A RATHER SHADY CHARACTER.
The lower middle classes are a never-failing stalking-horse; we can all
afford to laugh at them as ridiculous, vulgar, improvident and wicked.
Even the mock hero, the good young man who tries to raise himself, has
something comic in him. But we haven't seen anything of the lower orders
in this history as yet, and it is only incidentally that we quit King's
Warren for the grimy neighbourhood of St. Luke's. Just behind the great
hospital for lunatics is Matilda Street. They are all private houses in
Matilda Street, and from the number of brass plates it seems at first a
professional sort of neighbourhood. Most of the houses are evidently
occupied by at least three families, for the right-hand doorpost nearly
always contains three bells, one for each floor. But the brass plates
are not those of lawyers and doctors; many of them indicate the places
of business of working jewellers and watchmakers, and the latter
predominate; dial painters, engine turners, escapement makers, swivel
manufacturers and so on, _ad infinitum_. Then there are pianoforte
tuners, and dealers of many sorts. Those of the plates which have only a
surname upon them, indicate that the place is a lodging house. Though we
are in the black heart of London, in one of the darkest, poorest and
most melancholy quarters, there is a great deal of window gardening
going on; plants of every kind and sort may be seen on the window
ledges, from ground floor to attic; the humble Creeping Jenny is a great
favourite, and it seems to thrive wonderfully in the damp thick
atmosphere. Some of the ground floor windows are discreetly screened by
wonderful specimens of lank spindly geraniums--hapless plants which
have never been known to bloom, but whose sickly-looking leaves of
abnormal pallor struggle towards the light, what little there is of it.
Matilda Street, being in the heart of St. Luke's, naturally contains
many fanciers. Numerous bow-windowed, brass-bound cages, each with its
little bit of turf, are hung outside the windows in all directions, and
the imprisoned skylarks they contain warble away merrily, giving quite a
rural air to Matilda Street, E.C. Seedy-looking men and boys, carrying
tiny square cages carefully tied up in handkerchiefs, are continually
popping in and out; these are the chaffinch fanciers, and each cage
contains a sightless songster, who at his master's command is prepared
to pour forth his simple rural melody at any hour of the day or night in
a long unbroken series of cheeps and chirrups. In Matilda Street lives a
trainer of piping bullfinches, a man who has passed his whole life
turning a melodeon and teaching his pupils the tune of "Rule,
Britannia." Dog-breeding and dog-dealing are favourite occupations in
Matilda Street; mysterious men emerge at dusk, leading dogs and carrying
them in their arms, their pockets, or their bosoms, to exhibit them at
numerous local shows held in neighbouring pot-houses. The little back
yards--they call them gardens in Matilda Street--are filled with sheds
and wondrous home-made constructions, in which fancy poultry and rabbits
are kept. Even the roofs of the houses bristle with pigeon-lofts and
artful-looking structures for the capture of wandering birds. Should a
stray pigeon alight on one of these contrivances, attracted by the hemp
seed which is profusely scattered thereon, or by the presence of a decoy
securely fastened by the leg, a sudden click may be heard, and the bird
finds himself in an instant imprisoned in an artful arrangement of wire
walls, which has closed on him with the rapidity of a conjuring trick.
Matilda Street is a decidedly poor neighbourhood; but, strange to say,
it is a favourite "pitch" for the bogus starving British workman and his
interesting family, when he is upon what he terms the "kinchin lay." The
man generally goes barefoot, his face is half covered by a stubbly crop
of bristles, which pathetically indicate that he cannot even afford the
cheap luxury of the British workman--a ha'penny shave. He doesn't let
his beard grow--that would look far too comfortable; artful gashes in
his trousers exhibit his knees, which appeal in a startling manner to
the feelings of the benevolent; either elbow is clasped to show how he
suffers from the inclemency of the weather; by his side walks his
pattern wife, who always wears a large white apron; she invariably
carries an infant of tender years; at either side of the pair march the
rest of the family. They keep to the centre of the road; the woman
watches the windows of one side of the street, the man those of the
other; and from morning till night they howl a single verse of some hymn
with monotonous obstinacy, varying it with a plaintive lament that
"They've got no work to do." They are quite right in choosing places
like Matilda Street, for there is little or no traffic to interrupt the
effect of the procession; besides, in such a place as this no policeman
would interrupt them; and, strange to say, it is in shy and poor
neighbourhoods that the "kinchin lay" reaps its richest harvest.
Matilda Street is essentially a shy neighbourhood--perhaps that is why
the tenant of number 13 has chosen it as his residence. On the
door-plate of number 13 is the simple inscription, "Parsons, agent."
