The doctor had not proceeded far on his way home, until he found himself
alone. One after another, his friends had popped off; some disappearing
mysteriously, others giving fair warning of their departure, by shaking
him by the hand, and wishing him
----"good night,
And rosy dreams and slumbers light."
Left to his own reflections, and, we may add, to his own exertions, the
doctor stumped bravely homeward, and, without meeting with anything
particularly worthy of notice, arrived safely at his own _close_ mouth.
In another part of this history, we have mentioned that there were one
or two difficulties that always awaited the doctor on his return home
when in the particular state in which he was at this moment. The first
of these difficulties was to climb the dark tortuous staircase, on the
third story of which was his domicile. The second was to discriminate
between his neighbours' door and his own. The reader will recollect
that, to obviate this last difficulty, the doctor fell upon the
ingenious expedient of counting the landing-places as he ascended, his
own being number three.
The reader's memory refreshed as to these particulars, we proceed to say
that the doctor, having traversed the close with a tolerably firm and
steady step, commenced his laborious ascent of the stair in his usual
manner, but with evidently fully more difficulty, as some of the
neighbours, who heard his struggles, remarked, than ordinary,--a
circumstance from which they inferred--and correctly enough, as we have
seen--that the doctor was more than ordinarily overcome.
The first flight of steps the doctor accomplished with perfect success,
and with perfect accuracy recorded it as number one. This done, he
commenced the ascent of number two; and, after a severe struggle,
accomplished it also. But by the time he had done so, the doctor had
lost his reckoning, and, believing that he had gained his own
landing-place, from which, we need hardly remind the reader, he was yet
an entire flight of stairs distant, he deliberately pulled out his
check-key, and applied it to the door of the neighbour who lived right
under him,--a certain Mr. Thomson, who pursued the intellectual calling
of a cheesemonger.
Having inserted the key in the lock, the doctor gave it the necessary
twitch; and, obedient to the hint, the bolt rose, the door opened, and
the doctor walked in.
Being pitch-dark, and the two houses--that is, the doctor's and Mr.
Thomson's--being of precisely the same construction within, nothing
presented itself to the unconscious burglar to inform him of the blunder
he had made.
Satisfied, or rather never doubting, that all was right, the doctor shut
the door, and, groping along the passage, sought the door of a small
apartment on the left, which, in his own house, was his bedroom. This
room he readily found; and it so happened that in Mr. Thomson's house
this same apartment was also a bedroom; so that the doctor, under all
circumstances, could not be blamed for feeling perfectly at ease as to
his situation. In this feeling, he planted himself down in a chair, and
began deliberately to unbutton his waistcoat, preparatory to tumbling
in. While thus employed, the doctor indulged in a sort of soliloquy,
embracing certain reflections and reminiscences connected with his
present condition and recent revelries.
"All right, then," said the doctor, referring to his present position.
"Snug in my own bedroom. Capital song yon of Ned's; one of Gilfirian's,
I think. Writes a beautiful song, Gil--a pretty song--very pretty. Good
feeling, sweet natural sentiment, and all that sort of thing. Must get
his new edition, and learn half-a-dozen of them. Hah! confoundedly drunk
though--that lee-lurch ugly. Never mind: dead sober in the morning;
sound as a roach. Take a seidlitz, and all right."
While thus expressing the ideas that were crowding through his addled
brain, the doctor's attention was suddenly attracted by a noise at the
outer door. He paused to listen. It was some one, with a key,
endeavouring to gain access. What could it mean? Thieves, robbers, no
doubt of it. The doctor did not doubt it. So, grasping a huge, thick
crab-stick, which he always carried at night, and which he had on the
present occasion laid against the wall close by where he sat, the doctor
stole on tiptoe towards the door, and taking up a position about a yard
distant from it, raised his crab-stick aloft, and in this attitude slily
awaited the entrance of the thief, whom he proposed to knock quietly
down the moment he passed the door-way.
