much. The thieves were of the regular mould. I had no personal traces
to trust to, and the articles taken away were of so meltable or
transferable a nature that it might not be easy to trace them. My best
chance lay in the articles of dress, for, as I have already hinted,
thieves deriving their right from nature have all a corresponding
ambition to be gentlemen. There's something curious here. Those who work
their way up by honest industry seldom think of strutting about in fine
clothes. Social feelings have taken the savage out of 'em. It is the
natural-born gentleman who despises work that adorns our promenades and
ball-rooms. 'Tis because they have a diploma from nature; and so the
thieves who work by natural instinct come slap up to them and claim an
equality. Certain it is, anyhow, I never knew a regular thief who didn't
think he was a gentleman, and as for getting him to forego a nobby coat
from a pin, he would almost be hanged first. I have found this my cue
pretty often.
I had, therefore, some hope from the coats, but while getting a
description of them and the other articles I felt a kind of curiosity
about the peculiarities of the musical box.
"A small thing," said Mr Jackson, "some six inches long and three
broad."
"Too like the others of its kind," said I; and giving way to a whim at
the moment, "What tunes does it play?"
"Why, I can hardly tell," replied he, "for it belongs rather to the
females. But I think I recollect that 'The Blue-Bells of Scotland' is
among them."
"Perhaps," said I, keeping up the humour of the thing, "I may thereby
get an answer to the question, 'Where, tell me where, does my highland
laddie dwell?'"
Mr Jackson smiled even in the midst of the wreck of his house.
"I fear," he said, "that unless you have some other clue than the tune,
you won't get me back my property."
"I have done more by less than a tune," said I, not very serious, but
without giving up my hope, which I have never done in any case till it
gave up me.
So with my list completed, and a promise to the gentleman that
independently of the joke about the box I would do my best to get hold
of the robbers, as well as the property, I left him. I felt that it was
not a job to be taken lightly, or rather, I should say, that I
considered my character somewhat at stake, insomuch as the gentleman
seemed to place faith in my name. There is an amount of routine in all
inquiries of this kind. The brokers, the 'big uncles,' (the large
pawns,) and the 'half uncles,' (the wee pawns,) were all to be gone
through, and they were with that dodging assiduity so necessary to the
success of our calling. No trace in these places, and as for seeing one
of my natural gentlemen in a grand blue beaver top-coat, I could
encounter no such figure. I not only could not find where my highland
laddie dwelt, but I did not even know my lover. Nor did I succeed any
better with those who are fond of rings, for that the jewellery had
found its way among the Fancies I had little doubt. How many very soft
hands I took hold of in a laughing way, to know whether they were
jewelled with my cornelians or torquoises, I can't tell; but then their
confidence as yet wanted the ripening of time, and I must wait upon a
power that has no pity for detectives any more than for lovers.
And I did wait, yet not so long as that the tune of "The Blue-Bells of
Scotland" had passed away, scared though it was by the hoarse screams
and discords of crime and misery. One evening I was on the
watch-saunter, still the old dodging way by which I have earned more
than ever I did by sudden jerks of enthusiasm. I turned down
Blackfriars' Wynd, and proceeded till I came to the shop of Mr Henry
Devlin, who kept in that quarter a tavern, which, without reproach to
the landlord, was haunted by those gentlemen who owe so much to nature.
Now, I pray you, don't think I am a miracle-monger. I make the statement
deliberately, and defy your suspicions when I say, that just as I came
to the door of the tavern, which was open, and by the door of which I
could see into a small room off the bar, my attention was arrested by a
low and delicate sound. I placed my head by the edge of the open door
and listened. The sound was that of a musical box. The tune was so low
and indistinct that I held my breath, as if thereby I could increase the
watchfulness of my ear. "It is! it is!" I muttered. Yes, it was "The
Blue-Bells of Scotland." The charmed instrument ceased; and so enamoured
had I been for the few seconds, that I found myself standing in the
attitude of a statue for minutes after the cause of my enchantment had
renounced its power.
