One day, at the hour of noon, the court boasting the tall residence of
Mr. Grabman was startled from the quiet usually reigning there at broad
daylight by the appearance of two men, evidently no inhabitants of the
place. The squalid, ill-favoured denizens lounging before the doors
stared hard, and at the fuller view of one of the men, most of them
retreated hastily within. Then, in those houses, you might have heard
a murmur of consternation and alarm. The ferret was in the burrow,--a
Bow-Street officer in the court! The two men paused, looked round,
and stopping before the dingy towerlike house, selected the bell which
appealed to the inmates of the ground-floor, to the left. At that
summons Bill the cracksman imprudently presented a full view of his
countenance through his barred window; he drew it back with astonishing
celerity, but not in time to escape the eye of the Bow-Street runner.
“Open the door, Bill,--there’s nothing to fear; I have no summons
against you, ‘pon honour. You know I never deceive. Why should I? Open
the door, I say.”
No answer.
The officer tapped with his cane at the foul window.
“Bill, there’s a gentleman who comes to you for information, and he will
pay for it handsomely.”
Bill again appeared at the casement, and peeped forth very cautiously
through the bars.
“Bless my vitals, Mr. R----, and it is you, is it? What were you saying
about paying handsomely?”
“That your evidence is wanted,--not against a pal, man. It will hurt no
one, and put at least five guineas in your pocket.”
“Ten guineas,” said the Bow-Street officer’s companion. “You be’s a man
of honour, Mr. R----!” said Bill, emphatically; “and I scorns to doubt
you, so here goes.”
With that he withdrew from the window, and in another minute or so the
door was opened, and Bill, with a superb bow, asked his visitors into
his room.
In the interval, leisure had been given to the cracksman to remove all
trace of the wonted educational employment of his hopeful children. The
urchins were seated on the floor playing at push-pin; and the Bow-Street
officer benignly patted a pair of curly heads as he passed them, drew
a chair to the table, and wiping his forehead, sat down, quite at home.
Bill then deliberately seated himself, and unbuttoning his waistcoat,
permitted the butt-ends of a brace of pistols to be seen by his guests.
Mr. R----‘s companion seemed very unmoved by this significant action.
He bent one inquiring, steady look on the cracksman, which, as Bill
afterwards said, went through him “like a gimlet through a penny,” and
taking out a purse, through the network of which the sovereigns gleamed
pleasantly, placed it on the table and said,--
“This purse is yours if you will tell me what has become of a woman
named Joplin, with whom you left the village of ----, in Lancashire, in
the year 18--.”
“And,” put in Mr. R----, “the gentleman wants to know, with no view of
harming the woman. It will be to her own advantage to inform us where
she is.”
“‘Pon honour again?” said Bill.
“‘Pon honour!”
“Well, then, I has a heart in my buzzom, and if so be I can do a good
turn to the ‘oman wot I has loved and kep’ company with, why not?”
“Why not, indeed?” said Mr. R----. “And as we want to learn, not only
what has become of Mrs. Joplin, but what she did with the child she
carried off from ----, begin at the beginning and tell us all you know.”
Bill mused. “How much is there in the pus?”
“Eighteen sovereigns.”
“Make it twenty--you nod--twenty then? A bargain! Now I’ll go on right
ahead. You see as how, some months arter we--that is, Peggy Joplin and
self--left ----, I was put in quod in Lancaster jail; so I lost sight of
the blowen. When I got out and came to Lunnun, it was a matter of seven
year afore, all of a sudding, I came bang up agin her,--at the corner
of Common Garden. ‘Why, Bill!’ says she. ‘Why, Peggy!’ says I; and we
bussed each other like winky. ‘Shall us come together agin?’ says she.
‘Why, no,’ says I; ‘I has a wife wots a good ‘un, and gets her bread by
setting up as a widder with seven small childern. By the by, Peg, what’s
a come of your brat?’ for as you says, sir, Peg had a child put out to
her to nurse. Lor’, how she cuffed it! ‘The brat!’ says she, laughing
like mad, ‘oh, I got rid o’ that when you were in jail, Bill.’ ‘As how?’
says I. ‘Why, there was a woman begging agin St. Poll’s churchyard; so I
purtended to see a friend at a distance: “‘Old the babby a moment,” says
I, puffing and panting, “while I ketches my friend yonder.” So she ‘olds
the brat, and I never sees it agin; and there’s an ind of the bother!’
