[Illustration]
"Your crime," said Lord Justice Pimblekin, "is the most heartless,
atrocious, inhuman, and horrible that it has ever been my misfortune to
hear of: your long and cold-blooded premeditation; the cynical
indifference to the result of your atrocities, combined with the delight
with which you have wallowed in human gore; your contempt for all the
dictates of honesty, truth, pity, and good faith; your greed,
ingratitude, treachery, savageness, meanness, and cannibalism; all these
things stamp you as the most atrocious, unmitigated and loathsome
scoundrel, savage, monster, and vampire that ever wallowed in the foul
and fathomless quagmire of infinite and immeasurable dastardliness.
[Illustration]
"Under these circumstances I ought to inflict upon you the severest
penalty which the law allows. I say it is my unmistakable duty to
sentence you to penal servitude for life, with the cat once a week.
"Mercy would be thrown away upon you.
"Under these circumstances I will disregard my palpable duty, and render
the whole proceedings a farce, by sentencing you to a fine of forty
shillings, or a month."
The fine being immediately paid, the prisoner left the court amid the
congratulations of his friends.
New laurels were added to the already superfoliated wreath of Lord
Justice Pimblekin by this fresh masterpiece of judicial wisdom.
He was already the most renowned of all the judges on the Bench, and the
admiration and envy of the whole judicial and forensic body.
His verdicts had a character of their own; the severity of his
denunciation of inextenuable crime was only equalled by the inadequacy
of the punishment dealt out; as he explained on each occasion, he never
did his duty.
[Illustration]
He designed a mixture of justice, equity, and mercy; only he left out
the first two ingredients. After the mental strain of that historical
verdict recounted above, his lordship took a holiday. He had an offer of
a seat in a balloon which was about to ascend, and accepted. The machine
ascended successfully from his lordship's grounds, sailed majestically
out to sea, and disappeared in the distance.
[Illustration]
With the utmost anxiety the whole community waited for further news of
the balloon; but none arrived. Either the eminent judge had been picked
up by a passing ship bound for some remote parts, or he had perished.
A year passed without news; and it was then decided to erect a cenotaph
to his lordship in Westminster Abbey.
* * * * *
One evening some time after this decision, Jemmy Wedge and Bill Slinker,
the eminent burglars, sat in their humble room near the Mint, arranging
the final details of a burglary dated for the following evening. Jemmy's
eye, glancing casually round the room, perceived a dim figure standing
in a dark corner. With a strong expression of disapproval, Jemmy jumped
to his feet and sprang towards the intruding eavesdropper; but stopped
suddenly with an ejaculation of surprise as he recognised the well-known
and revered features of Lord Justice Pimblekin!
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
A flood of contending emotions welled up in the mind of Jemmy
Wedge--rage at the overhearing of his plans by an intruder, and that
intruder an administrator of the law; fear of the consequences;
inveterate and deep-rooted affection for the judge who had so often
saved him from the well-merited penalties of crime; surprise, wonder.
His arm, raised to fell the eavesdropper, sank impotently to his side:
he gasped and stared.
"You need have no anxiety," said Lord Justice Pimblekin in a strange,
hollow, far-off voice, "your secret is safe with me. I will not blow the
gaff."
These words, spoken with the quiet judicial accent which Jemmy knew so
well, yet in the far-off tone mentioned above, made Jemmy's eyes rounder
than ever with wonderment.
No word of slang had ever before passed the lips of the judge: for slang
might indeed be unintelligible to a judge who knew not what a
race-course was, and would ask in court, "What is the 'Stock
Exchange'--is it a cattle market?"
[Illustration]
Lord Justice Pimblekin's head was drooped hopelessly upon his bosom; and
he now covered his face with his trembling hands, while a bright tear
crept out between his fingers, as he murmured in a quivering voice, "I
am one of you now! I'm a pal--that's what I am; straight, and no kid, my
pippin!" The painful effort with which these words were uttered was
apparent in his whole frame. He had not finished speaking; he was
obviously struggling with another word, which threatened to choke him.
With an expression of horror and despair, he clutched his bald head; and
then the word came--the single word "Blimey!" It was uttered in the same
soft, mincing, judicial accents.
Then his lordship moved across the room and, sitting upon the table near
the fire, drew out a short dirty clay pipe, lit it at the candle, and
sat puffing at it; an occasional tear still creeping down his furrowed
cheek.
"You may proceed with your deliberations with a perfect sense of
security," he said anon. "Djeer, old pal? _I_ ain't goin' to give yer
away."
Every phrase of this kind evidently inflicted upon the unfortunate judge
the most acute pain.
"To convince you how little you have to apprehend from me," he
continued, "I may inform you that I shall never again occupy my former
judicial position; in fact, I am incapacitated from doing so by the fact
that I am a GHOST!"
