We got to the cab-stand, and were soon rattling out from Edinburgh,
and when out on the smooth country road my new assistant very eagerly
threw off the following information:—
“We were playing at a ball out by Penicuick—six or seven of us
altogether—and as it was a jolly affair at a gentleman’s seat, we
were driven out and in in an open trap. My chum, M——, of the Theatre
Royal,—he’s dead now, as you know,—was leader, and had his best
fiddle with him—a splendid _Stradivarius_ Cremona, which cost him
£50. I had a great liking for the instrument, and used often to try
it, and have got the loan of it often when I had a solo to play. We
were through with our business about three in the morning, and I
remember perfectly that it was a clear, cold night, with plenty of
moonlight. We had had some refreshments during the night, but every
one of us knew perfectly well what he was about. M—— was the last to
step into the vehicle that was to bring us in, and he came out with
his fiddle and case in his hand, and said, ‘Mind yer feet or I pit in
my fiddle—better that you sud be crampit for room than that my fiddle
sud come to ony herm.’ We made room—the fiddle case was shoved in on
the floor of the vehicle among others there lying, the door at the
back was shut, and we drove off, singing, laughing, and joking, and
as jovial and happy as kings. There was a toll-bar some distance in,
and I remember some of us getting out to knock up the toll-keeper and
get him to open the gate; and it is possible that the door of the
trap may not have been shut immediately on the journey being resumed,
but, at all events, the door was found open when we came to the next
toll, which was near Edinburgh. When we got to the Theatre Royal—the
most central place for us all—we got out, and M——, who was joking and
laughing till we had all got out our instruments, began groping about
under the seats, and then said, ‘Some o’ ye hae taen my fiddle.’ We
counted over, and searched everywhere, but the Cremona and case were
gone.”
“Lost on the road, I suppose?”
“Yes, or stolen—it was never found out which. The loss was not
thought serious at first, for there was a brass plate on the case
bearing the owner’s name, and it was expected that the fiddle would
be picked up by some of the early carters coming in to the market,
and that a mere advertisement and small reward would ensure its
restoration. But though the advertising was tried, and every inquiry
was made, the fiddle has never been heard of since.”
“And did you not tell Cleffton all this when you saw the fiddle in
his possession?”
“No; I was not sure that it _was_ the fiddle. But I thought of it,
and was very near saying it.”
I made no further comments on the new information. I was not anxious
that he should prove correct in his surmise, but hoped that the case
would be narrowed rather than broadened. With this end in view I
thought proper to prime my companion well as to the questions he was
to ask the gentleman we were on our way to see, leaving to myself
rather the task of watching and analysing.
Mr Turner had a craze for buying fiddles which he never did, and
never could, play upon, and I mentally placed him in the same
position as a bibliomaniac, who would sell his soul to get hold of
some old musty volume not worth reading, simply because it happened
to be the only copy in existence. Such a man, I had no hesitation
in deciding, would steal as readily as a man drunk with opium. My
only difficulty was how to make sure that the fiddle had been stolen
at his instigation, and, if that were made clear, how to get at the
stolen article.
The cab stopped at a little hamlet about three miles from the city,
and I was shown into the drawing-room of Mr Turner’s house, in which
we were speedily joined by a dirty-looking man, very shabbily and
raggedly attired, and evidently straight from digging in the garden,
whom I had difficulty in believing to be the wealthy gentleman I had
come to see.
The face was rather repulsive, on the whole, until my companion spoke
of his rare fiddles, when it became animated and bright with the
ruling passion of his life. Then he turned to a cabinet in the room,
and unlocked it as solemnly as if it had been an iron safe full of
diamonds and gold, and brought out several old fiddles, very much
cracked and mended, and every one, if possible, uglier than another,
and which were placed successively in my hands, with a triumphant
look, which evidently meant, “Admire that, or be for ever condemned
as ignorant and stupid.”
I examined them closely as I had been instructed by Mr Cleffton,
and even brightened a little when I found one which had the printed
ticket inside of which he had spoken, but on referring the matter to
my companion, he only smiled and said—
“Oh, that’s a _Strad._, too, but it’s only a copy, and a very poor
one. The other was a _real_ Cremona. By the by, Mr Turner,” he
abruptly added aloud, in response to a signal from me, and while I
pretended to bend over the fiddle in my hand in wrapt devotion and
admiration, “Do you remember that _Stradivarius_ which Cleffton
refused to sell you?”
“Yes; what of it?” The words were somewhat hastily thrown out, and I
fancied I noticed a kind of nervous flutter in his voice as he spoke.
“It has been stolen.”
“Stolen? Impossible!”
