The Arthur Morrison Mystery

by Arthur Morrison

  Presently he turned his attention to the spoils. It was a poor little locket—gold, no doubt, but with sides like paper. Nine carat, probably. The watch and chain was a different matter—thick and solid; nothing of nine carats there. Indeed, quite a good night’s work, as regarded the clock and slang.

  He put the watch away and turned the locket over in his hand. After all there was little enough in that, one way or another; and there are some things below a high mobsman’s notice. To work in the East End might be well enough, for a gold watch. But a thing like this—well, a man of Spotto Bird’s standing must have some self-respect. He turned back into the yard, dancing the locket in his half-closed hand. The cottage was shut close and dark now, and Spotto stooped over the brick steps and felt along the bottom of the door. The crack was a quarter of an inch wide, and more. He pushed the locket through, and thrust it as far as it would go with the blade of his knife.

  “P’raps she’ll fancy it was a dream now,” thought Spotto Bird,—“a sleep-walking dream!”

  SPOTTO’S RECLAMATION

  First published in Pall Mall Magazine, Vol. 35, 1905, pp 457-464)

  Spotto Bird’s reclamation, like a number more of his adventures, came about through a watch.

  It was at a period of some difficulty in Spotto’s history. He had had a bad “fall”—a stretch and a half; that is to say, in shameless English, he had been imprisoned for eighteen months; the most prolonged misfortune of the sort that had yet befallen him. Now, it is not well to begin “the game” again too soon after such a release, and that for more than one reason. Firstly and obviously, of course, the police eye is upon you, and a fresh conviction just then is looked on with peculiar disfavour from the bench. But furthermore, eighteen months with hard labour (and for that term the living is as hard as the labour) has a ruinous effect on the professional abilities of so finished a fingersmith as Spotto Bird. Like the cultured quickness of the boxer trained to the hour, like the lightning riposte of the fencing-master, and like the preternatural spurt of the nurtured runner, the dexterity of the master pickpocket is an artificial product, kept alive by daily practice, and vanishing utterly with a month’s disuse. And even that is not all; the seclusion of a year and a half costs more than touch and training; the practitioner loses his accustomed nerve; he feels shy in the crowded streets, and desperately apprehensive of a thousand eyes.

  So it came about that for some little while Spotto Bird did not “go out.” In the common and ordinary sense of the term he went out frequently, it is true, but never in the restricted and recondite meaning of the term—to go in search of professional adventure. Funds sank low—very low. There was a half-sovereign gratuity on discharge from prison, but what was ten shillings to a man of Spotto’s tastes and habits? There were also a few contributed half-crowns and crowns from friends, but a sporting attempt to found a financial start on these ended in disaster, through the pestilent prowess of the wrong horse. And two of Spotto’s most sympathetic and affluent friends were in trouble (prison) themselves. Spotto Bird was driven to begin the game again.

  But it was not easy. On his very first outing he encountered a certain plain-clothes constable, well known to him and others in the trade as “Ears.” This man’s ears—they were huge ears, splayed outward—had won him promotion from the uniformed force; not so much because of their size as because of their quickness, whereby he had been enabled, unsuspected, to overhear conversations addressed from one cell to another, and so acquire information of much use.

  No sooner had Spotto discovered a promising little crowd before a shop window—it was in Regent Street—than he became aware of the presence of “Ears.” There the enemy lounged by the kerb, and Spotto, cold shivers running between his shoulder-blades, averted his face and slunk away, hoping—and he thought with reason—that he had not been observed.

  He crossed the roadway, walked a little way down the less crowded side of the street, and then recrossed close by the beginning of the Quadrant. One could always depend on finding just here, at a corner, a gaping knot of people, mostly well dressed, and always staring at photographs in a window. He knew the place of old, and judged it an easy spot to begin with; and, in fact, there were the photographs and there was the knot of people, absorbed and gaping as ever, as though they had never left the place since he saw it last. He crossed the pavement and joined the group. A sealskin hand-bag hung from a fat old lady’s wrist at his right hand, and a man with a possible though somewhat doubtful breastpin stood on his left. The pin was too difficult—and uncertain as to quality; the hand-bag was better. But at that moment some instinct, some telepathic shiver in the back, induced him to look behind him, and there stood “Ears” again, staring full at him!