[Illustration]
Now, Jemmy Wedge and Bill Slinker were superstitious and nervous to a
degree, as most burglars are; and at that announcement their hair rose,
and they stood gazing at the speaker with glaring eyes and chattering
teeth.
"I am sorry to cause you such alarm," said the spectre, "and assure you
I should only be too happy to go; but I cannot--it is not permitted me
to do so.
[Illustration]
"The balloon in which I ascended was found to have some defect in the
valve, which made it impossible to descend; it, consequently, after
rising to a great altitude, burst, hurling myself and the three other
occupants of the car into the sea. I was unfortunately drowned--a most
terrible loss to society! The three others were drowned also; but, as
they were neither judges nor counsel, but merely ordinary persons,
liable to be called as jurors or witnesses, their loss need not further
concern us. If they had survived, they would have been subsequently
killed at some time or other by their treatment in court.
[Illustration]
"Well, I found myself floating among the disembodied spirits in space;
and I became conscious that certain of those in my vicinity were eyeing
me askance and whispering together in a menacing and most disturbing
manner----" At this point the spectre broke down for a moment, and
sobbed audibly, his emotion culminating in the words, "Strike me pink!"
He then proceeded: "You must excuse this emotion--the whole thing has
been too much for me--djeer?----in a most menacing and disturbing
manner. Now and again these threatening spirits would beckon to their
circle certain of those that passed; and these joined them in their
minative demonstrations until, knock me funny! if the whole rabble did
not surround me, covering me with vituperation. I gleaned from the
evidence before me that they were innocent persons who had suffered in
consequence of the inadequate punishments I had dealt out to various
criminals during my judicial career. There was a woman who had been
murdered by her husband after his release from the seven days I had
given him for breaking both her arms and legs; there were seven babies
who had been made away with by another malefactor, in his joy at
escaping with one month for kicking a policeman to death. There were
several hundreds of persons who had succumbed to the practices of a
purveyor of diseased meat to the London markets who was an especial
protégé of mine and whom I always--after the most scathing comments on
his villainy--let off with a fine; and so forth.
"These indignant spectres dragged me before three spirits who acted as
judges in those parts, and who, as I understood, had formerly been
Mahatmas when living; and these, after hearing the evidence before the
court, pronounced upon me a most--s'elp me beans!--most terrible
sentence. I was condemned to return to earth as a ghost, and there
remain until the evil consequences of my lapses of duty had fully worked
themselves out. This, they calculated, would amount to a sentence of
about seven thousand years. There was no option of a fine, while my
request for leave to appeal for a mandamus was dismissed with costs. My
sentence also provided that I should be compelled to assist in all the
crimes resulting from my own leniency, and should be powerless to
prevent them by warning the sufferers or the authorities. And,"
concluded the unhappy spectre, sobbing aloud, "here I am, s'elp me!"
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
The two burglars were really touched, for they had loved Lord Justice
Pimblekin as a true and valuable friend. They knew him to have been an
old gentleman whose abhorrence of the vulgarity of crime had been
equalled by his sensitive horror of illiterate, vulgar, or slangy
speech; and they thus, to a certain extent, understood the painful
nature of his present position, for the involuntary use of the idiom and
ways of the society in which he was now condemned to mix was a part of
his sentence.
Far into the night the judge sat smoking his short spectral pipe and
drinking from an unsubstantial pewter pot, while he listened,
shuddering, to the plans of the two burglars for the carrying out of
their crime. With growing horror he gradually gleaned that the crib to
be cracked was the house of his twin brother the Bishop of Hampstead, a
lonely mansion near the village of Highgate.
[Illustration]
He watched the two malefactors as they cleaned and loaded their
revolvers and made other preparations for the expedition. If that judge
had done his duty, these two would still have been working out their
time for the last crime but seven which they had committed; whereas Lord
Pimblekin had let them off for that job with three months, and visited
their subsequent deeds with penalties which decreased at a constant
ratio, until for the latest--burglarious entry, removal of property
valued at £500, wilful destruction of other property valued at £5,000,
and maiming of two policemen and one footman--he had given them seven
days.
[Illustration]
Now, it happened that there had been for the last year or so before the
disappearance of Justice Pimblekin a disagreement of a somewhat painful
nature between himself and his twin brother the Bishop of Hampstead.
Both were old gentlemen of the utmost purity and philanthropy of
principle, to whom the injuring of anyone--especially a brother--would
have been an idea of the utmost horror.
Besides this, their mutual affection was really very strong; but they
had quarrelled about a matter of principle--a mere trifle: whether a
piece of toast should be buttered on the right or left side; and their
feelings had become temporarily embittered.
[Illustration]
This painful circumstance naturally increased the horror of the unhappy
spectre at the present plans of the burglars, and he made the wildest
efforts to go to his brother and warn him; but he was glued to the
table.