These were his words, and natural enough under the circumstances,
but it is impossible to convey in print the whole effect of the
exclamation. There is more in the manner in which words are spoken
than in the words themselves. The appearance of surprise and
incredulity was—or appeared to me to be—manifestly forced; the eyes
of the man had an absent and uneasy expression, as if, while he was
mechanically pronouncing the words, he was saying to himself—“Is
there any danger? Can any one have hinted to him that I might have
been the thief?”
“It is not only possible, but a fact,” pursued my companion.
“And how was it done?” asked Mr Turner, with more coolness.
The fiddler briefly ran over the incidents of the theft, but when he
came to explain that all the suspicion rested on the sham coachman,
Mr Turner dissented warmly. “They’ll find that that has been a
cock and bull story of the servants to screen themselves,” he said
decidedly. “The whole thing is absurd; and my opinion is that the
fiddle is safely hidden somewhere about the house in which it was
missed.”
“The police don’t seem to think so,” I quietly observed.
“The police!” he scornfully echoed, “a parcel of blockheads—they’ll
never lay hands on it, I’ll swear. When anything is stolen, of
course, they have to make a show of activity, but it’s all humbug.
They never recover the stolen thing.”
“I think you’re mistaken,” said I, with some truth, as the reader
probably is aware.
“They’ll never see it,” he hotly and positively persisted. “I’ll
stake twenty pounds on it.”
“Perhaps you’ll lose,” I laughingly returned. “Now, Mr ——, you bear
witness that Mr Turner has promised to pay £20 to the—say the Royal
Infirmary—if the police get back Mr Cleffton’s fiddle.”
Mr Turner appeared to think this a very good joke, and laughingly
repeated his offer. We had by this time looked over every fiddle in
his possession, as he averred, and as I had no search warrant, and
no grounds for trying to get one, we had to take leave without any
further discovery. But while we were being shown to the door by the
shabby and ragged proprietor, I busied myself with inquiries as to
the number of servants he employed. The house was a big one, and
there was at least half an acre of garden ground attached to it,
and I was in hope that he might keep a man, or hire one to help him
to keep it in order. In this I was disappointed. He kept but two
servants, and never hired a man for his garden, unless when actually
forced to it by bad health. He kept neither horse nor machine, and
always walked in to Edinburgh when business called him thither, so my
sniffing after a horsey manservant went for nothing. I knew, however,
that Mr Turner had been perfectly aware of Cleffton’s engagement to
play at the Earl of ——’s, and was loath to believe that I was on the
wrong scent.
I therefore bade the eccentric man rather an absent-minded good-bye,
and had moodily settled myself in the cab for a good think, when a
sudden thought came to me as we were leaving the hamlet behind. A
little further down the road from the house we had visited was a
wayside cottage with a few jars of sweets and biscuits and a couple
of tobacco pipes stuck prominently in one of the windows, thus
intimating that the place was meant for a shop. If any gossip—any
news or information was to be collected regarding any one in the
place, it was surely to be got in such a house as this, and my hand
was on the check string in a moment.
When I got inside the cottage, a clean, tidy woman came bustling
through from the back room, wiping her hands on her apron as she
came. I was a little at a loss how to begin till I noticed some
bottles of lemonade in a case behind the little counter, and asked to
be served with two.
Chairs were handed us, and we decanted the lemonade in comfort,
talking about the weather and roads as we did so, and then I
indifferently turned the conversation to the strange customers that
the good woman would be in the habit of noticing on the road.
“I suppose you never notice any men coming to see Mr Turner up the
way there—a coarse, red-haired man, for instance, in a big coachman’s
coat, and having a slight cast in his eyes?”
“Mr Turner’s no ane to hae mony folk coming aboot his hoose—he’s owre
greedy for that,” was the answer, “but I think I did see a man like
that a day or twa syne—no gaun to Mr Turner’s, but coming the other
road. He cam’ in here and bocht a half-ounce o’ tobacco and a pipe.”
“Going in towards Edinburgh, you mean?”
“No that either, for he asked the nearest road to the railway
station.”
“He couldn’t be going to Edinburgh, then, for the station is two
miles farther on, and he would have been nearly as quick to have
walked. Have you any idea if he had been at Mr Turner’s?”
“No me; I never clapped een on the man afore.”
“Was he carrying anything?—a fiddle case, for instance?”
“No, no—naething but a deal box, tied roond wi’ a string. It wasna
sae big as a fiddle case. He laid it doon on the counter while he
filled his pipe. I think there was a ticket on it—put on wi’ iron
tacks—and a name on the ticket.”
“What name?”
“I never lookit. Maybe it wasna a name. I never like to be impident,
and didna look very close.”
