INVOLVES A CRITICAL POSITION.
“WHO’S that?” inquired Brittles, opening the door a little way, with
the chain up, and peeping out, shading the candle with his hand.
“Open the door,” replied a man outside; “it’s the officers from
Bow-street, as was sent to, to-day.”
Much comforted by this assurance, Brittles opened the door to its full
width, and confronted a portly man in a great-coat, who walked in
without saying anything more, and wiped his shoes on the mat as coolly
as if he lived there.
“Just send somebody out to relieve my mate, will you, young man?”
said the officer; “he’s in the gig minding the prad. Have you got a
coach’us here that you could put it up in for five or ten minutes?”
Brittles replying in the affirmative, and pointing out the building,
the portly man stepped back to the garden-gate, and helped his
companion to put up the gig, while Brittles lighted them, in a state
of great admiration. This done, they returned to the house, and, being
shewn into a parlour, took off their great-coats and hats, and shewed
like what they were. The man who had knocked at the door was a stout
personage of middle height, aged about fifty, with shiny black hair,
cropped pretty close, half-whiskers, a round face, and sharp eyes.
The other was a red-headed, bony man, in top-boots, with a rather
ill-favoured countenance, and a turned-up, sinister-looking nose.
“Tell your governor that Blathers and Duff is here, will you?” said the
stouter man, smoothing down his hair, and laying a pair of handcuffs on
the table. “Oh! good evening, master. Can I have a word or two with you
in private, if you please?”
This was addressed to Mr. Losberne, who now made his appearance; that
gentleman, motioning Brittles to retire, brought in the two ladies, and
shut the door.
“This is the lady of the house,” said Mr. Losberne, motioning towards
Mrs. Maylie.
Mr. Blathers made a bow, and being desired to sit down, put his hat
upon the floor, and, taking a chair, motioned Duff to do the same. The
latter gentleman, who did not appear quite so much accustomed to good
society, or quite so much at his ease in it, one of the two, seated
himself, after undergoing several muscular affections of the limbs, and
forced the head of his stick into his mouth, with some embarrassment.
“Now, with regard to this here robbery, master,” said Blathers. “What
are the circumstances?”
Mr. Losberne, who appeared desirous of gaining time, recounted them at
great length, and with much circumlocution: Messrs. Blathers and Duff
looking very knowing meanwhile, and occasionally exchanging a nod.
“I can’t say for certain till I see the place, of course,” said
Blathers; “but my opinion at once is,—I don’t mind committing myself
to that extent,—that this wasn’t done by a yokel—eh, Duff?”
“Certainly not,” replied Duff.
“And, translating the word yokel for the benefit of the ladies, I
apprehend your meaning to be, that this attempt was not made by a
countryman?” said Mr. Losberne, with a smile.
“That’s it, master,” replied Blathers. “This is all about the robbery,
is it?”
“All,” replied the doctor.
“Now, what is this about this here boy that the servants are talking
of?” said Blathers.
“Nothing at all,” replied the doctor. “One of the frightened servants
chose to take it into his head that he had something to do with this
attempt to break into the house; but it’s nonsense—sheer absurdity.”
“Wery easy disposed of it is,” remarked Duff.
“What he says is quite correct,” observed Blathers, nodding his head
in a confirmatory way, and playing carelessly with the handcuffs, as
if they were a pair of castanets. “Who is the boy? What account does
he give of himself? Where did he come from? He didn’t drop out of the
clouds, did he, master?”
“Of course not,” replied the doctor, with a nervous glance at the
two ladies. “I know his whole history;—but we can talk about that
presently. You would like to see the place where the thieves made their
attempt, first, I suppose?”
“Certainly,” rejoined Mr. Blathers. “We had better inspect the premises
first, and examine the servants arterwards. That’s the usual way of
doing business.”
Lights were then procured, and Messrs. Blathers and Duff, attended by
the native constable, Brittles, Giles, and everybody else in short,
went into the little room at the end of the passage and looked out at
the window, and afterwards went round by way of the lawn, and looked in
at the window, and after that, had a candle handed out to inspect the
shutter with, and after that, a lantern to trace the footsteps with,
and after that, a pitchfork to poke the bushes with. This done, amidst
the breathless interest of all beholders, they came in again, and Mr.