It's rather a puzzle to make out what Mr. Parsons is agent for; no
clients ever come to see him, and he seems to pass the greater part of
his day in smoking a pipe and reading a newspaper. But Mr. Parsons has
his profession--he was born in it, so to speak, and his father was a
professor before him; but his father failed, and his father's
unfortunate failure has been a lesson to him. The real fact is that Mr.
Parson's father was a burglar of the fine old school. His was a life of
vicissitude; and though an ambitious and fairly successful man, the law,
against which he had waged war for many years, got the better of him at
last; and after having passed nearly forty years of his life in Her
Majesty's jails, death at length prevented his obtaining the
ticket-of-leave he had almost earned, and his consequent return to
business.
It is all very well for the majority of us to wonder why Mr. Parsons
didn't attempt to earn an honest livelihood, but we must remember that
he had been brought up to a profession of which most people disapprove
from his earliest infancy. As quite a little fellow he had accompanied
his father on many a successful nocturnal expedition; it had been his
duty to keep watch for the guardians of public order, and to signal
their approach. He had been taught to rapidly dispose of precious
plunder in a neat little crucible, plunged in a fierce fire of coke; as
he got bigger, he it was who sat ready at the corner of the street in a
tax-cart, prepared to rapidly drive off with the "swag" when of a bulky
nature.
But though Mr. Parsons, Senior, had been a clever professor of the
predatory art, though his triumphs had been numerous and his operations
exceedingly brilliant and extensive, he could not be called a success.
To pass forty years of one's life in jail, to be perpetually blackmailed
by one's accomplices, to obtain only a small proportion of one's
legitimate earnings from those rascals the "fences" or dealers in stolen
property, and at last after all to die in prison, is not a brilliant
prospect. Now Mr. Parsons the son was a philosopher. On his father's
death he found himself the possessor of a complete and almost perfect
set of what may be termed his father's trade utensils. There was also a
little secret hoard of valuable gems. Mr. Parsons put his burglarious
implements in a place of safety; he lived abroad upon the proceeds of
his little fortune for some years; and when he came back to England his
own mother, if she had been alive, would not have known him. Then he
settled down at number 13, Matilda Street, and commenced the practice of
his profession upon principles of his own: not as a mere mercenary
occupation, but as a fine art. Mr. Parsons kept well away from his
father's old haunts and from the perfidious acquaintances who had
degraded him and been the cause of his ultimate ruin. Mr. Parsons had no
low tastes; he disliked drink and bad company; he had but one ambition,
and that was to obtain a comfortable competence from the skilful
exercise of his profession. He wisely concluded that it is not
sufficient to commit a successful burglary, if you are afterwards found
out. He was a careful student of the police reports and the trials at
the Central Criminal Court, and the more he studied those interesting
records, the more he became convinced of the wickedness of human nature,
the inefficiency of the police, and the tendency of accomplices to
"split." Mr. Parsons, then, being a thoroughly practical man was also a
theorist; he made several determinations, which he strictly kept to. In
the first place, he came to the conclusion that a suspect is always
watched, and that accomplices, however useful, are extremely dangerous.
So he determined to carry on his profession upon strictly business
principles. Wise man that he was, he appreciated the fable of the hare
and the tortoise. It was better, he thought, to earn a safe and
comfortable living; and he determined, should he ever be so fortunate
as to make a great _coup_, to immediately retire from business. He
trusted to his own clear head, his own clever fingers, and himself. So
he habitually worked alone. He passed his afternoons in "looking round."
His operations were very carefully planned, and generally successfully
carried out.
It will be seen from all this that Mr. Parsons was no common criminal,
but he was a dangerous man for all that; for on his nocturnal
expeditions he was in the habit of carrying an ugly sheath knife, not as
a weapon of offence, be it remembered, but purely as a last resource for
the protection of his own personal liberty.
It was a fine summer afternoon, and Mr. Parsons was lounging through one
of the better streets of St. John's Wood; that neighbourhood,
sarcastically designated "the shady grove of the Evangelist," had
peculiar attractions for Mr. Parsons; it is wealthy, the large houses
stand mostly in their own grounds, and the big well-kept gardens offer
favourable hiding-places to the midnight thief. Mr. Parsons lounged
along, peacefully smoking a briar-root pipe; the houses where the paint
was shabby or the gardens were ill-kept did not attract his attention;
these signs were quite sufficient for him, and in his mind he put their
owners down as "electro." Other houses which were guarded by dogs also
failed to interest him, but Mr. Parsons took more than a passing glance
at Azalea Lodge.