Just as the clocks were striking 2 a.m., however, he felt that he could
move; and swiftly gliding away from the attic, he hurried down into the
street and strained every nerve to direct his course towards Highgate.
But every effort was vain; he was drawn, against his will, to a house
where an habitual criminal whom his lordship had let loose upon society
was engaged in preparing poisoned food for a family.
Having assisted in the mixing of the poison, he passed on and found
himself in a room with a swindling company-director whom he had let off
with six months instead of fifty years; and here he assisted in the
drawing up of a new prospectus specially designed for the benefit of the
widow and the fatherless who might happen to have a mite or two to be
relieved of.
By this time it was morning; and the judge's ghost found himself in a
shed where that diseased-meat purveyor whom he had alluded to was busy
packing for the market; and the ghost helped with advice.
All that day he wandered from one criminal to another, from one victim
to another; until the following night he once more joined the two
burglars Jemmy and Bill at the carriage-gate of the residence of the
Bishop of Hampstead. Convulsed with inexpressible grief, the spectre
advised the stretching of wires across the lawn to trip up pursuers;
then struggling madly against the words which he was forced to utter, he
offered, as a ghost, to glide in through the walls and discover the most
vulnerable fastenings; an offer which the two burglars eagerly and
gratefully accepted. After this the judge's ghost pointed out where the
plate was kept, and assisted in chloroforming the butler and stealing
the key; and then he led the way to the cabinet in which the Bishopess
of Hampstead kept her jewels, and kept watch while it was forced and the
valuables were extracted.
All three had safely reached the library on their way out, when a
piercing scream rang through the house; it was the scream of the
spectre's sister-in-law the bishopess who had just awoke and discovered
the loss of the jewels; and in another moment the bishop in his nightcap
and slippers stood before them.
[Illustration]
He was a brave bishop, and was in the act of felling Jemmy Wedge with a
poker, when he recognised his brother; and the weapon fell from his
hand, giving Jemmy a chance of whipping out his revolver and firing. The
bishop fell; and the judge's ghost and he were left alone. Beside
himself with despair, the ghost bent over his brother and tried to weep;
but he felt that he was grinning from ear to ear and chuckling
derisively. The wounded bishop slowly opened his eyes and gazed at him
in grief and horror.
[Illustration]
"Peter!" he gasped.
"He, he!" said the ghost. "We're quits now. I said I would round on you,
old pal! You've got it now." Then straining every agonized nerve to
prevent it, the judge's ghost began to jig round the prostrate bishop
and snap his fingers and hop lightly over him.
[Illustration]
The other members of the family and the servants had collected and were
gazing upon the scene: Mrs. Bishop glared at the ghost, uttered the word
"Peter!" screamed a piercing scream, and swooned.
[Illustration]
They carried the bishop and the bishopess upstairs and sent for a
doctor, while the members of the family stood around the judge's ghost,
gazing upon him with indignation and repugnance. In a hurried
consultation they agreed that it would never do to hand him over to the
police, as such a family scandal was not to be thought of.
"Do not loathe me," said the unfortunate spectre; "I am only a ghost!"
"A ghost!" cried the family in chorus; "a nice subterfuge! You expect us
to believe that, of course? Go! Let us never see your face again!"
Slowly and with downcast eyes the ghost crept out through the bookcase
and rejoined Jemmy and Bill to assist in disposing of the swag. They
lavished upon him terms of endearment, and insisted on treating him at
every public-house in the neighbourhood: and the sight of that
respectably-dressed old gentleman with kid gloves and a short clay pipe
surprised the pot-boys. The ghost could not consume the liquor, being
too unsubstantial. At short intervals he would retire into a dark corner
to beat his breast in remorse and anguish.
Presently Jemmy and Bill, who had been whispering earnestly together,
turned respectfully to the spectre; they appeared very nervous, as
though afraid to broach some delicate matter which was on their minds.
"Beg parding, boss--I mean my lordship"--began Jemmy, hesitatingly, and
fidgeting from one foot to the other; "but we was a-going to ask yer if
as how you'd 'ave enny objection----"
"Yus," chimed in Bill. "If ye'd take the 'uff if so be as we wos to----"
"Dry up, you, Bill," said Jemmy. "It's just this 'ere, guvnor. We wos
a-thinkin' of crackin' another crib next week as yer might ha' heered ov
in yer time--well, to bust out with it straight and candid, it's yer own
crib as used to be w'en yer wos alive; but, yer see, bein' as how ye're
dead now and it ain't o' no more good to yer--there's a nice little lot
of old plate as you've got there as we sho'd be proud to 'andle. The
on'y thing is----"
"Yus, that's w'ere it is," interrupted Bill. "The o'ny thing is as we
might 'ave to knock yer missis--axin' pardon; 'er ladyship--on the 'ed,
bein' a light sleeper, her maid ses, and a bit ov a spitfire, d'ye see?"