Giles and Brittles were put through a melodramatic representation of
their share in the previous night’s adventures, which they performed
some six times over, contradicting each other in not more than one
important respect the first time, and in not more than a dozen the
last. This consummation being arrived at, Blathers and Duff cleared
the room, and held a long council together, compared with which, for
secrecy and solemnity, a consultation of great doctors on the knottiest
point in medicine would be mere child’s play.
Meanwhile, the doctor walked up and down the next room in a very uneasy
state, and Mrs. Maylie and Rose looked on with anxious faces.
“Upon my word,” he said, making a halt, after a great number of very
rapid turns, “I hardly know what to do.”
“Surely,” said Rose, “the poor child’s story faithfully repeated to
these men will be sufficient to exonerate him.”
“I doubt it, my dear young lady,” said the doctor, shaking his head.
“I don’t think it would exonerate him either with them or with legal
functionaries of a higher grade. What is he, after all, they would
say?—a runaway. Judged by mere world considerations and probabilities,
his story is a very doubtful one.”
“You credit it, surely?” interrupted Rose, in haste.
“_I_ believe it, strange as it is, and perhaps may be an old fool for
doing so,” rejoined the doctor; “but I don’t think it is exactly the
tale for a practised police-officer, nevertheless.”
“Why not?” demanded Rose.
“Because, my pretty cross-examiner,” replied the doctor, “because,
viewed with their eyes, there are so many ugly points about it; he can
only prove the parts that look bad, and none of those that look well.
Confound the fellows, they _will_ have the why and the wherefore, and
take nothing for granted. On his own shewing, you see he has been
the companion of thieves for some time past; he has been carried to a
police-office on a charge of picking a gentleman’s pocket, and is taken
away forcibly from that gentleman’s house to a place which he cannot
describe or point out, and of the situation of which he has not the
remotest idea. He is brought down to Chertsey by men who seem to have
taken a violent fancy to him, whether he will or no, and put through
a window to rob a house, and then, just at the very moment when he is
going to alarm the inmates, and so do the very thing that would set
him all to rights, there rushes into the way that blundering dog of a
half-bred butler, and shoots him, as if on purpose to prevent his doing
any good for himself. Don’t you see all this?”
“I see it, of course,” replied Rose, smiling at the doctor’s
impetuosity; “but still I do not see anything in it to criminate the
poor child.”
“No,” replied the doctor; “of course not! Bless the bright eyes of your
sex! They never see, whether for good or bad, more than one side of
any question, and that is, invariably, the one which first presents
itself to them.”
Having given vent to this result of experience, the doctor put his
hands into his pockets, and walked up and down the room with even
greater rapidity than before.
“The more I think of it,” said the doctor, “the more I see that it
will occasion endless trouble and difficulty to put these men into
possession of the boy’s real story. I am certain it will not be
believed; and even if they can do nothing to him in the end, still the
dragging it forward, and giving publicity to all the doubts that will
be cast upon it, must interfere materially with your benevolent plan of
rescuing him from misery.”
“Oh! what is to be done?” cried Rose. “Dear, dear! why did they send
for these people?”
“Why, indeed!” exclaimed Mrs. Maylie. “I would not have had them here
for the world.”
“All I know is,” said Mr. Losberne at last, sitting down with a kind
of desperate calmness, “that we must try and carry it off with a
bold face, that’s all. The object is a good one, and that must be
the excuse. The boy has strong symptoms of fever upon him, and is in
no condition to be talked to any more; that’s one comfort. We must
make the best of it we can; and if bad is the best, it is no fault of
ours.—Come in.”
“Well, master,” said Blathers, entering the room, followed by his
colleague, and making the door fast before he said any more. “This
warn’t a put-up thing.”
“And what the devil’s a put-up thing?” demanded the doctor, impatiently.
“We call it a put-up robbery, ladies,” said Blathers, turning to them,
as if he compassioned their ignorance, but had a contempt for the
doctor’s, “when the servants is in it.”
“Nobody suspected them, in this case,” said Mrs. Maylie.
