten
nights--every den scoured, and every 'soup-kitchen'[B] visited, every
swell watched and dogged, and every trull searched; I can do no more. It
is now eleven, my eyes will hardly hold open, and I request to be
allowed to go and rest for the present."
"As you like," replied the superintendent. "We are neither omniscient
nor omnipotent."
"The people who get robbed think us both," said the officer; and taking
his hat, left the office, and began to trudge slowly down the street.
The orderly people had mostly retired to their homes. The midnight
ghouls from the deep wynds and closes were beginning to form their
gossiping clusters; the perambulators had begun their courses; and fast
youths from the precincts of the College or the New Town were resuming
their search for sprees, or determined to make them. There were among
them many clients of our officer, whom he knew, and had hopes of at some
future day; but now he surveyed them with the eye of one whose
occupation for the time was gone. His sadness was of the colour of
Jacques', but there was a difference: the one wove out of his melancholy
golden verses in the forest of Arden; our hero could not draw out of his
even silver plate in the dens of Edinburgh. He had come to the Tron
Kirk, and hesitated whether, after all, he should renounce his hunt for
the night--true to the peculiarity of this species of men, whose game
are wretched and wicked beings, always less or more between them and the
wind's eye, and therefore always stimulating to pursuit; but again he
resolved upon home, or, rather, his heavy eyes and worn-out spirits
resolved him, in spite of himself, and he turned south, in which
direction his residence was. So on he trudged till he came about the
middle part of the street called the South Bridge, when he heard
pattering behind him the feet of a woman. She came up to him, and passed
him, or rather was in the act of passing him, when, from something no
better than a desire to stimulate activity, or rather to free himself
from the conviction that he was utterly and entirely defeated, he turned
round to the girl, whom he saw in an instant was a street-walker, and
threw carelessly a question at her.
"Where are you going?"
"Home," was the reply.
"Where do you live?"
"In Simon Square."
Here he was at first inclined to make a stop, having put the questions
more as common routine than with any defined intention; but just as the
girl came opposite to a lamp-post, and was on the eve of outstripping
him, he said,
"Oh, by-the-bye, do you know any one thereabouts, or anywhere else, who
mends rings?"
"Yes."
"Who is it?"
"Abram."
"What more?"
"I don't know his other name; we just call him Abram, and sometimes Jew
Abram."
"Did you ever get anything mended by him?"
"No; but I bought a ring from him once."
"And what did you do with it?"
"I have it on my finger," she replied.
"Will you let me see it?" he continued.
"Oh yes."
And as they came forward to another lamp-post, he was shown the ring. He
examined it carefully, taking from his waistcoat another, and comparing
the two--"Won't do."
"How long is it since you made this purchase?"
"About ten days ago."
"And what did you pay for it?"
"Three and sixpence."
By this time they had got opposite the square where the girl lived. She
crossed, and he followed, in the meantime asking her name.
"There is Abram's house," she said; "there's light in the window."
And the officer, standing a little to see where she went, now began to
examine the outside of Abram's premises. A chink in the shutters showed
him a part of the person of some one inside, whom he conjectured to be
Abram sitting at his work. He opened the door, and it was as he thought.
An old man was sitting at a bench, with a pair of nippers in his hand,
peering into some small object.
"Can you mend that?" said the officer abruptly, and, without a word of
prelocution, pressing into his hands a ring.
"Anything," was the prompt reply.