With a knowledge of what you here anticipate, I claim the liberty of a
pause, to enable me to remark, that though utterly unfit to touch
questions of so ticklish a nature, I have had reason to think, in my
blunt way, that in nine cases out of ten there is something mysterious
in the way of Providence towards the discovery of crime. Just run up the
history of almost any detective you please, and you will come to the
semblance of a trace so very minute that you may view it either as a
natural or a mysterious thing, just according to your temperament and
your point of view. As a philosopher, and a little hardened against the
supernatural, you may treat my credulity as you think proper. I don't
complain, provided you admit that I am entitled to my weakness; but
bearing in mind at the same time, that there are always working powers
which make a considerable fool of our reasoning. Take it as you may, and
going no further than the musical box, explain to me how I should have
that night gone down Blackfriars' Wynd, and come to Henry Devlin's door
just as "The Blue-Bells of Scotland" was being played by that little
bit of machinery. You may go on with your thoughts as I proceed to tell
you, that recovering myself from my surprise I entered the house. I did
not stop at the bar where Mrs Devlin was, but proceeded direct into the
room into which I could see from the door, and there, amidst empty
tankards, I found the little instrument which had so entranced me, mute
and tuneless, just as if it had been conscious that it had done some
duty imposed upon it, and left the issue to the Power that watches over
the fortunes of that ungrateful creature, man.
Taking up the monitor, which on the instant became dead to me,
"How came this here?" I said to the landlady, who seemed to be watching
my movements.
"Indeed, I can hardly tell, Mr M'Levy," replied she, "unless it was left
by the twa callants wha were in drinking, and gaed out just before you
cam in. Did you no meet them?"
"No."
"Then they maun hae gaen towards the Cowgate as you cam by the High
Street."
I paused an instant as an inconsistency occurred to me.
"But they couldn't have forgotten a thing that was making sounds at the
very moment they left?"
"Aye, but they did though," replied the woman. "The thing had been kept
playin' a' the time they were drinking, and was playin' when they paid
their score, and the sound being drowned in the clatter o' the payment,
they had just forgotten it even as I did. It plays twa or three tunes,"
she added, "and among the lave 'The Blue-Bells of Scotland,' a tune I
aye liked, for ye ken I'm Scotch."
"And I like it too," replied I, "though I'm Irish; but do you know the
lads?"
"Weel--I do, and I dinna. Ane o' them has been here afore, and if you
were to mention his name, I think I could tell you if it was the right
ane."
"Shields," said I.
"The very name," said she, "and if I kenned whaur he lived I would send
the box to him."
"I will save you that trouble, Mrs Devlin," said I, as I put it in my
pocket.
"I never took you for a thief, Mr M'Levy," said she, in a half humorous
way. "I aye took ye for a thief catcher."
"And it's just to catch the thief I take the box," said I. "You can
speak to the men if I bring them here?"
"Brawly."
And so I left the tavern. I had got my trace, and knew where to go for
my men, and I had, moreover, a well-grounded suspicion not only as
regarded him whose name I had mentioned, but also his companion. I sent
immediately for two constables, and having procured these, and been
joined by my assistant, I proceeded to Brodie's Close in the Cowgate.
Arriving at the foot of a stair, I planted there my constables, and
mounted till I came to a door familiar to me on prior occasions. I gave
my quiet knock,--a signal so regular, that, as I have sometimes heard,
it was known as "M'Levy's warning." Whether known as such now, or not, I
cannot say, but it was quickly enough responded to by no less a
personage than the famous Lucky Shields herself. The moment she saw me
she recoiled, but only for an instant, and then tried to detain me--the
ordinary sign that I should be in. Without saying a word I pushed her
back, and making my way forward, got at once into the middle of one of
those scenes of which the quiet normal people of the world have no more
idea than they have of what is going on in the molten regions of the
middle of the earth, on the surface of which they are plucking roses. A
large room, where the grandees of a former time drank their claret to
the tune of "Lewie Gordon;" all about the sides a number of beds--one or
two rattled up of pine stumps--another with black carved legs, which had
supported fair dames long since passed away, alongside another with no
more pretensions to decayed grandeur than could be put forth by a sack
of chaff and a horsecloth. Close to that a ragged arm-chair, with a
bundle of hay rolled up in an old napkin, to serve when there was an
additional lodger. A number of chairs, marrowless, broken, and rickety;
a white table in the midst of all, covered with glasses and tankards,
all replete with the ring of drinking echoes, and shining in the haze
of tobacco smoke, illuminated by bright gas.