“Wery likely not, ma’am,” replied Blathers, “but they might have been
in it for all that.”
“More likely on that wery account,” said Duff.
“We find it was a town hand,” said Blathers, continuing his report;
“for the style of work is first-rate.”
“Wery pretty indeed it is,” remarked Duff, in an under tone.
“There was two of ’em in it,” continued Blathers, “and they had a boy
with ’em; that’s plain from the size of the window. That’s all to be
said at present. We’ll see this lad that you’ve got up stairs at once,
if you please.”
“Perhaps they will take something to drink first, Mrs. Maylie?” said
the doctor, his face brightening up as if some new thought had occurred
to him.
“Oh! to be sure!” exclaimed Rose, eagerly. “You shall have it
immediately, if you will.”
“Why, thank you, miss!” said Blathers, drawing his coat-sleeve across
his mouth; “it’s dry work, this sort of duty. Anything that’s handy,
miss; don’t put yourself out of the way on our accounts.”
“What shall it be?” asked the doctor, following the young lady to the
sideboard.
“A little drop of spirits, master, if it’s all the same,” replied
Blathers. “It’s a cold ride from London, ma’am; and I always find that
spirits comes home warmer to the feelings.”
This interesting communication was addressed to Mrs. Maylie, who
received it very graciously. While it was being conveyed to her, the
doctor slipped out of the room.
“Ah!” said Mr. Blathers, not holding his wine-glass by the stem, but
grasping the bottom between the thumb and forefinger of his left hand,
and placing it in front of his chest; “I have seen a good many pieces
of business like this, in my time, ladies.”
“That crack down in the back lane at Edmonton, Blathers,” said Mr.
Duff, assisting his colleague’s memory.
“That was something in this way, warn’t it?” rejoined Mr. Blathers;
“that was done by Conkey Chickweed, that was.”
“You always gave that to him,” replied Duff. “It was the Family Pet, I
tell you, and Conkey hadn’t any more to do with it than I had.”
“Get out!” retorted Mr. Blathers; “I know better. Do you mind that time
Conkey was robbed of his money, though? What a start that was! better
than any novel-book I ever see!”
“What was that?” inquired Rose, anxious to encourage any symptoms of
goodhumour in the unwelcome visiters.
“It was a robbery, miss, that hardly anybody would have been down
upon,” said Blathers. “This here Conkey Chickweed——”
“Conkey means Nosey, ma’am,” interposed Duff.
“Of course the lady knows that, don’t she?” demanded Mr. Blathers.
“Always interrupting, you are, partner. This here Conkey Chickweed,
miss, kept a public-house over Battlebridge way, and had a cellar,
where a good many young lords went to see cockfighting, and
badger-drawing, and that; and a wery intellectual manner the sports
was conducted in, for I’ve seen ’em off’en. He warn’t one of the
family at that time, and one night he was robbed of three hundred
and twenty-seven guineas in a canvass bag, that was stole out of his
bedroom in the dead of night by a tall man with a black patch over his
eye, who had concealed himself under the bed, and after committing the
robbery, jumped slap out of window, which was only a story high. He
was wery quick about it. But Conkey was quick, too; for he was woke by
the noise, and darting out of bed, fired a blunderbuss arter him, and
roused the neighbourhood. They set up a hue-and-cry directly, and when
they came to look about ’em, found that Conkey had hit the robber; for
there was traces of blood all the way to some palings a good distance
off, and there they lost ’em. However, he had made off with the blunt,
and, consequently, the name of Mr. Chickweed, licensed witler, appeared
in the Gazette among the other bankrupts; and all manner of benefits
and subscriptions, and I don’t know what all, was got up for the poor
man, who was in a wery low state of mind about his loss, and went up
and down the streets for three or four days, pulling his hair off in
such a desperate manner that many people was afraid he might be going
to make away with himself. One day he come up to the office all in a
hurry, and had a private interview with the magistrate, who, after a
good deal of talk, rings the bell, and orders Jem Spyers in (Jem was
a active officer), and tells him to go and assist Mr. Chickweed in
apprehending the man as robbed his house. ‘I see him, Spyers,’ said
Chickweed, ‘pass my house yesterday morning.’—‘Why didn’t you up, and
collar him?’ says Spyers.—‘I was so struck all of a heap that you
might have fractured my skull with a toothpick,’ says the poor man;
‘but we’re sure to have him, for between ten and eleven o’clock at
night he passed again.’ Spyers no sooner heard this than he put some
clean linen and a comb in his pocket, in case he should have to stop
a day or two; and away he goes, and sets himself down at one of the
public-house windows behind a little red curtain, with his hat on,
already to bolt at a moment’s notice. He was smoking his pipe here late
at night, when all of a sudden Chickweed roars out—‘Here he is! Stop
thief! Murder!’ Jem Spyers dashes out; and there he sees Chickweed
tearing down the street full-cry. Away goes Spyers; on keeps Chickweed;
round turns the people; everybody roars out, ‘Thieves!’ and Chickweed
himself keeps on shouting all the time, like mad. Spyers loses sight
of him a minute as he turns a corner—shoots round—sees a little
crowd—dives in. ‘Which is the man?’—‘D—me!’ says Chickweed, ‘I’ve
lost him again!’
