by James McLevy
I soon saw that I had a difficult case in hand, and I told Mr Jackson as 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 came 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 horse-cloth. 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 real 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. A way wid you, and never show 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 Broker’s Secret
❖
I have often heard it said that the past part of my life must have been a harassi
ng and painful one; called on, as my reputation grew, in so many cases,—obliged to get up at midnight, to pursue thieves and recover property in so wide a range as a city with 200,000 inhabitants, and often with no clue to seize, but obliged in so many instances, to trust to chance. All this is true enough, and yet in fails in being a real description, insomuch as it leaves out the incidents that maintain and cheer the spirit,—for I need scarcely say, that if any profession now-a-days can be enlivened by adventure, it is that of a detective officer. With the enthusiasm of the sportsman, whose aim is merely to run down and destroy often innocent animals, he is impelled by the superior motive of benefiting mankind, by ridding society of pests, and restoring the broken fortunes of suffering victims; but, in addition to all this, his ingenuity is taxed while it is solicited by the sufferers, and replayed by the applause of a generous public. A single triumph of ingenuity has repaid me for many a night’s wandering and searching, with not even a trace to guide me.
On the 28th of September 1848, the house of Mr Gravat, butcher in Hanover Street, was entered in the forenoon, by keys, and a large quantity of jewellery and article of clothing were abstracted. I got immediate notice; and having examined the people who saw the thieves coming out of the stair, I was enabled, from my general knowledge of almost all the members of the tribe—at that time, though only twelve years ago, so much more numerous than now—to fix upon my men. I have made the cheering remark “so much more numerous then than now,” and it is suggestive of a consideration. Society itself has always made its own pests, and it astonishes one to think how long we have been in coming in to this thought,—nay, it is comparatively only a few years old, as if we had been always blind to the fact, that there are two kinds of thieves and robbers: one comprising those that have no choice but to continue their early habits, got from their parents and associates, and who are wicked from the necessities of their position; the others, those that are born outlaws. The latter are not so numerous as one would imagine, and though, from their natures, independent from any care or culture, could be easily managed. To reclaim is nearly out of the question; but a speculation on that subject is beyond my depth, my duty being to catch them, and get them punished. But I repeat that I don’t believe they are so numerous as is generally thought. As for the other class, let our Social Science friends just act up to the modern invention of anticipating the natural wants of human creatures, and the numbers of thieves and robbers will diminish further still.