Leaving the doctor in this gallant position for a few seconds, we step
aside to inform the reader of a circumstance or two with which it is
right he should be made acquainted. In the first place, he should be, as
he now is, informed that the person at the door, and whom the doctor
took to be a midnight robber, was no other than the doctor's neighbour,
Mr. Thomson himself, the lawful occupant of the house of which the
former had taken possession. He had happened, like the doctor, to have
been out late that night; and, like the doctor, too, was several sheets
in the wind. However, that is neither here nor there to our story. But
it is of some consequence to it to add, inasmuch as it accounts for the
non-appearance of any one to avert the impending catastrophe, that there
was no one residing in Mr. Thomson's house at the particular period of
which we speak, but Mr. Thomson himself; his wife, children, and
servant, being at sea-bathing quarters. Thus, then, it was that the
doctor had been allowed to take and keep such undisturbed possession of
the premises.
Again, the doctor being a bachelor, kept no servant at all; the domestic
duties of his establishment being performed by an old woman, who came at
an early hour of the morning, remained all day, and left at night.
There was thus no family circumstance connected with his own domestic
establishment, the absence of which, on the present occasion, might have
excited his suspicions as to his real position. Everything, then,
favoured the unlucky chance now in progress. To resume: The doctor
having placed himself in the hostile attitude already described, coolly
and courageously awaited the entrance of the supposed burglar. He had
not to wait long. The door opened; and, all unconscious of what was
awaiting him, Thomson entered. It was all he was allowed to do, however;
for, in the next instant, a well-directed blow from the doctor's
crab-stick laid him senseless on the floor.
"Take that, you burglarious villain," shouted the doctor triumphantly,
on seeing the success of his assault; "and that, and that, and that," he
added, plunging sundry forcible kicks into the body of his prostrate
victim with the points of his little stumpy Hessians.
Having settled his man, as he imagined, the doctor stooped down, and,
seizing him by the neck of his coat, proceeded to drag him to the
outside of the door. This was a work of some difficulty, as Thomson was
rather a heavy man; but it was accomplished. The doctor exerted himself,
and succeeded in hauling the unconscious body of his unfortunate
neighbour on to the landing-place on the outside. Having got him there,
he edged him towards the descent, and, giving him a shove with his foot,
sent him rolling down the stairs.
The housebreaker thus disposed of, and put, as the doctor believed,
beyond all power of doing any more mischief in this world, the latter,
highly satisfied with what he had done, and not a little vain of his
prowess, re-entered the house, carefully secured the door after him with
chain and bolt, and retired to the little bedroom of which he had been
before in possession.
Somewhat sobered by the occurrence which had just taken place, the
doctor now discovered various little circumstances which rather
surprised him. He could not, for instance, find his nightcap; it was not
in the place where it used to be. Neither could he find the boot-jack;
it was not where it used to be either. The bed, too, he thought, had
taken up a strange position; it was not in the same corner of the room,
and the head was reversed. The head of his bed used to be towards the
door; he now found the foot in that direction.
All these little matters the doctor noted, and thought them rather odd;
but he set them all down to the debit of his housekeeper,--some as the
results of carelessness--such as the absence of the nightcap and
boot-jack; others--the shifting of the bed and altering its position--to
the whim of some new arrangement.
Thus satisfactorily accounting for the little omissions and
discrepancies he noted, the doctor began to peel; and, in a short time
after, was snugly buried beneath the blankets, with his red comforter
round his head in place of a nightcap.
Leaving the doctor for a time, thus comfortably quartered, we will look
after the unfortunate victim of his prowess, whose rights he was now so
complacently usurping.
For fully half an hour after he had been bundled down stairs by the
doctor in the way already described, poor Thomson lay without sense or
motion. At about the end of that time, however, he so far recovered as
to be able to emit two or three dismal groans, which happening to be
overheard by the policeman on the station, who was at the moment going
his rounds, he hastened towards the quarter from whence the alarming
sounds proceeded, and found the ill-used cheesemonger lying at full
length on the stair, head downwards, and, of course, feet uppermost.
The policeman held his lantern close to the face of the unfortunate man,
to see if he could recognise him; but this he could not, and that for
two reasons: First, being newly come to the station, he did not know
Thomson at all; and, second, the countenance of the latter was so
covered with blood, and otherwise disfigured, that, suppose he had, he
could not possibly have recognised him.
Seeing the man in a senseless state, and, as he thought, perhaps
mortally injured, the policeman hastened to the office to give notice of
his situation, and to procure assistance to have him carried there; all
of which was speedily done. A bier was brought, and on this bier the
person of the unfortunate cheesemonger was placed, and borne to the
police office.