My ears were more bewildered than my eyes; for the room, with its
strange furniture, was familiar enough to me; but I had some difficulty
for a minute or two in distinguishing the living articles. Round the fir
table sat my hero of the box, Patrick Shields; alongside of him, Henry
Preger,--so true an associate of Shields, as to render it impossible for
me to doubt his participation in the affair at Coates Crescent; and
along with these Daniel O'Hara, a gentleman with a peculiar turn of
thought, which induced him to believe that a watch in another man's
pocket was out of its proper place. The two first were still fuming with
the effects of Mrs Devlin's whisky, and O'Hara seemed to be great, as
master of the new-brewed potation, whisky-punch, which he had been
handing round to the young women. I don't want to paint vividly, in my
slap-dash way, where picturesqueness is only to be effected at the
expense of the decencies of life, and you don't want pictures of vice.
Then, what boots it to describe such women. Their variety is only a
combination of traces which are as uniform as the features of
sensuality. Yes, these young women, who were quite familiar to me--Agnes
Marshall, Jessie Ronald, Elizabeth Livingstone, Hannah Martin, Julia
Shields--were simply representatives of thousands bearing the same
marks,--one, a demure but cunning catcher of hearts and purses;
another, a fair and comely living temple, with a Dagon of vice stuck up
in it; another, never sober except when in a police cell, and never
silent except when asleep, and scarcely then, for I have heard the cry
of her wild spirit as it floated in drunken dreams; and another, the
best resetter in the city, from whom a century of years in prison would
not have extorted a Brummagem ring of the value of a glass of whisky. If
I force so much of a picture upon you, it is because, as a part of
society, you deserve to know what your laws and usages produce.
It was not for a little time after I entered that the confusion of
tongues ceased. Their spirits had received such an impetus from the
effects of the spirituous, that the speed could not be stopped; and even
when the noise was hushed, it was only after the muttering of oaths.
Meanwhile, a glance told me I had got into the very heart of the
reset-box of Mr Jackson's fine jewellery. Finger and ear-rings glittered
in the gas-light, and the expensive coats, at the top of the fashion,
made Shields and Preger look like gentlemen who had called in from
Princes Street to see the jewelled beauties. I have always had my own
way of dealing with such gentry. I took out my musical box, and pulling
the string, set it agoing. I have heard of music that drew stones--mine
drew bricks. Shields and Preger fixed their eyes wildly upon me; and the
women, who knew nothing of the meaning of M'Levy's music, first shot out
into a yell of laughter, and then, rising, began, in the madness of
their drunkenness, to dance like so many furies, keeping time, so far as
they could, to the tune of the instrument. I could account for this
insensibility to danger by no other way than by supposing that they had
not previously seen the box, and did not see the consequences that were
likely to result from my visit.
After the hubbub ceased, I addressed my man in the first instance.
"Patrick," said I, "I am come to return your box."
"It's not mine," replied the youth; "I have nothing to do with it."
"It's mine anyhow," cried the unwary mother, who all this time was
looking through the smoke like a tigress. "The spaking thing is mine
anyhow, for didn't me own Julia get it from a raal gintleman to learn
her to sing, and isn't what's hers mine?"
And how much more of this Irish howl I might have heard, I can't say, if
the son had not shot a look into her which brought her to a sense of her
imprudence.
"And it's not my box afther all, ye vagabond," she cried, in trying to
retreat from her error; "for wasn't mine an ivory one, and didn't it
play raal Irish tunes? Come here, Julia; is that your box?"
"No," said Julia.
"And wasn't yours raal ivory?"
"Yes," replied the girl.
"Now, didn't I tell you, you murtherin' thief, it wasn't my box. Away
wid you, and never shew your ugly face here again among dacent people."
The ordinary gabble of all such interviews. I gave a nod to my
assistant, and in a few minutes the constables were at my back.
"Well," said I, addressing the men, "you can carry the top-coats on your
backs to the office; but as for you, ladies, there are certain finger
and ear ornaments about you which, for fear you lose them, I must take."
These few simple words quieted the turmoil in an instant. I have often
produced the same effect by a quiet exercise of authority. The
boisterousness of vice, with no confidence to support it, runs back and
oppresses the heart, which has no channel for it in the right direction;
the channel has been long dried and seared.
"Search them," said I.