  There was no question, this time, of the detective having seen him. He was watching him, following him, without a doubt. Spotto Bird shifted uneasily from his place, and, hands deep in pockets—his own—made an industrious pretence of great interest in a photograph of the Albert Memorial. Then he edged away round the corner and so down the turning, miserably conscious of being followed by “Ears.” This is what is called in police courts being “kept under observation,” and it is one of the discomforts of Spotto Bird’s profession.

  For the rest of the day Spotto avoided crowds, strove not to look behind him—though the temptation was sore—and did his best to impart an air of aimless innocence to his back view. All to little effect; for no sooner did he begin, next morning, to prospect afresh, than he perceived that “Ears” was “on” him again.

  Spotto Bird’s nerves began to suffer. “Ears” seemed ever behind him, and Spotto wondered why in the world he had not rather been called “Eyes.” It was a fact that the detective was keeping a particularly close watch on Spotto, and was asking questions about him of certain private informers, for he knew Spotto must soon begin business again; but it was also a fact that Spotto began to see the detective where no detective was, and that for Spotto each successive crowd was fuller of ears and eyes than the last. Meanwhile “Ears” had other business, and others to watch; and there came two days when Spotto saw him in the flesh not at all, and even began to grow less and less convinced in fancy of his baleful proximity; till, on the evening of the second day, things being very low indeed, Spotto Bird at last began work again.

  He had come along Oxford Street, and he turned up the detached northern end of Regent Street on the chance of a meeting at either of the halls, since this was about the time at which such meetings began. St. George’s Hall was shut and dark, but there was a meeting of some sort at Queen’s Hall, a small crowd at the door, and cabs. Spotto was desperate. This absurd nervousness must be got over somehow, else starvation faced him—or even work. There were dark corners here and there, a crowd to hide in, and people everywhere. On the outskirts of the crowd, and near one of the dark corners, a man stood intently reading a newspaper by the light of a street lamp. He wore spectacles, and had ragged, hay-coloured whiskers and beard; on his head was a feeble-looking soft felt hat, of no particular shape, unless it were that of a pork pie in a saucer, and as he held the paper close before his face his arms parted his large cloak before him, revealing, in the light of the Queen’s Hall lamps, a black watch-ribbon. Now it was Spotto’s experience that a black watch-ribbon was commonly attached to one of two sorts of watches, either very expensive indeed, or very cheap. Perhaps the man did not look exactly the person to carry an expensive watch, but again experience told Spotto that this was a thing you never could tell. It was a good enough chance.

  He glanced about him, and sidled toward the man, so as to give himself a wide field of observation to the left, in the direction of the crowd and the lights. First the ribbon, and then the bow of the watch passed between his forefinger and thumb, and so, with his little finger on the edge of the pocket, he lifted the prize deftly. The man stood still, with his spectacled eyes close on his paper.

  The rest occurred in an instant, thoug
h it is slow to tell. As the watch left the pocket, Spotto felt the back smooth against his finger-tip, and then was aware of a certain prominence about the edge. Surely this was a Waterbury! The suspicion put him to a shade of pause. It must be a tug and a bolt if the thing were worth it, and if it were not, then best let the watch slip back and try farther in the crowd. The moment’s indecision, the unworkmanlike fumble did it. Down came hands and paper from the man’s face, and Spotto’s forearm was grabbed and held.

  Spotto tugged and whimpered. In other circumstances, with his full nerve—before his eighteen months—he would have knocked the man over with his left. In his present state he whimpered and pulled.

  “You lemme go—I got nothing o’ yours—give a poor chap a chance, guv’nor—I’ve done nothing, s’elp me! Let go!”