The judge's ghost attempted to give vent to a cry of indignant horror
and forbid the attempt in the most unequivocal way. He struggled to rush
forth and inform the police and the community; but he heard himself
chuckle and felt himself slap the two burglars on the back, and knew
that he was saying to them: "Heave ahead, my bloaters! I owe the old
Dutch clock one for the naggings she's treated me to. I'm on this job,
that's what I am!" And then he puffed away at his short clay, and kept
on chuckling until he felt quite sick with misery.
"He's the right sort, so he is," said Bill, "and no two ways abaat it."
"Right yer are," said Jemmy. "'E's the sort o' pal for me, and no
error."
Once more the judge's ghost wandered about from one malefactor to
another, and from one victim to another, always assisting the
malefactors and jeering the victims, and always welcome as a friend by
the former, and cursed as an enemy by the latter. He had no rest night
or day; he was constantly racked and harrowed by some new shock of grief
or repugnance.
The thing got noised about, how the eminent and respected judge Lord
Justice Pimblekin had not been killed in his balloon adventure, but had
returned to the country and, disregarding all his old associations of
morality, refinement, and respectability, was herding with criminals of
the lowest type, and indulging in the most nefarious and vulgar
practices.
At this time it was his fate to appear at a select meeting of the
directors of that Widows' and Orphans' Fleecing Corporation Limited, the
prospectus of which he had assisted in drawing up. His presence at first
filled the directors with the gravest alarm; but when the promoter
explained how greatly his lordship had changed, they unanimously
appointed him chairman. It was passingly suggested that his lordship's
growing evil reputation might prejudice the concern in the eyes of the
public; but the promoter, who knew the public well, reassuringly
explained that investors were so hopelessly idiotic that a board
composed entirely of burglars would not prevent their investing so long
as the prospectus contained sufficiently impossible promises of profit;
so the ghost of Lord Pimblekin officiated as chairman and assisted in
causing several suicides.
Then the night came for the cracking of his own crib, and he continued
to give vent to a succession of boisterous chuckles every one of which
nearly killed him; only a ghost is a difficult thing to kill. Arrived at
his palatial suburban residence, he directed the burglars to the
outhouse where the ladders were kept; and the three first ascended to
her ladyship's dressing-room where the jewels were. The door between the
dressing-room and her ladyship's bedroom being open, the ghost undertook
to stand over her with a phantom bludgeon to prevent any noise in the
event of her waking. She woke, stared at his lordship, looked at the
burglars at work at her bureau, gazed once more at the ghost with a look
which froze him, murmured "Peter," and sank back with closed eyes.
[Illustration]
Half mad with misery, the ghost directed the burglars to the plate and
other valuables, and then looked on chuckling while they tore the silk
curtains, jumped on her ladyship's favourite violin, ripped the carpet
with a clasp-knife, cut the throat of the pug, and twisted the necks of
the canaries and linnets and doves.
Then they left quietly; and, as the ghost followed them out, he was
conscious of an immaterial form similar to his own standing at his side.
"Come with me," said the form; and they whirled through space until they
arrived in the same court in which sentence had been passed upon him.
The three Mahatmas were still sitting on the bench, and the chief
Mahatma said:--
"Prisoner, your case is one of the worst which it has ever been our
painful task to pass sentence upon. Your reckless disregard of what you
recognised as your duty and of the consequences of your misdemeanours on
the bench render mercy in your case entirely out of place. It is our
duty to give you the benefit of the full seven thousand years to which
you have been sentenced; we will, however, release you on your own
recognisances and allow you to return to earthly existence and again
fill your former judicial sphere, with a view to observing how you go on
for the future. You will be bound over to come up for judgment if called
upon."
Instantly our judge found himself in the flesh once more, and robing for
his accustomed seat on the bench. His reappearance caused great
surprise, as his evil reputation was now public property and the
authorities had removed his cenotaph from Westminster Abbey and sold it
to a rag-shop.
However, as it is impossible to remove a judge from the bench even if he
murders the Queen, the Royal Family, and the Bench of Bishops, steals
the watches of the whole Houses of Lords and Commons, and even defrauds
the Inland Revenue, Lord Justice Pimblekin was allowed to remain on the
bench; and, as he was a socially influential person, bygones were
allowed to be bygones.
[Illustration]
But he was a reformed judge. He did his duty, and gave irredeemable
criminals what they deserved; fraudulent company directors got the cat,
and diseased meat purveyors a lifer, until there was hardly any crime
left. Lord Justice Pimblekin's twin brother and wife recovered, and
forgave him, and his lordship has not been called up for judgment yet.