A process which, as regards women, we generally leave to our female
searchers, but which I was obliged to have recourse to here in a
superficial way to guard valuables, so easily secreted or cast away, and
a process which requires promptness even to the instant; for on such an
occasion, the cunning of women is developed with a subtlety transcending
all belief. The hair, the hollow of the cheek, under the tongue, in the
ear, up the nostrils, even the stomach being often resorted to as the
receptacles of small but valuable articles. We contrived all four to
dart upon the creatures at once, each seizing his prey. The suddenness
of the onset took them by surprise, and in the course of a few minutes,
we had collected into a shining heap nearly the whole of Mr Jackson's
most valuable jewels.
We then marched the whole nine up to the Police-Office, I carrying the
magic box, which, if I had been vainglorious, I would have set agoing as
an appropriate accompaniment to our march up the High Street.
They were all tried on the 25th July 1843; Preger got fourteen years,
and Shields ten. The women got off on the admission that they got the
jewellery from Shields and Preger. I remember that, after the trial, Mr
Jackson addressed me something in these terms:--
"Mr M'Levy, I owe the recovery of my property to you. I will retain my
jewels, but as for the articles of apparel, I am afraid that were I to
wear them I might myself become a thief; so you may dispose of them, and
take the proceeds, with my thanks. The musical box I will keep as a
useful secret informer; so that in the event of my house being robbed
again, it may have a chance, through its melody, of recovering my
property."
The Whiskers.
It may be naturally supposed that we detectives are not much given to
sadness. It is, I suspect, a weakness connected with me, a tendency to
meditate on the vanity of human wishes; and I should be free from the
frailty, insomuch as there has been less vanity in my wishes to
apprehend rogues than in the case of most other of the artistes of my
order. Yet am I not altogether free from the weakness. We have a natural
wish to see our friends happy around us, and this desire is the source
of my little frailty; for when I find my ingenious friends off my beat,
and away elsewhere, I immediately conclude they are being happy at the
expense of others, and I am not there to sympathise; nor does it affect
this tendency much that I am perfectly aware that my sympathy rather
destroys their happiness.
I had, about April 1854, lost sight for a time of the well-known Dan
Gillies. He had had my sympathies more than once, and immediately took
to melancholy; but somehow or another he recovered his gaiety,--a sure
enough sign that he again stood in need of my condolence. I had been
told that in kindness he and his true-hearted Bess M'Diarmid had gone to
the grazing on turnips, (watches,) and that I had small chance of seeing
him for a time. Well, here was an occasion for a return of my fit, for
wasn't Dan happy somewhere, and I not there to see. I don't say I was
thinking in that particular direction on that 5th day of April when I
was walking along Princes Street, for indeed I was looking for another
natural-born gentleman among those who, considering they have better
claims to promenade that famous street, pretend to despise those who, I
have said, are nearer to natural rights than they are; but indulging in
that habit of side-looking, which I fear I have borrowed from my
friends, who persist in an effort to avoid a straight, honest look at
me, I descried a well-known face under a fine glossy silk hat, and above
a black and white dappled cravat. A glance satisfied me that the rest of
the dress was in such excellent harmony that he might, two minutes
before, have come out of the Club, where plush and hair-powder stands at
the door. It was Dan. The grazing must have been rich to give him so
smooth and velvety a coat; and to shew that he had not despised his
fare, he had a yellow "shaw" stretching between the middle of his fine
vest to the pocket. When a grand personage, who despises the toil which
makes us all brethren, meets one of my humble, laborious order, he makes
a swerve to a side, even though the wind is in another direction, to
avoid the blasting infection of common humanity, and Dan was here true
to his class; but as I do not discard the duties any more than the
rights of nature, I overlooked the insult, and swerved in the same
direction, not being confident enough, nevertheless, to infect with my
touch the hand of a Blue-Vein, if not a Honeycomb.
"Why, Dan," said I, as I faced him, and somewhat interrupted his
passage, "what a fine pair of whiskers you've got since I saw you. The
turnips must have been reared on the real Peruvian."
"What the d----l have you to do with my whiskers?"
"One who has been the means of shaving your head," replied I, "may
surely make amends by rejoicing in the growth of your fine hair
elsewhere."
"None of your gibes. Be off. I owe no man anything."
"No, Dan, but every man, you know, owes you, if you can make him pay.
Don't you know what's up?"
"No, and don't care."
"There's a grand ship-launch at Leith to-day."
"D----n your ship-launch!" said the Honeycomb; and pushing me aside,
Dan strutted away under the indignation of the shame of my presence.