  “It’s all right!” the stranger answered eagerly. “I shan’t charge you! You’re the very man I want to consult. It’s most fortunate for both of us, really! You’ll be quite safe, I tell you!”

  Spotto ceased to pull, but continued to whine. “It’s very ’ard when a man’s ’ungry, sir,” he pleaded, “an’ if you’d bin through all what I ’ave, you’d—”

  “Yes, I know,” the stranger interrupted; “that’s just what I want to hear about. You shall tell me. You’re quite safe, my friend, I assure you.”

  Spotto took heart again. Perhaps there was more to be got out of this man than a white-metal watch after all, and by safer means. But at this moment a shadow fell on them from the direction of the hall lights, and behold—it was the shadow of “Ears!”

  “’Ullo!” growled “Ears,” with a fierce stare at Spotto; “what’s this? What’s he been up to?”

  “What do you mean?” retorted the man in the felt hat, dropping his hold of Spotto’s arm. “Who are you?”

  “I’m a p’lice officer,” answered ’Ears,’ “an’ I want to know what this man’s been up to.”

  “Oh, a police officer!” repeated the stranger, with no less sharpness. “Then this is my friend, and he hasn’t been up to anything!”

  “Oh, you’re a pal of ’is, are you?” remarked the plain-clothes man, turning grimly on the man in the cloak. “I’ll just bear you in mind then, me fine feller! An’ now you an’ your pal had better dear out o’ this, ’fore I make it too warm for you. Come now, just you pass along, smart!”

  Spotto’s new friend glared and bridled and began angry threats. But Spotto turned away with a humble “All right, guv’nor, I’m off,” and the man in the cloak was fain to follow, anxious not to lose him.

  “Go on now! Go on!” urged “Ears,” sternly, with a rising inflection, standing erect on the footway to watch them off.

  “And this is what you have to endure habitually, I have no doubt?” asked Spotto’s companion, with indignation.

  Spotto admitted that it had occurred before.

  “It is an outrage upon sovereign humanity!” his friend exclaimed. And, in fact, it was not long ere Spotto discovered that Mr. Bullwinkle regarded “humanity” as the one thing worshipful in the universe.

  “I was going to the Queen’s Hall,” he resumed presently, “to the meeting of the Anti-Shampooing League. But this will be better, and the Anti-Shampooing principle is now firmly established—though I fear on mistaken lines. Now, I want you to tell me all about your complaint—for of course it is a complaint. Crime, of course, is a disease. You have heard that before, I suppose?”

  Spotto shook his head doubtfully. Crime as a disease was wholly a new notion. But if this old crackpot had any idea of dosing him—well, it only meant a bolt up the first turning.

  “What! you have not heard that elementary truth? What is this talk of popular education? You can read and write, I suppose?”

  Oh yes, Spotto could do both very well. Though he did not mention that it was nothing but a particularly dexterous piece of writing that first procured—But that was an unpleasant memory.

  “You can read and write, and yet have not learned that crime is merely a disease, a misfortune, to be pitied and treated lovingly! That is the fruit of this brutal system of law, and that benighted superstition called religion! Well, you must realise firmly that crime is a disease, and that I shall cure you—drive it out of you completely.”

  Spotto looked a trifle askance at this promise. But the street was dark, and his instructor went on.

  “You must tell me your symptoms. My name is Bullwinkle—I am Mr. Samuel Bullwinkle. Of course you know that name?”

  Spotto nearly ruined his chance. He hesitated, and began: “Well, sir, I can’t quite—”

  “What?” cried the outraged theorist, stopping full in his walk. “What?”

  And Spotto felt that if “Ears” hove in sight now he would be given in charge on the spot. So he retrieved the error with native quickness. “Did you say Daniel, sir?” he asked.

  “No; Samuel—Samuel Bullwinkle.”

  “Oh, Samuel! Why, of course, sir,—Mr. Samuel Bullwinkle! I thought you said Daniel. I never expected, of course—why—not the great Mr. Samuel Bull-winkle?”