I questioned her closely on the man’s appearance, and found that
it tallied very closely with that of the sham coachman. Yet I was
anything but hopeful of the result. The description might have suited
fifty innocent men who might pass her little shop in the course of a
forenoon. Still I resolved to follow the clue a little further, and
directed the cabman to turn his horse off at the first bye-road, and
make for a railway station two miles further on. It was quite a small
place, a branch from the main line, and to my satisfaction I found
the booking clerk who had been on duty on the day named by the woman.
This lad recollected the red-haired man perfectly, but when I said,
“Where did he book for?” he looked at me with a puzzled expression,
then thought a moment, and said—
“_Did_ he book for any place?”
It was now my turn to look puzzled.
“I don’t know—I suppose he did when he walked two miles to get to the
station,” I said at last. “Why else would he come here?”
“He brought a parcel,” said the lad, turning to one of his ledgers
and flapping over the leaves. “He booked _it_, I know, but I don’t
think he took out a ticket or waited for the train.”
“What kind of a parcel?”
“A light box. I think he said it was to be kept dry, as there were
artificial flowers and ribbons in it. Ah, here is the entry—it is
not paid you see—he said we’d take greater care of it if it wasn’t
prepaid—‘Sent by James Paterson, to Robert Marshall, Linlithgow. To
lie at station till called for.’”
“Was the box big enough to have held a fiddle?”
“About that size, sir. I don’t think it would have held the
fiddlestick too. The fiddlestick is longer, and would take more room.”
“Was the box called for at the other end, do you know?” I asked,
beginning to be more hopeful.
“I don’t know about that—it was sent away, and that’s all we have to
do with it. These parcels are generally expected, and don’t lie long
unclaimed.”
“You’ve got a telegraph handy—would you just send a message through,
particularly asking if that box has been called for?” and I calmly
sat down and motioned the clerk to his place at the instrument; and
in a short time had the welcome news that the “box was there still,
and had not been asked for.”
I looked at my watch and then consulted a time-table, and found that
if I drove smartly into Edinburgh I could easily get a fast train
to Linlithgow, without waiting for the slow connection with this
out-of-the-way branch line. Afraid of looking foolish if I found
myself mistaken, I dropped my companion at Edinburgh and took train
for Linlithgow alone. The moment I got out, and the bustle of the
train’s arrival and departure was over, I got the booking-clerk to
turn out his parcel press, and easily found the box I was in search
of. It was but roughly put together, and appeared to have been made
out of the undressed spars of an old orange box; but by shaking it
sharply I soon ascertained that it contained something harder than
either flowers or ribbons. After a consultation, I was allowed to use
a chisel to the lid, and easily prised it up sufficiently to pull
out the paper and straw with which it was padded, and found snugly
reposing underneath, a fiddle which in every respect answered the
description of that stolen from Mr Cleffton.
I had little doubt that I had fairly recovered the stolen property,
but I was just as anxious to get hold of the thief. It appeared to
me that the sending of the fiddle by rail to this quiet station was
merely the adoption of a safe hiding-place till the hue and cry of
the robbery were over, and that as soon as the actual instigator felt
safe he would appear to claim the box. I could not afford to wait so
long; so I got permission to fasten up the box and leave it, while I
returned to Edinburgh bearing the fiddle.
My first visit was to the gentleman who had introduced me to Mr
Turner, and he identified the fiddle at a glance as Cleffton’s; but
he did more. Getting out a fiddle bow, he ran his fingers over the
strings in a testing way, and at last said decidedly—
“I could stake my life on it that that’s M——’s £50 Cremona that was
stolen as I told you. Suppose we go along to his house and see?”
“I thought you said he was dead?”
“So he is; but his widow is alive, and may know the fiddle. We will
not prompt her in any way, but just show it her and see if she has
any suspicion of the truth.”
I was so pleased at the identification of the fiddle as that stolen
from Cleffton—which was all I had been employed to find—that I
offered no objection, and we walked through a street or two to a
semi-genteel place, where I was introduced to the widow of the
musician, and found her a shrewd and superior woman—one picked out
of a hundred, I should say, for quick intelligence.
My companion opened the conversation by asking to see one of her late
husband’s instruments to compare it with that we had with us, and in
the course of the testing he managed that our fiddle should find its
way into the widow’s hands. In a moment or two I saw her start and
look at it more closely, then take it nearer the light and examine it
closely at the scroll work close to the screwing pegs, and then she
turned to my companion perfectly amazed, and said—
“Do you know what I’ve discovered?”
“What?”
“This is my fiddle—the one that was stolen from M———the £50 Cremona
lost on the Penicuick road.”
“Impossible!—that one was bought in Newcastle.”
“That’s nothing. I don’t care though it had been bought in
Australia—it’s his fiddle. Look here”—and she pointed to some
scratching on the varnish in among the scroll carving—“what do you
call that?”