I could not help looking after him, and recollecting the remark of Lord
Chesterfield on the South-Sea Islander who sat at table in the company
of lords. Looking at his back, you could perceive no difference between
him and a high-bred aristocrat. But the aristocrats don't mind those
thin distinctions.
Having some much more important business in hand that day, all
recollection of Dan and his whiskers passed out of my mind. I remember I
had to meet a French lackey who could point out to me a London brewer's
clerk committed to my care. The offender had run away from his employer,
taking with him not only the flesh which had got so lusty upon the
stout, but also a couple of thousand pounds which he ought to have
deposited in a bank; nor was this even the entire amount of his
depredations, for he had also contrived to abstract the brewer's wife,
described by my Frenchman as a "great succulent maman of forty years,"
and not far from that number of stones avoirdupois. With such game in
prospect, it was not likely I should trouble myself with Dan Gillies,
nor did I care more for the Leith launch. The constables there could
look to that, though I was not the less aware that if Dan got among the
crowd there would be pockets rendered lighter, without more of a
"purchase" than might be applied by a thief's fingers.
Notwithstanding of the brightness of my prospects in the morning--for I
had even pictured to myself the English clerk with the "succulent maman"
hanging on his arm, and together promenading Princes Street--my hopes
died away as the day advanced. I had got, moreover, weary of the clatter
of the lackey, and was, in short, knocked up. It might be about four
o'clock, I think, when I resolved upon returning by the way of the
Office, where I had some report to make before going home to dinner. I
proceeded slowly along Waverley Bridge, turned past the corner of
Princes Street gardens, and advanced by the back of the Bank of
Scotland. I was in reality at the time looking for none of my friends. I
had had enough of looking, and felt inclined rather to give my eyes a
rest by directing them to the ground, after the manner of melancholy
musers. As I was thus listlessly making my way, I was roused by a rapid
step, and I had scarcely time to look up when I encountered my young
Honeycomb of the morning. I was at first confused, and no great wonder,
for there was Dan Gillies without a single hair upon his face. The
moment he saw me he wanted to bolt, but the apparition prompted me on
the instant to cross him, and hold him for a moment at bay.
"Dan, Dan," said I, with really as much unfeigned surprise as humour,
"what has become of your whiskers, man?"
A fiery eye, and the terrible answer which sends a man to that place
where one might suppose that eye had been lighted, so full of fury was
it.
"Why, it's only a fair question," said I, again keeping my temper. "I
might even wish to know the man who could do so clean a thing."
"What have you to do with my barber?"
"Why, now you are getting reasonable," said I; "your question is easily
answered; I might want him, say on a Sunday morning, to do to me what he
has done to you."
Again dispatched to the place of four letters with an oath which must
have been forged there by some writhing soul, I could stay him no
longer, for making a rush past me, Dan Gillies was off in the direction
of the Flesh-market Close, up which I saw him turn.
His oaths still rung in my ear. I have often thought of the wonderful
aptitude of the grown-up Raggediers at swearing; they begin early, if
they do not lisp, in defiances of God, and you will hear the oaths
ringing amidst the clink of their halfpennies as they play
pitch-and-toss. Their little manhood is scarcely clothed in buckram,
when they would look upon themselves as simpletons if they do not
vindicate their independence by daring both man and Heaven. You may say
they don't understand the terms they use. Perhaps few swearers do; but
in these urchins the oaths are the sparks of the steel of their souls,
and there is not one of them unprepared to shew by their cruelty that
their terrible words are true feelings. It may appear whimsical in me,
but I have often thought that if this firmness of character--for it is
really a mental constitution--were directed and trained by education and
religion in the track of duty, it would develop itself as an energy
fitted for great and good things. A man like me has no voice in the
Privy Council; but _literature_, as I have heard said, is a big
whispering-gallery, whereby the humblest of minds may communicate with
the highest. Let it be that my whisper is laughed at, as everything is
grinned at or laughed at which is said for the hopefulness of our wynd
reprobates; but I have learned by experience, that while the greatest
vices spring from the dregs of society, the Conglomerates, as they are
called in that book (which describes them so well,) "The Castes of
Edinburgh," so the greatest virtues sometimes spring from the same
source. How much of the vice they are _forced_ to retain, and how much
of the virtue they are compelled to lose, is one of the whispers which
ought to reach the ears of the great.