Azalea Lodge stood back some twenty feet from the road way; the entire
outside of the house was painted or grained; there was a great deal of
gilding on the railings, a large gas lamp of the latest construction was
fixed over each of the polished oak gates that formed the entrances to
the little carriage-drive; the carriage-drive itself was asphalted, and
clean as a new pin; the shrubs in the small front garden were
expensive ones, and well pruned and trimmed; beyond the porch
projected a rather elaborate glass structure set in ornamental iron
work, and the centre of the well-whitened stone steps was covered with
striped horsehair matting. Flowering shrubs in pots were ranged up these
steps, while the sides of the porch proper were crammed with them.
Elaborate floral decorations were on every window-ledge; not mere plants
in pots, but great blocks of colour artfully arranged: scarlet geraniums
and calceolarias with glossy-leaved fuchsias of many hues blazed in
frames of blue lobelia, while dwarf ivies, nasturtiums and the pretty
variegated periwinkle hung down in thick festoons, hiding the window
sills. The beds in the front garden were made to show up in startling
contrast to the closely-shaven turf by means of cocoanut fibre, into
which potted flowering plants were plunged in reckless profusion. In one
window of the drawing-room was a quasi-oriental _jardinière_ in which
stood a large orchid covered with delicate blooms of mauve and yellow;
in the next appeared the top of a parrot's cage of plated metal, on
which sat a tame white cockatoo, who seemed to enjoy the splendour by
which he was surrounded. The very linings of the curtains were of rich
corded silk, and a half open window showed in the dim vista a distant
vision of the heavy frames of numerous oil paintings. From top to bottom
the bedroom windows were discreetly screened by lace curtains tied up
with coloured ribbon.
All these pretty things have taken somewhat long to describe, but the
eagle eye of Mr. Parsons took them all in at a glance. A fishmonger's
cart stopped at the side door, and Mr. Parsons noticed with satisfaction
that a fine piece of salmon and a lobster were taken into the house by
the purveyor's assistant. Mr. Parsons continued his walk as far as the
next house, which proved to be an empty one and in the hands of the
painters; their ladders and paint pots stood about in every direction,
but the workmen themselves had evidently gone to dinner. Mr. Parsons
shook out the contents of his pipe, pocketed it, and walking up to the
hall door, which stood invitingly open, confidently entered the empty
house; he walked into the drawing-room and on to the open Italian
balcony beyond it, which commanded a view of the grounds of Azalea
Lodge, and then Mr. Parsons stood wrapped in meditation. Something that
he saw at a heavily-barred window on the ground floor of Azalea Lodge
evidently gave him food for reflection. On a table covered with green
baize lay a quantity of elaborate specimens of the silversmith's art,
racing cups and trophies, vases and statuettes of burnished silver were
there in profusion, and a heap of leathers and brushes showed that they
were undergoing the process of cleaning. The eyes of Mr. Parsons
sparkled with satisfaction; he looked round to see if he was observed.
There wasn't a soul in sight. And then Mr. Parsons did a very curious
thing; he gave a low growl, then a little yelp, and then an aggressive
bark like an irritated dog. Then he began to bark again in a louder and
still more defiant manner. But there was no answer to the strange
challenge. Mr. Parsons gave a satisfied smile, walked quietly out of the
empty house, re-lighted his pipe and resumed his walk.
It's hardly likely that Mr. Parsons thought of renting the empty house
next door to Azalea Lodge, but he walked past at least four times that
afternoon. He went home to Matilda Street on the top of an omnibus, and
then, like a respectable man as he was, he sat down to a good
substantial tea.
Before commencing a campaign a great general sits down to think it out.
This is exactly what Mr. Parsons did. The tenant of number 13, Matilda
Street had declared war against Azalea Lodge. From what he had seen, Mr.
Parsons had no doubt whatever in his own mind that, should his campaign
prove successful, he would secure the competence he had yearned for, for
so many years and be able to retire from business altogether.
That night Mr. Parsons visited a public house, paid for a glass of ale,
and consulted the directory. He found that Azalea Lodge was occupied by
Lord Hetton; the name seemed familiar to him; he turned to the landlord,
who was a well-known sporting character, and sought for information.
"Lord Hetton's a political chap, ain't he, Mr. Mason?" said he,
addressing the great man with much humility.
"Not as ever I heard of; why his lordship's a racing man. Every one
knows Lord Hetton--him as owned Dark Despair, and lost the Derby once by
a short head."