‘But won’t they ever ax for the child,--them as giv’ it you?’ ‘Oh, no,’
says Peg, ‘they left it too long for that, and all the tin was agone;
and one mouth is hard enough to feed in these days,--let by other folks’
bantlings.’ ‘Well,’ says I, ‘where do you hang out? I’ll pop in, in
a friendly way.’ So she tells me,--som’ere in Lambeth,--I forgets
hexactly; and many’s the good piece of work we ha’ done togither.”
“And where is she now?” asked Mr. R----‘s companion.
“I doesn’t know purcisely, but I can com’ at her. You see, when my poor
wife died, four year com’ Chris’mas, and left me with as fine a famuly,
though I says it, as h-old King Georgy himself walked afore, with his
gold-’eaded cane, on the terris at Vindsor,--all heights and all h-ages
to the babby in arms (for the little ‘un there warn’t above a year old,
and had been a brought up upon spoon-meat, with a dash o’ blueruin to
make him slim and ginteel); as for the bigger ‘uns wot you don’t see,
they be doin’ well in forin parts, Mr. R----!”
Mr. R. smiled significantly.
Bill resumed. “Where was I? Oh, when my wife died, I wanted sum ‘un to
take care of the childern, so I takes Peg into the ‘ous. But Lor’! how
she larrupped ‘em,--she has a cruel heart, has n’t she, Bob? Bob is a
‘cute child, Mr. R----. Just as I was a thinking of turning her out neck
an’ crop, a gemman what lodges aloft, wot be a laryer, and wot had just
saved my nick, Mr. R----, by proving a h-alibi, said, ‘That’s a
tidy body, your Peg!’ (for you see he was often a wisiting here, an’
h-indeed, sin’ then, he has taken our third floor, No. 9); ‘I’ve been
a speakin’ to her, and I find she has been a nuss to the sick. I has
a frind wots a h-uncle that’s ill: can you spare her, Bill, to attind
him?’ That I can,’ says I; ‘anything to obleedge.’ So Peg packs off, bag
and baggidge.”
“And what was the sick gentleman’s name?” asked Mr. R----‘s companion.
“It was one Mr. Warney,--a painter, wot lived at Clap’am. Since thin
I’ve lost sight of Peg; for we had ‘igh words about the childern, and
she was a spiteful ‘oman. But you can larn where she be at Mr. Warney’s,
if so be he’s still above ground.”
“And did this woman still go by the name of Joplin?”
Bill grinned: “She warn’t such a spooney as that,--that name was in your
black books too much, Mr. R----, for a ‘spectable nuss for sick bodies;
no, she was then called Martha Skeggs, what was her own mother’s name
afore marriage. Anything more, gemman?”
“I am satisfied,” said the younger visitor, rising; “there is the purse,
and Mr. R---- will bring you ten sovereigns in addition. Good-day to
you.”
Bill, with superabundant bows and flourishes, showed his visitors out,
and then, in high glee, he began to romp with his children; and the
whole family circle was in a state of uproarious enjoyment when the door
flew open, and in entered Grabman, his brief-bag in hand, dust-soiled
and unshaven.
“Aha, neighbour! your servant, your servant; just come back! Always so
merry; for the life of me, I couldn’t help looking in! Dear me, Bill,
why, you’re in luck!” and Mr. Grabman pointed to a pile of sovereigns
which Bill had emptied from the purse to count over and weigh on the tip
of his forefinger.
“Yes,” said Bill, sweeping the gold into his corduroy pocket; “and who
do you think brought me these shiners? Why, who but old Peggy, the ‘oman
wot you put out at Clapham.”
“Well, never mind Peggy, now, Bill; I want to ask you what you have done
with Margaret Joplin, whom, sly seducer that you are, you carried off
from--”
“Why, man, Peggy be Joplin, and Joplin be Peggy! And it’s for that piece
of noos that I got all them pretty new picters of his Majesty Bill,--my
namesake, God bliss ‘im!”
“D--n,” exclaimed Grabman, aghast; “the young chap’s spoiling my game
again!” And seizing up his brief-bag, he darted out of the house, in the
hope to arrive at least at Clapham before his competitors.