Medical aid being here afforded to the sufferer, he was soon brought so
far round as to be able to give some account of himself, and of the
misfortune which had befallen him. His face, too, having been cleared of
the blood by which it was disguised, he was recognised by several
persons in the office; and being known to be a respectable man, the
wonder was greatly increased to see him in so lamentable a condition.
Mr. Thomson's account, however, of the occurrences of the night
explained all.
He stated that, on returning home to his own house, in which there was
no one living at present but himself, he was encountered by some one in
the passage, and knocked down the instant he entered the door. Who or
what the person was he could not tell, but he had no doubt that it was
some one who had entered the house for the purpose of robbing it; and
added his belief that the house was filled with robbers, who, he had no
doubt, had plundered it of every portable article worth carrying away.
How he came to be found on the stair he could not tell, but supposed
that he had been dragged there after he had been knocked down--that
proceeding having deprived him of all consciousness.
Here ended Mr. Thomson's deposition; and great was the sensation, great
the commotion which it excited in the police office. So daring a
burglary--so daring an assault. The like had not been heard of for
years. In a twinkling, eight or ten men were mustered, lanterned, and
bludgeoned; and, headed by a sergeant, were on their march to the scene
of robbery.
On arriving at Mr. Thomson's door, they found it fast, and all quiet
within. What was to be done? Force open the door? Perhaps some of the
villains were still in the house. At any rate, it was proper to see what
state things were in.
A smith was accordingly sent for, the lock picked, and the door thrown
open, when, headed by the sergeant with a pistol in his hand, in rushed
a mob of policemen, a constellation of lanterns, a forest of bludgeons.
The guardians of the night now dispersed themselves over the house; but,
to their great surprise, found no trace whatever of the thieves. There
appeared to have been nothing disturbed, and the doors and windows
remained all fast.
Puzzled by these circumstances, the police had begun to abate somewhat
of that zeal with which they had first commenced their search, and were
standing together in knots, some in one room and some in another,
discussing the probabilities and likelihoods of the case, when those in
the doctor's apartment were suddenly startled by a loud snore or grunt,
proceeding from the bed, which was followed by a restless movement, and
the exclamation--"Thieves, robbers!" muttered in the thick indistinct
way of a person dreaming.
In an instant, half a dozen policemen rushed towards the bed, drew aside
the curtains, and there beheld the unconscious face of the heroic little
doctor just peering out of the blankets, and a section of the red
comforter in which his head was entombed in the manner already set
forth. We have said that the face on which the astonished policemen now
looked was an unconscious one. So it was; for, notwithstanding the grunt
he had emitted, the movement he had made, and the exclamations he had
uttered, the doctor was still sound asleep; the former having been
merely the result of dreamy reminiscences of the past, awakened by an
indistinct sense of the presence of some person or persons in the house.
In mute surprise, the police, every one holding his lantern aloft, and
thus surrounding the bed with a halo of light, gazed for a second or two
on the sleeping Esculapius. They had never, in the course of all their
experience, seen a burglar take things so coolly and comfortably. That
he should enter a house with the intention of robbing it, and should
deliberately strip, go to bed, and take a snooze in that house, was a
piece of such daring impudence as they had never heard of before.
It was no time, however, for making reflections on the subject. The
business in hand was to secure the villain; and this was promptly done.
Finding his sleep so profound as not to be easily disturbed, half a
dozen men, lanterns and sticks in hand, flung themselves on the doctor,
and, seizing him by the legs and arms, had him in a twinkling on the
floor on the breadth of his back. Confounded and bewildered as he was by
the extraordinary and appalling circumstances in which he now found
himself--surrounded with what appeared to him to be a mob--lanterns
flitting about as thick as the sparks on a piece of burned
paper--cudgels bristling around him like a paling--and, to complete all,
a clamour and hubbub of tongues that might have been heard three streets
off;--we say, confounded and bewildered as he was by these sights and
sounds, the doctor's pluck did not desert him. Starting to his feet, and
not doubting that he was in the midst of a mob of housebreakers, he
seized one of the policemen by the throat, when a deadly struggle
ensued, in which the doctor's shirt was, in a twinkling, torn up into
ribbons; in another twinkling he was floored by a blow from a baton, and
rendered incapable of further resistance.