"Oh, that's him, is it?" replied Mr. Parsons, "and what's his address
when he's at home?"
"How should I know his address?" said the landlord. "If you wants to
call on him, you might try the Jockey Club, or I shouldn't be surprised
if you was to find him at Tattersall's of a Sunday afternoon; that sort
mostly shows up there. What might you want with him?"
"Oh, it's no great matter," replied Mr. Parsons; "it's only a little bit
of business about a dog," and then he changed the conversation.
"Racing plate," he thought, "there is never any mistake about that;
that's the real genuine article, thank goodness." And then Mr. Parsons,
who was of a sentimental turn of mind and a humble patron of the drama,
sauntered off to the Britannia Theatre, at Hoxton, and derived no small
degree of mental comfort in four hours of the sorrows of "Ada, the
Betrayed."
It has been said that Lord Hetton was an economical man; every farthing
that he could scrape together invariably went to settle his accounts
with his trainer. He had begun life as a pigeon, to all appearances he
would end it as a hawk. Dark rumours of shady things which had been done
in his name rendered men shy of backing his horses. Scandal had said
that the boy who rode Dark Despair, when that animal was beaten on the
post, had pulled the great raking chestnut by his lordship's orders. But
though Lord Hetton had done many shabby things in his time, it was by no
fault of his that Dark Despair failed to win the blue ribbon of the
turf. It is quite possible that the boy who rode the animal had made a
mess of the race at the critical moment, or he may even have been "got
at," but that was not Lord Hetton's opinion or that of his astute
trainer; and the same stunted youth still always rode in his lordship's
colours in any big event in which Lord Hetton's animals might be
engaged. Owner and trainer had neither of them been to blame in the
matter; his lordship had honestly backed Dark Despair, and had had
considerable difficulty in meeting his engagements at the time. There
had even been an execution in Azalea Lodge. Azalea Lodge was the one
luxury that his lordship permitted himself; he looked upon it as his
home, and the titular mistress of Azalea Lodge had been the original
cause of all his differences with his father. Hetton was quite a boy
when he first fell into the toils of the syren; he was not quite fool
enough to marry her, his fear of the old lord prevented that; for her
sake Lord Hetton declined to marry; for her sake he was shut out from
society; and he was a man to be pitied after all, for he hadn't a friend
in the world, and it was with the greatest difficulty that he succeeded
in satisfying her numerous extravagant demands for money. The lady was
_passée_, vulgar, and her temper was almost diabolical; but she still
retained her hold upon Lord Hetton's affections. She had succeeded in
riveting the fetters which bound Lord Hetton to her in a rather original
manner--by an act of generosity for which none of her acquaintances
would have given her credit, least of all his lordship. When he made his
great _fiasco_ with Dark Despair, and the execution was already in
Azalea Lodge, by an impulse of generosity the lady had driven over to
Messrs. Israels, and had pledged with them her entire collection of
valuable jewelry. She had handed the cheque to Lord Hetton, and he did
settle at Tattersall's on the fatal Monday following the race. Lord
Hetton was agreeably astonished; he found, much to his surprise, that he
had one real friend in the world. Is it then to be wondered at that from
that day Lord Hetton clung to his only friend, and that he looked upon
Azalea Lodge as his home? Things went better with Lord Hetton, and he
settled Azalea Lodge and its valuable contents upon the object of his
gratitude.
When anything remained to him after paying his trainer whenever he made
a _coup_, or landed a good stake, he invariably made a thank-offering at
the shrine in St. John's Wood. It was all very wrong, and very wicked,
no doubt, but after all it was perhaps very natural.
It was nine o'clock one Sunday night, and Mr. Parsons was very busy
indeed--he was preparing for the war-path. On his table were arranged a
number of polished steel implements, which looked like surgical
instruments; they were burglar's tools. Half-a-dozen handy bits of
candle and a box of silent matches were quickly placed in his pocket; a
piece of strong Manilla cord some four yards long, with a sharp
three-pronged hook at the end of it, was wrapped around his waist,
beneath his virtuous waistcoat; his plain tweed coat carried numerous
canvas bags lined with washleather in its back. It was a wonderful coat
with innumerable pockets in the inside; in each of these mysterious
receptacles he placed one or other of the implements of his trade; a
short crow-bar in three pieces, which could be screwed together, formed
the last of these, while a big bunch of skeleton keys, a phial full of
oil and another of acid were slipped into his waistcoat pockets. He
popped a pair of loose felt slippers into his hat, calmly lighted his
pipe and proceeded to Old Street. He then called a hansom cab and told
the driver to take him to the Swiss Cottage.