“Who’s Morley?”
“That man who was here just now.”
“His name isn’t Morley—it’s Peter Mackintosh,” said Tim, with an air
of superior knowledge.
“Oh, is it? I beg your pardon,” I returned, with a fine-drawn sneer,
which Tim perfectly appreciated. “Well, what was he in such a state
about?”
Tim fenced cunningly, but finding me in dead earnest, was forced at
last to say—“He’s in a state about something which he sold to my
father, and wants now to buy back again. He says the agreement was
that it was to be kept for a month, to give him a chance to buy it
back. Did you ever hear the like? We’re not allowed to do that,” the
monkey solemnly added, “it would be as bad as keeping a ‘wee pawn.’”
“Oh, come now, Tim, don’t try that with me; play ‘the daft laddie’
with somebody else,” I laughingly returned. “What was the article he
sold or left with you?”
“A Bible—a Family Bible——”
“Good gracious!”
“Ay, you may say that. Bibles is a drug in the market; and to expect
us to keep one when we had a chance to sell it! Family Bibles is out
of fashion now—can’t get the price of the binding for them—and the
last we had lay for a year in the windy.”
“And so you sold this one?” I said quietly, having got time to think
during Tim’s speech. “Who was the buyer?”
“Blest if I can tell—seemed a sort of ‘revival,’” by which Tim meant
a “revivalist,” a name given to a sect of religious enthusiasts then
newly started in Edinburgh. “Was it you who sold the Bible to him?”
“Yes, that’s why that man kicked up the row. He says my father knew
it wasn’t to be sold. I wasn’t to know that, and I was glad to get
rid of it. The ‘revival’ was near not taking it because the Family
Register was cut out—tried to beat me down two shillings for that.
Religious folks are always the biggest screws.”
“You must be terribly religious then,” I calmly remarked to Tim, for
I knew that that youthful precocity could drive a bargain which would
have drawn a blush to the cheeks of the biggest rogue of a broker who
ever bartered and sold.
Tim grinned delightedly at the tribute to his genius.
“Would you know the ‘revival’ again?” I asked, beginning to think I
was fairly done at last.
“Oh, fine. I’ve seen him before, giving away tracts on the streets.
He left me one, after buying the Bible and trying to beat me down two
shillings.”
“Have you got it now?”
“No; I used it to light the gas—it saved a match, you know.”
I thought if any one was likely to save money and die rich that one
was Tim, but I was to change my opinion soon by discovering that the
smart young broker was as great a spendthrift as he was a screw.
After some further conversation I warned him to say nothing to Morley
of my visit, should that worthy return, as I had no doubt he would,
to see Tim’s father. I am doubtful if Tim kept his promise. Certainly
if any one offered him a shilling to break it, the promise would
instantly kick the beam.
After the visit to Tim the suspected yard-keeper seemed a good deal
depressed. He went back once, and had a hot quarrel with Tim’s
father, threatening the police again, but failing to fulfil that
threat. He said the Bible must be got, and the broker promised to do
his best—which meant nothing.
In the meantime I had been much occupied in thought about Tim
himself. His answers to me had appeared frank and truthful enough,
but a dire suspicion that it was possible for the monkey to cheat
and deceive even me crept into my mind. I discovered that Tim was
squandering money right and left, quite unknown to his father. He
sometimes went to Portobello, or Leith, or Musselburgh with his
companions, and spent a day there, Tim always paying the entire
expense, like a lord of the land.
Could it be possible that Tim was himself the purchaser of that
Family Bible, and the “revival” merely a creation of his vivid
imagination?
So strong a hold did this idea take of my mind that I gave up
watching Morley, and turned my undivided attention to Tim. I could
not find that he had changed a £50 bank-note, but I did discover that
he had been seen with two twenties. I, therefore, only waited till
he should be out with his friends for a day’s squandering, and then
I pounced on him in the midst of his jolity. Tim appeared mightily
crestfallen, but grandly demanded to know what was the charge against
him. I replied by asking where he got all the money he had been
spending. His reply staggered me a little.
“What! is it my father who has set you on to this?”