The combat had been a most unequal one, and no other consequence could
possibly have arisen from it.
Having knocked down the doctor, the next business, as is usual in such
and similar cases, was to get him up again. Accordingly, three or four
men got hold of him by the arms and shoulders, and having raised him to
his feet, planted him, still senseless, in a chair.
A clamorous consultation, spoken in half a dozen different dialects, now
ensued, as to how the housebreaker was to be disposed of.
"We'll teuk him to the office, to pe surely," said a hard-faced,
red-whiskered Celt. "What else you'll do wi' ta roke that'll proke into
shentleman's hoose, and go to ped as comfortable as a lort. Dam's
impitence."
"Soul, and it's to the office we'll have him, by all manner o' means,
and that in the twinkling of a bedpost," chimed in a tall raw-boned
Irishman, with a spotted cotton handkerchief tied so high around the
lower part of his face as to bury his mouth. "The thaif o' the world.
It's a free passage across the wather he'll now get, anyhow, bad luck to
him."
"Fat, tiel, would you tak the man stark naked through the street?" said
a little thick-set Aberdonian. "It would be verra undecent. There's a
bit cloaky there; throw that aboot his shouthers, and then we'll link
him awa like a water-stoup."
"Od, ye'll no fin that so easy, I'm thinkin!" exclaimed a lumpish,
broad-shouldered young fellow. "He's as fat's a Lochrin distillery pig.
He's a hantle mair like his meat than his wark, that ane."
Hitherto the unfortunate subject of these remarks had been able to take
no part in what was passing; but, stupefied by the blow he had received,
which had covered his face with blood, and further confounded by the
various circumstances of the case--his previous debauch, the violence
and suddenness of his awakening, and the extraordinary clamour and
uproar that surrounded him--he sat, with drooping head and confused
senses, without uttering a word.
His physical energies, however, gradually recovering a little, he began
to stare about him with a look of bewilderment; and at length, fixing
his eye on the Irishman, who happened to be standing directly opposite
him, he addressed him with a--
"Pray, friend, what is the meaning of all this?"
"Faiks, my purty fellow, and it's yourself that might be after guessing
that with your own 'cute genius," replied Paddy. "Haven't you half a
notion, now, of what you have been about the same blessed night?"
"I have a pretty good notion that my house has been broken into by a
parcel of ruffians," said the doctor, "and that I have been half,
perhaps wholly, murdered by you."
"Capital, ould fellow; capital," said the Irishman. "Tell truth, and
shame the devil. Your house! Stick to that, my jewel, and you'll
astonish the spalpeens. But come, come, my tight little mannikin, get up
wid ye. You'll go and have a peep of _our_ house now. Time about's fair
play."
And he seized the doctor, who was now wrapped in his cloak, and was
forcing him from his seat, when the latter, resisting this movement,
called out--
"Does no one here know me? Will no one here protect me? What am I
assailed in my own house in this manner for? My name's Dobbie--Doctor
Dobbie!"
"Your name's no nosin to nobody, you roke," said Duncan M'Kay, seconding
the efforts of his colleague to lug the doctor out of his seat. "You'll
be one names to-day and anodder names to-morrow. So shust come along to
ta office, toctor--since you calls yourselfs a toctor--and teuket a
nicht's quarters wi' some o' your frients that's there afore you."
"Let's get a grup o' him," exclaimed the broad-shouldered young fellow
already spoken of, edging himself in to have a share in the honour of
laying a capturing hand on the doctor. "Od, he's as round as a pokmanky.
There's nae getting hand o' him. Come awa, doctor; come awa, my man.
Bailie Morton 'll be unco glad to see ye," he added, having succeeded in
getting hold of one of the doctor's arms, which he seized with a grip
like a vice.
Undeterred by the overpowering force with which he was assailed, the
doctor still resisted, vainly announcing and re-announcing his name and
calling. It had the effect only of increasing the clamour and hubbub
amongst the police, who now all huddled round him in a mob; and without
listening to a word he said, finally succeeded in carrying him bodily
out of the house, in despite of some desperate struggling, and a great
deal of noisy vociferation on the part of the doctor.