“It was a remarkable occurrence, but he warn’t to be seen nowhere, so
they went back to the public-house; and next morning, Spyers took his
old place, and looked out from behind the curtain for a tall man with a
black patch over his eye, till his own two eyes ached again. At last,
he couldn’t help shutting ’em to ease ’em a minute, and the very moment
he did so, he hears Chickweed roaring out, ‘Here he is!’ Off he starts
once more, with Chickweed half-way down the street ahead of him; and
after twice as long a run as the yesterday’s one, the man’s lost again!
This was done once or twice more, till one-half the neighbours gave out
that Mr. Chickweed had been robbed by the devil, who was playing tricks
with him arterwards; and the other half, that poor Mr. Chickweed had
gone mad with grief.”
“What did Jem Spyers say?” inquired the doctor, who had returned to the
room shortly after the commencement of the story.
“Jem Spyers,” resumed the officer, “for a long time said nothing at
all, and listened to everything without seeming to, which shewed he
understood his business. But one morning he walked into the bar, and
taking out his snuff-box, said, ‘Chickweed, I’ve found out who’s done
this here robbery.’—‘Have you?’ said Chickweed. ‘Oh, my dear Spyers,
only let me have wengeance, and I shall die contented! Oh, my dear
Spyers, where is the villain?’—‘Come!’ said Spyers, offering him a
pinch of snuff, ‘none of that gammon! You did it yourself.’ So he
had; and a good bit of money he had made by it, too; and nobody would
ever have found it out, if he hadn’t been so precious anxious to keep
up appearances; that’s more!” said Mr. Blathers, putting down his
wine-glass, and clinking the handcuffs together.
“Very curious, indeed,” observed the doctor. “Now, if you please, you
can walk up stairs.”
“If _you_ please, sir,” returned Mr. Blathers; and closely following
Mr. Losberne, the two officers ascended to Oliver’s bedroom, Mr. Giles
preceding the party with a lighted candle.
Oliver had been dozing, but looked worse, and was more feverish than he
had appeared yet. Being assisted by the doctor, he managed to sit up
in bed for a minute or so, and looked at the strangers without at all
understanding what was going forward, and, in fact, without seeming to
recollect where he was, or what had been passing.
“This,” said Mr. Losberne, speaking softly, but with great vehemence
notwithstanding, “this is the lad, who, being accidentally wounded by a
spring-gun in some boyish trespass on Mr. What-d’ye-call-him’s grounds,
at the back here, comes to the house for assistance this morning, and
is immediately laid hold of and maltreated by that ingenious gentleman
with the candle in his hand, who has placed his life in considerable
danger, as I can professionally certify.”
[Illustration: _Oliver waited on by the Bow-Street Runners._
London, Richard Bentley, May 1, 1838.]
Messrs. Blathers and Duff looked at Mr. Giles, as he was thus
recommended to their notice; and the bewildered butler gazed from them
towards Oliver, and from Oliver towards Mr. Losberne, with a most
ludicrous mixture of fear and perplexity.
“You don’t mean to deny that, I suppose?” said the doctor, laying
Oliver gently down again.
