“I suspect some of the coachmen will have your fiddle down in the
kitchen,” and to the kitchen they went to find there more than one
coachman, but no fiddle, or trace of one. Every one there seated
swore that they had not as much as noticed the fiddle, and then
they voluntarily underwent a process of searching. Greatcoats were
produced and inspected, pockets turned out, and every means tried
without success. Then some suggested that they should see if all in
waiting were there; they counted off at once, and found that, by
comparing the number with that of the plates set for supper in the
servants’ hall, they were exactly one short. Who was the missing one!
No one could tell, till one jolly-faced coachman said—
“Where’s the surly chap that sat next to me, and never took off his
driving coat all the time?”
“Ay, where was he?” every one echoed, and soon to this was added the
question, for the first time asked, “Who was he?”
There was no answer to either question. Nobody had noticed the man
particularly, though to the jolly-faced coachman he had gruffly said
that his name was “Smith, or Jones, or something,” and that he had
been “driving some of the folks up stairs.”
Every one in this case, down to the servants of the house themselves,
had imagined that every body else knew all about the strange man, and
so had paid little attention to him and his odd manner.
Smith had done little but smoke and stare, though he had shown great
alacrity in going up to see the ball-room; some, indeed, insisted
that it had been he who proposed the treat. More, he had gone up
with his heavy driving coat on, and some of the servants had a faint
recollection of him loitering near the music stands while the rest of
the servants walked round the room looking at the decorations.
“That’s the man that has stolen my violin,” cried Mr Cleffton at
this stage of the inquiry. “He would have a big pocket inside his
coat,—probably made for the occasion,—and has slipped my Cremona into
it when no one was looking or thinking of him. Who does he serve
with?”
“Who, indeed?” All echoed the question; but when guest after guest
had been enumerated or appealed to by the butler, there came the
still more surprising discovery that Smith served no one—came with no
one—and was known to no one—had gained admittance, indeed, entirely
by the dress he wore, his own cool audacity, and the general flurry
in which every one was plunged by the party being held up stairs.
“Get out your horses, and let the villain be pursued,” cried Mr
Cleffton, more and more distracted, “the whole robbery has been
systematically planned and carried out; but the wretch can’t be far
off, and we may overtake him yet. I will give ten pounds to any of
you who help to put it into my hands again.”
The incentive was little needed, for a good deal of Cleffton’s
excitement had communicated itself to those about him. In a few
minutes several vehicles were horsed and ready in the stable yard
behind, and on one of these Mr Cleffton took his place beside the
driver and with a grand lashing of whips and excited whooping they
were off down the avenue, at the foot of which they separated to take
the different roads running from the spot. Mr Cleffton, from some
idea of his own, had chosen that leading to Edinburgh; but, though
the night was clear, and the moon and stars out in the sky, not a
trace of the fugitive did they come upon between the mansion and
the city. Several tramps they did overtake and rouse up and search
without ceremony, but as none of these answered the description of
the surly Mr Smith, they were allowed to resume their tramping or
snoring, while the agonised fiddler entered the city. Of course his
first visit was to the Central Police Office, where he made known his
loss to the lieutenant on night duty, and then excitedly demanded
to see a detective. It was explained to him that detectives require
sleep as well as ordinary mortals, and are not usually kept at the
office during the night waiting for such exceptional cases, but this
produced little impression upon the musician.
“Everything depends on this matter being seen to with promptitude,”
he said. “Give me the man’s address, and I’ll go to him myself.”
They ought to have given him M^cSweeny’s address, considering the
hour and the work I had done the day before, but they didn’t; they
gave him mine; and out to Charles Street he came at half-past four
in the morning, and roused me out of bed, sleepy, stupid, and dazed
with having got only three hours rest instead of eight, and, without
waiting to see if I understood him, at once began to bemoan his loss.
“My lovely Cremona! my beautiful _Strad!_ spirited away—stolen from
under my very eyes! Good heavens, what am I to do? What is to become
of me if you don’t trace out the thief?”
“Strad! Strad! Who is she?” I vacantly asked, thinking from the man’s
tears that he must mean some young and beautiful maiden, violently
abducted from her home and friends.
“The best fiddle in the world—at least, the best that I ever tried,
and I’ve tried a few,” he moaned, wringing his hands. “I’d rather
have had a leg broken, or lost my head, than that Cremona.”
I stared at him, only half understanding the speech, and inclined to
think that he had lost his head.
“You don’t mean to say that it’s a—a fiddle you’ve come to make all
this fuss about?” I at last found voice to say.
“A beauty—and the tone of it, three fiddles in one, and as sweet and
soft as a flute,” he cried, not noticing my rising anger.
“Good heavens, man!” I shouted at last, “you don’t mean to tell me
that you’ve come here and roused me out of bed at four in the morning
about a miserable fiddle that you’ve lost? I thought it was something
serious.”
“And do you not call that serious?” he returned, after favouring me
with a pitying look which was meant to kill me, but did not. “It is
serious for me. I’ll never sleep till I get it.”
“I’m sorry for you, but you might at least have let me sleep—till
morning.”
“Worth £400—refused £200 for it the other day,” he continued, quite
undisturbed.
“£400!” I echoed. “Is it possible you gave that sum for a fiddle?”
“No, not quite so much, but that’s its value,” he slowly admitted.
“How much did it cost you?”
“£40,” he rather reluctantly answered.
“There’s a slight difference between 40 and 400,” I ventured to
remark.
“A mere nothing,” he said, with the greatest gravity stumbling on a
joke; “that’s common in fiddle buying. You don’t always give for an
instrument exactly what it’s worth.”
“Then its value is just the price which you choose to put on it?”
“That’s about it;” and then he hastily changed the subject by
narrating all the circumstances of the strange robbery much as I have
put them down, only taking much longer to go through.
When he had finished I quietly returned to the point at which he had
broken off, pretty sure that he had a reason for avoiding it.
“If the fiddle is worth £400, and you got it at a tenth of that
price, you must have got a great bargain?” I observed.
“I am coming to that,” he answered, with a groan. “A great bargain?
Yes, I thought so too at the time, but I’ve never had peace since I
bought it. It has a history, and as that, I am sure, has something to
do with the robbery, you may as well hear it now.”
“Then there is more to listen to?” I ruefully returned, with
something like an echo of his groan, and a wistful thought of the
cosy blankets I had left. “Will it take long to tell?”
“Not very long—it must not, for I must have you and some of your
comrades out to watch the departure of the Newcastle trains.”