“It was for my mother I took them.”
“Your mother, ye villin. She’s fond o’ them things, I s’pose?”
derisively returned M^cSweeny.
“Ye—ye—yes, sir.”
“And she’s got them now, eh!”
“Yes—oo! hoo! hoo!”
“And where does she live?”
“Bu—bu—bu—ccleuch Street, sir.”
“Then we’ll go there now,” sternly observed M^cSweeny, highly elated
with the success of his bold measures; “and luck here now, if ye try
to escape I’ll shoot you—shoot you! with a double-barrelled poker.”
The terror-stricken culprit rose and got his cap; and they were
moving out of the lobby when Mr Stafford appeared.
“It’s all right, sur,” whispered M^cSweeny, with a significant wink;
“you’ll have them here for identification in an hour.”
“But how was it done?” cried the gentleman in amazement.
“Done? What trick is there that’s too difficult or dirty for an idle
vagabone of a boy?” responded M^cSweeny with a wise look. “I knew
what a scamp he was the minit I smelt tobacco on him,” and M^cSweeny
got out his own pipe ready for lighting when he should be outside the
door.
The boy, all the way to his home, was tremulously asking what would
be done to him, but his captor smoked away in dignified silence,
more terrible to the prisoner than the most voluble of threats. At
length the great oracle spoke, and gave the boy to understand that
the nature and duration of his punishment would depend very much upon
himself—if he agreed to tell how the robbery had been accomplished,
and all other particulars, his punishment would probably be extremely
light. This gracious concession gave great comfort to the boy, who
instantly promised to keep back nothing. They had then arrived at the
house in Buccleuch Street.
It was a poor hovel of a room, both damp and dark, being on the
ground floor. A woman who opened the door was promptly introduced to
M^cSweeny as the boy’s mother. The boy whispered to her for a moment,
and then led M^cSweeny to the fireplace. A small fire burned in the
grate, and on that fire was a pot of broth. The boy lifted down the
pot on to the hearth, and, handing an old ladle to M^cSweeny, told
him to “take them out.”
“What a hiding-place!” was M^cSweeny’s inward comment. “The young
scoundrel’s as clever as if he had been wan of my bairns all his
life. To think of him making broth of jewels!—begorra, he deserves a
prize for fine cookery.”
As he made these comments M^cSweeny began to rake up the contents of
the pot, but found no trace of the magic jewels.
“What do ye mane, ye young spalpeen?” he cried at last, in terrible
tones, to the boy and his quaking mother. “Didn’t you say they were
here, in the pot?”
“Yes—that’s them,” said the boy, stopping his whimpering to point
to a heap of beef bones, with some shreds of meat still adhering to
them, which M^cSweeny had removed one by one from the pot.
“What?” The thought was too humiliating—too horrifying; and M^cSweeny
could find voice for only the one word.
“That’s them,” repeated the boy, touching the steaming bones, “and
I’d never have taken them, only the servant said they were no use.”
“It’s jewels I’m after!” shouted M^cSweeny in a great rage. “Jewels!
£200 worth of jewels!”
“Jewels? I never saw them,” cried the boy, drying up his tears with
marvellous alacrity. “You said bones, I thought—at least it was the
only thing I ever took, and thought you meant them.”
All this was dreadful to M^cSweeny, and yet it was so simply
and naturally spoken, that he could not for a moment doubt the
truthfulness of either. With a great show of bluster and official
activity he searched the whole of the little hovel, but, of course,
found no trace of jewellery of any kind; indeed, the page-boy
protested loudly that he had never seen his master with jewellery in
his possession, and so could not possibly have stolen it.
The return to Mr Stafford’s house was not quite such a triumphal
procession as M^cSweeny had expected, and when there he had nothing
but utter failure to recount. He went over the whole house, and
questioned the other servants, with a like result. He was not a step
nearer the solution than when he began. There remained then but one
slender hope—that the thief might attempt to dispose of the jewels,
so M^cSweeny finished his work by taking a minute description of
these valuables, and having them inserted in our printed lists sent
round to all dealers and pawnbrokers. A tour round the most of these
produced no better result. No one had offered such articles either
for sale or pledge. At the end of a week, when I was beginning to
“hirple” about again, we were in one of these dealers’ places, when
I suggested that the description of the jewels was rather vague for
the pawnbrokers, and that we might go along to the jeweller who had
sold them to Mr Stafford, and have it made fuller and more complete.
A reference to the scribbles which M^cSweeny called notes revealed
the fact that no such name was recorded. I sent M^cSweeny out to the
South Side to have the omission rectified, not being able to walk as
far myself, and on his return learned that Mr Stafford had had some
difficulty in remembering the name himself. However, on M^cSweeny
naming two or three of the principal ones in Princes Street, he at
length spotted one as the right one. In the evening I chanced to be
in Princes Street, and went into the shop to get the description. To
my surprise, the jeweller and all his assistants declared that no
such purchase had been made in the shop. Back I sent M^cSweeny to Mr
Stafford, when that gentleman at once smiled out knowingly, and said—
“I think I understand that statement of the jeweller. It is all a
plot between him and my servants—he is to swear that he never sold
them, and they are to declare that they never took them. The jeweller
will thus get them back, and they will divide the spoil.”
M^cSweeny scratched his red pow, looked up at the ceiling, and then
down at the carpet, and finally confessed that he did not exactly
catch the drift of the gentleman’s reasoning.
“I will explain—I will confide in you as a friend,” said Mr Stafford,
waxing warm. “I am a lonely man, without wife or children to look
after my interests and protect me from designing persons. The
consequence is that I am continually being persecuted, robbed, and
cheated. One of my acquaintances, whom I never injured by thought or
deed, carried this torture to such an extent that I was forced to
leave the city.”
“Could you not have got the protection of the police?” suggested
M^cSweeny.
“Useless. How could I prove the persecution? I fled to London; the
wretch followed me there; I took the first train from the place; it
landed me at one of their pleasure gardens—the grounds of the Crystal
Palace, I think. I enjoyed myself there; when all at once my fiend—my
tormentor—as I must call him—appeared before me. I ran from the spot;
a balloon was just starting; I leaped in, cut the rope, and shot up
into the air, laughing in triumph at the chagrin of my persecutor.”
“That was a neat escape,” observed M^cSweeny; “but how did ye get
down again?”
“The most awful part of the adventure was to come,” pursued Mr
Stafford. “When I had got up a certain distance I got freezing cold,
and thought to warm myself with a smoke. In striking a light some of
the gas escaping from the balloon must have touched and exploded, for
the next moment the whole thing was in shreds and flames, and I was
flying towards earth with the speed of a cannon ball.”
“And ye was kilt? Smashed to atoms?” exclaimed M^cSweeny in earnest
horror, with his hands raised, and his eyes almost starting from
their sockets.
“No; fortunately I fell into the water, and, being an excellent
swimmer, I managed to save myself. I returned to Edinburgh, but my
tormentor was soon upon my track again, and even yet he continues his
persecutions upon every occasion when there is no chance of being
seen. Possibly he is at the bottom of this mysterious robbery.”
M^cSweeny asked the name of this persecutor, and after a good deal of
demur on the part of Mr Stafford, the name was given, when it proved
to be that of an eminent professor, as renowned for his learning
as for his goodness. M^cSweeny was a good deal staggered, but took
leave, saying he would make inquiry into the matter, and see that Mr
Stafford was annoyed no longer.