“It was all done for the—for the best, sir!” answered Giles. “I am
sure I thought it was the boy, or I wouldn’t have meddled with him. I
am not of an inhuman disposition, sir.”
“Thought it was what boy?” inquired the senior officer.
“The housebreaker’s boy, sir!” replied Giles. “They—they certainly had
a boy.”
“Well, do you think so now?” inquired Blathers.
“Think what, now?” replied Giles, looking vacantly at his questioner.
“Think it’s the same boy, stupid-head?” rejoined Mr. Blathers,
impatiently.
“I don’t know; I really don’t know,” said Giles, with a rueful
countenance. “I couldn’t swear to him.”
“What do you think?” asked Mr. Blathers.
“I don’t know what to think,” replied poor Giles. “I don’t think it is
the boy; indeed, I’m almost certain that it isn’t. You know it can’t
be.”
“Has this man been a-drinking, sir?” inquired Blathers, turning to the
doctor.
“What a precious muddle-headed chap you are!” said Duff, addressing Mr.
Giles, with supreme contempt.
Mr. Losberne had been feeling the patient’s pulse during this short
dialogue; but he now rose from the chair by the bedside, and remarked,
that if the officers had any doubts upon the subject, they would
perhaps like to step into the next room, and have Brittles before them.
Acting upon this suggestion, they adjourned to a neighbouring
apartment, where Mr. Brittles, being called in, involved himself and
his respected superior in such a wonderful maze of fresh contradictions
and impossibilities as tended to throw no particular light upon any
thing, save the fact of his own strong mystification; except, indeed,
his declarations that he should’nt know the real boy if he were put
before him that instant; that he had only taken Oliver to be he,
because Mr. Giles had said he was; and that Mr. Giles had, five minutes
previously, admitted in the kitchen that he began to be very much
afraid he had been a little too hasty.
Among other ingenious surmises, the question was then raised, whether
Mr. Giles had really hit anybody, and upon examination of the fellow
pistol to that which he had fired, it turned out to have no more
destructive loading than gunpowder and brown paper,—a discovery which
made a considerable impression on every body but the doctor, who had
drawn the ball about ten minutes before. Upon no one, however, did
it make a greater impression than on Mr. Giles himself; who, after
labouring for some hours under the fear of having mortally wounded a
fellow-creature, eagerly caught at this new idea, and favoured it to
the utmost. Finally, the officers, without troubling themselves very
much about Oliver, left the Chertsey constable in the house, and took
up their rest for that night in the town, promising to return next
morning.
With the next morning there came a rumour that two men and a boy
were in the cage at Kingston, who had been apprehended overnight
under suspicious circumstances; and to Kingston Messrs. Blathers and
Duff journeyed accordingly. The suspicious circumstances, however,
resolving themselves, on investigation, into the one fact, that they
had been discovered sleeping under a haystack, which, although a great
crime, is only punishable by imprisonment, and is, in the merciful
eye of the English law, and its comprehensive love of all the king’s
subjects, held to be no satisfactory proof, in the absence of all
other evidence, that the sleeper, or sleepers, have committed burglary
accompanied with violence, and have therefore rendered themselves
liable to the punishment of death—Messrs. Blathers and Duff came back
again as wise as they went.
In short, after some more examination, and a great deal more
conversation, a neighbouring magistrate was readily induced to take the
joint bail of Mrs. Maylie and Mr. Losberne for Oliver’s appearance if
he should ever be called upon; and Blathers and Duff, being rewarded
with a couple of guineas, returned to town with divided opinions on
the subject of their expedition: the latter gentleman, on a mature
consideration of all the circumstances, inclining to the belief that
the burglarious attempt had originated with the Family Pet; and the
former being equally disposed to concede the full merit of it to the
great Mr. Conkey Chickweed.
Meanwhile, Oliver gradually throve and prospered under the united care
of Mrs. Maylie, Rose, and the kind-hearted Mr. Losberne. If fervent
prayers, gushing from hearts overcharged with gratitude, be heard in
heaven—and if they be not, what prayers are?—the blessings which the
orphan child called down upon them sunk into their souls, diffusing
peace and happiness.