“Ah, you think it’s one of the lot taken from that shawl shop on
the Bridge, but you’re wrong. I bought it this morning in another
place, and there’s the receipt,” and she produced one of those little
flimsies which drapers give with their goods, showing that three
shillings had been paid for the shawl that very day. “Would you like
to know who did that job?” she added with suspicious loquacity.
“Yes—had you a hand in it?”
I was only chaffing her. I never expected to get a single grain of
truth out of her, for she was bad to the very heart’s core.
“Me! No; but I heard about it, that’s all.”
“You’re an awful liar, Bess; but go on,” I calmly answered.
“Well, I believe an old porter called Corny Stephens had the big hand
in it,” she boldly continued.
“I don’t believe it,” was my answer.
“Well, please yourself; I only heard it; but if you went to his house
late to-night you might find something, that’s all,” and away she
went, singing unmusically.
I knew very little of the old porter, but, had I put my impressions
of him against my knowledge of Bess, her statements would at once
have kicked the beam. Still I could not deny that the taint of Pat’s
conviction and sentence extended in a certain sense to his relatives,
and my duty was to act on any hint, however meagre, so that I decided
to visit Corny the same night, at an hour when he was likely to be at
home and in bed. I got there at ten o’clock, and was frankly received
by his daughter, who told me he had a late job, and would not be in
for an hour or so. She was preparing his supper, so I decided to
accept her offer and sit down by the fire till he came.
In the ordinary course of events Corny should have appeared, bearing
his undelivered load, about eleven o’clock, and this had probably
been calculated upon, but I waited till midnight, and much to the
concern of Annie his daughter, no Corny appeared. How that happened
was simple enough, though not in the programme.
Corny was slowly trailing through Argyle Square with his load, on his
way home, when he chanced to be met by M^cSweeny. My chum was in a
good humour, for he had been spending a night jovially at a friend’s,
where a widow had made a dead set at him; and M^cSweeny’s joy arose
from the fact that at the last moment he had ingeniously saddled the
widow on to an unsuspicious friend, while my chum took his way home
in happy freedom alone. But though elated and exultant, at peace
with all the world, and trying his best to merrily whistle “The Poor
Married Man,” M^cSweeny’s duty was not so far from his mind as to
allow him to pass Corny and the big bundle at such an hour.
“Stop, you!” he imperatively commanded. “What’s that you’re carrying
on your back? and where are you going with it?”
“It’s some chany and crystal I got to carry over to the New Town, and
I couldn’t find the place, so I’m taking it home,” said Corny.
M^cSweeny suspiciously poked his fingers into the bundle, but could
feel nothing like china or crystal.
“It’s uncommon soft,” he said, with a grunt. “Who gave it to you to
carry?”
“The gintleman.”
“The gintleman, ye blockhead; hasn’t he got a name?” said M^cSweeny
wrathfully.
“He has; it’s written on that paper; but I couldn’t find him when I
took the load back.”
“I daresay not,” said M^cSweeny, dryly. “Well, you’ll need to come up
to the Office wid me, till we see what’s in the bundle.”
“I’m an honest man,” said Corny indignantly. “Do you take me for a
thafe?”
“Well, you don’t look like one of my bairns,” said M^cSweeny, in
imitation of me; “but you’ll have to trot all the same. Mebbe you
don’t know that I’m M^cSweeny, the detective, that all the books has
been writ about?”
“I know the other one,” said Corny simply. “M^cGovan’ll spake a good
word for me.”
“You’ll not need that if your bundle’s all right,” was the lofty
reply, and to the Office they went.
The bundle unfortunately was not all right. It contained a deal of
rubbish of no use to any one, but it also contained a number of
bright-coloured shawls of a certain pattern, which were already down
in our list as having been taken from a shop on the Bridge.
Corny seemed thunderstruck at the grave looks of every one about
him, and wildly went over the details I have put down, but without
impressing his hearers much. The story seemed such a poor one and
so common. There is not a “smasher” taken with the counterfeits in
his possession but volubly declares that he got the parcel from some
one on the street, either to hold or to take to some address. Corny
seemed to realise his position only when he was handed over to the
man to be taken down to the cells. Then he dropped on his knees
before the lieutenant, and, clasping his hands, besought them to
spare him the disgrace.
“I’m not a thafe, sur, and though I’m sixty years of age I never was
in a cell in my life. Send to the praist and ax him what he knows of
poor owld Corny Stephens.”
The tears of the quivering old man, and his desperate energy might
have had some effect, but just then one of the officers present,
touching his cap to the lieutenant, said briefly—
“His son got eighteen months lately for shopbreaking.”
That settled the matter. It was the old doom reversed—the sins of the
children coming back on the father.
Before Corny was locked up he besought them to send word to his
daughter, so that his absence might be accounted for, and it was
from the messenger thus sent that I learned these facts, and that
further waiting was useless. I was considerably staggered by the
news, and had now so much suspicion of Corny that I took the
precaution of searching his house thoroughly before I left. That was
the first impression. Next morning, after I had seen Corny, I began
to think differently, though still puzzled. It was well on in the
forenoon, and after Corny had been remitted to a higher Court, that
I remembered about the warning of his son Pat. Curiously enough, the
thing which brought it to my mind was the presence of Micky Hill
among the audience of the Police Court, coupled with the fact that he
left as soon as Corny had been removed.
“A plant! a plant, I believe!” was my mental exclamation, but I was
too busy for some hours to give the matter further attention. Then I
began my work. I found that Bess had followed me from the Office down
the close in which I had addressed her about the shawl, and it now
recurred to me that she and Micky were old acquaintances, and very
likely to work into each other’s hands. Then she had volunteered the
information about Corny, without my asking for it, and I knew her so
well that I had not for a moment believed it until Corny was taken
with the goods in his possession. I did not know very well how to
act, but there was no time for delay, and I began by pouncing upon
Bess. She was so frightened that she let out a word or two more than
she intended, and in a short time I was at Micky’s house inquiring
for him.
Micky was drunk—speechlessly drunk—to which state he had reduced
himself, I think, in joy over the success of his scheme; but the
capture of the shebeener was a trifle to the one which accompanied it.
In the same room with Micky, and not much more sober, was a
swell-mobsman, who had been lodging there for some time. He had
come down for the purpose of attending the races, and was a smart
man altogether. He did not get to the races that year, for the old
street porter easily identified him out of a dozen men as the man who
employed him to carry the bundle to the New Town. His ivory-headed
umbrella and his cigar case were also identified as promptly—a clear
proof that a rogue should not indulge in easily recognisable finery.
Before the day of the trial we had also discovered a person living
in the stair in Clerk Street who had seen the smart man loitering in
the stair with the bundle and handing it over to Corny, and that,
with a stolen shawl found on the back of Micky’s wife, served to
successfully rivet the fetters on both.
The actual perpetrator of the robbery had really been the
swell-mobsman, Micky having had no hand in it but the resetting of
some of the things; but some of the evidence appeared to implicate
him, and he was found guilty, and sentenced to the same term as his
companion in the dock—seven years’ penal. Corny, of course, had
been released as soon as we got Bess to make a clean breast of it,
and he appeared as a witness at the trial, and got some handsome
commendations from the presiding judge. His case attracted some
attention, and a gentleman willing to help the old porter came to me
for advice in the matter, to make sure that the case was a deserving
one. The result was that Corny’s lot was made more easy; and when his
son was released, they were all helped out of the country by the same
generous hand, Pat proving one of the exceptions to the rule, “Once
a thief, always a thief.”