  “I am the Mr. Samuel Bullwinkle,” replied the other modestly, resuming his walk with stately gratification. “And I am disposed to take an interest in you,” he added, after a pause. “You must tell me your symptoms—your whole life. You must come and answer my questions—every day.”

  Spotto ventured a dubious cough.

  “I shall pay you, you know,” Mr. Bullwinkle pursued. “I shall pay for the information—pay according to the quality and quantity of that information, of course.”

  Spotto resolved that it should lack neither in quality nor quantity, if invention could help the matter.

  “And I’ll cure you into the bargain. I’ll undertake to cure you of your disease—criminality.”

  Spotto resolved that he might do his worst in that respect—at a reasonable price.

  “Of course,” Mr. Bullwinkle resumed, stopping again with sudden concern, “of course I take it you are an habitual criminal? This is not a mere first attempt, brought about by pressure of circumstances? You said something about being hungry, I think.”

  Plainly, if there were to be money in this adventure Spotto must be as hardened a criminal as possible. He grinned quietly. “Well,” he said, “you see that split knew me well enough.”

  “That split? Do you mean the detective?”

  “Yes, the ’tec. I know him, too. Known him for years. I’m just out from eighteen months ’ard, an’ ’e knows it. It’s all right; ’twasn’t no first attempt.”

  “Very good, then. If it had been, the case would have been no good to me. I’d rather have charged you out of hand, and be done with it. Now I think we will begin tomorrow. I was so interested to discover you, that it never struck me that it would be late before we could reach home. I think I will get back to the meeting, after all. Just listen. You know now that it is a disease you are suffering from—this disease of criminality, for which the law has so brutally punished you. You know, also, that I am here to cure you of that disease. Here is half a crown and my card. Come to my house tomorrow at ten, and you shall have more.”

  Half a crown was very little wool after so much cry, but Spotto Bird was a philosopher, and reflected that it was at least better than a clump of bony knuckles on his collar (“Ears” had enormous knuckles) and a charge at Marlborough Street in the morning. Moreover, there was more in it, it seemed, tomorrow, and perhaps more still afterward.

  Thus began Spotto Bird’s memorable month of honesty, though it was scarcely that. Rather it was a month in which he abandoned irregular thieving for regular lying on the handsomest scale, at five shillings a day. For he found that the biggest lies were received with most favour, and he obliged his patron accordingly.

  Mr. Bullwinkle lived in a very comfortable house at Highgate; and one of the first interesting things which Spotto ascertained ab
out him was that his watch was a gold one after all. Truly Spotto’s finger-tips must have grown sadly out of condition to have made the mistake they had.

  Other facts about Mr. Bullwinkle were not to be so definitely stated, except that he was engaged on a voluminous work of philosophy, an incompendious compendium of the universe in the Bullwinkle interpretation, which remained incomplete by reason of the author’s constant discovery or invention of new “views” on many things. Religions of quaint design he had favoured and abolished one after another, and now would have none of them; food, clothes, and drinks of all sorts he extolled and execrated from day to day, forming or joining leagues and associations right and left, and quarrelling with all of them in turn.

  And it was here that, amid the multitude of Mr. Bullwinkle’s principles, the one appeared which remained unchanging: since ever and persistently he proclaimed himself a man of peace, quarrelling unceasingly, with opportunity and with none; and, for a man of peace, taking the most absorbing interest in any sort of row of anybody else’s. Also offering “views” thereupon having nothing in common except this, that if the row were between his country and another, his country must be wrong, and if the row were between an honest man and a thief, then obviously the thief was a very ill-used person. Likewise, such was this peacemaker’s sympathy with rows that if he found a policeman quelling one in the street he invariably took his number. The one crime he would never excuse, the sole sin he would proclaim the outcome of sheer depravity, was disagreement with himself. His published works were contained in a vast scrap-book, consisting of innumerable letters to the newspapers. He was ever sedulous to wash a white man black, and always ready to take the breeks from a Highlander and make a silk purse from a sow’s ear.