Now, why should Tim blurt out that? To me it implied that Tim had
taken the money from his father. I threw out a hint about a Family
Bible being a good bank to draw from. Tim looked puzzled, and really
did not seem to grasp the idea. I did not enlighten him with an
explanation, but I myself was enlightened next day by his father, who
had discovered that his smart son had broken in on a hoard of his
own, and lessened it by nearly £60. He nevertheless did not wish to
charge Tim with the robbery, but merely requested that that clever
monkey might be handed over to him for punishment.
I could not oblige him, though he promised that the chastisement
should bring Tim as near the grave as he would ever be without
entering it. I had now to put the matter before Tim in a plain,
straightforward question—“Had he or had he not lied about the sale of
that Family Bible?”
He loudly protested his truthfulness, and offered to help me to find
the buyer.
“How can you do that when you say he left neither name nor address?”
I impatiently returned.
“Oh, we could easily find him at some of the revival meetings,” was
Tim’s quickwitted reply. “He’ll be at the door giving out tracts when
the meeting breaks up. I know his face fine.”
I stared at Tim, and then spoke out the thought that flashed across
my mind. “Tim, if you don’t turn out a thief, you’ll maybe be a
detective some day.”
“A detective!” he echoed, with a merry twinkle in his eyes. “Oh, no,
Mr M^cGovan, I haven’t enough wickedness in me for that.”
Tim and I went to a revival meeting that night together. By going
together I mean to imply that we were closely attached to each
other—by a pair of handcuffs. Tim could not have gone forward to
the penitent form though he had been ever so strongly inclined.
We did not need to wait till the close, nor look out for a tract
distributor, for one of those who rose to address the meeting was
instantly identified by Tim as the buyer of the Family Bible. The lad
was quite young, and had on his face as he spoke a look of etherial
happiness and rapt delight which could never have been assumed. I
think I see that fair face before me now. It looked noble, exalted,
thrilling—just such a face as we could imagine smiling at the stake,
and breathing forth forgiveness and peace amidst the roaring of the
flames.
When the address was over, the young man had occasion to move
through the hall and past the place where we sat. I touched him on
the arm, and drew him out to the door. He promptly admitted that he
had bought a Family Bible, second-hand, from the boy before him. He
had it at home, but though he had used it twice every day in his
home, he declared most earnestly that he had found nothing in it.
At my suggestion we walked with him to his home. He was evidently
unmarried, for the home was presided over by his mother, a quiet,
respectable-looking widow.
The Family Bible I sought occupied a place of honour in the little
home, and the owner had only to point to it and tell me to take it
down with my own hands. I opened the book, and he quietly informed
me that the only alteration I should find would be at the beginning,
where he had inserted a new leaf as a Family Register.
I turned to the leaf and read there his own name, and quite a recent
date, in the column of “Births,” with the words below—“Saved from
wrath by the mercy of Jesus Christ.” Without a remark I sat down and
turned over every single leaf in that book, but found nothing. When I
had finished, and was in despair, I happened to notice that the paper
pasted against the inside of the back board did not correspond in
colour and texture with that on the front board. A little examination
revealed the cause. The lining of the back board was simply one of
the fly-leaves pasted down at the edges. I passed my fingers over
the pasted leaf. There was a feeling of something below. I took
out my pen-knife and ran the point into the sheet and round the
pasted edge—the whole family, and Tim in particular, looking on
with goggling eyes. When I turned back the leaf, I found it glazed
and yellow on the under side, like that inside the front board, but
I found also other three slips of paper neatly ranged above one
another, flat against the board of the Bible—three £50 bank-notes.
The owner of the Bible looked simply and truly surprised. Tim looked
terribly disappointed and chagrined.
“If I had known they were there, I’d never have sold it so cheap,” he
blurted out.
“Maybe not at all?” I suggested; and Tim did not deny the soft
impeachment.
The notes were readily identified by the builder by the number
“2020” which one of them bore; but when we came to look for Morley,
he had vanished. From another country he afterwards sent a detailed
confession of the circumstances which led to the crime. The payer of
the money was dressed as a working man, and asked at the gate for Mr
Lockyer. Morley at once conceived a suspicion that the man had come
after the post of yard-keeper, and applied his eyes and ears to the
inner door in the tool-house to ascertain the truth. He saw the notes
placed in the desk, and the temptation followed, for he had found a
key shortly before in the tool-house which fitted the lock perfectly.
After taking the notes he dropped the key into a street “siver,” or
we might have stumbled on it during our search. Tim was set free, but
he has not yet developed into a detective.