McLevy

by James McLevy

  And under the influence of this generous sentiment, he sent forth a cloud worthy of Jove’s breath to send it away into thin air, and leaving me, he struck off in the direction of the links, probably to see the golfers. As I looked after him, there he was blowing away in the distance, and apparently not less happy than King Coil, albeit that king was of a nation that loved another weed. I have known great smokers, but never found that the passion, like that of opium, goes on without a term. It has a conservative way about it, I think, and cares its own excess by producing a reaction in the stomach somehow. I have noticed, too, that the greatest smokers give up at some period of their lives, almost always—at least much oftener than the moderate-cloud compellers.

  But be all that as it may, it is certain that I looked upon my friend as a kind of tobacco-glutton, only a curiosity not in my way, nor did I expect that he would ever be so. I say not, being unaware that I have learned my readers a bad habit in looking for some ingenious connexion where none as yet exists—just as if I were a weaver of a cunning web, where the red thread is taken up where it suits me. By no means so, I may say; but will I thereby prevent you throwing your detective vision before my narrative, when I begin to tell you that some considerable time after this interview with my tobacco-fancier, I got information of a robbery of a grocer’s shop at Ratho, from which a great many articles were taken, among the rest several rolls of tobacco, besides a number of ounces? Just the man, you will say, and so said I, as I went over the description of the thief as given to the grocer by some neighbours who saw him hanging about the shop. I recollected my friend perfectly; but in order to abate your wonder at such coincidences, please to remember that I was in the habit of going up to every lounger I met, and that I have so retentive a remembrance of faces, that I have a hundred times picked out my man from impressions derived from these casual encounters. I had never seen my tobacco-lover before nor after, and knew no more where to go for him, than where to look for another such jolly smoker out of Holland.

  One night (just the old way) I was walking, with Mulholland behind me, down towards the west end of West Crosscauseway. My object at the time, I recollect, was to observe what was going on about Flinn’s house in that quarter; and I frankly confess, that so little hope had I of ever seeing my old friend of the Meadow Walk, that I was thinking nothing about him; nor when I saw a lounging-like fellow—it was in the gloaming—standing at the turn of the street speaking to a woman, had I the slightest suspicion that he was one on whom I had any claims for attention; and perhaps if there is to be a miracle in the matter, by hook or crook, it consisted in this, that with a view to get a nearer look of him to see whether he belonged to Flinn’s, I again went up to ask, what I did not want, a light. My first glance satisfied me that I had my tobacco-fancier before me; but I was perfectly satisfied he had no recollection of his friend of the Meadow Walk, and with this confidence I could enjoy a little fun. He took my pipe quite frankly.

  “Why, there’s nothing in it,” said he, with the old generosity, “I will fill it for you, for I don’t like to see a smoker with his pipe not only out, but empty.”

  And taking out a pretty large piece of tobacco, he twisted off a bit, took out a knife, and bidding me hold my hand, he cut it into shreds, filled my pipe, and lighted it.

  “You seem to have plenty of tobacco,” said I.

  “Oh yes,” said he; “and since you seem to be smoked out, I’ll give you a quid for supper.”

  And to be sure he was not slack in giving me at least a quarter of an ounce.

  “Capital stuff,” said I, as I blew away; “where do you get it?”

  “Special shops,” said he; “I won’t have your small green-shop article.

  I admit to have been a little cruel in this case, for I felt an inclination to play with my old friend, and straightway gave him the end of the thread he had drawn in the Meadows. By and by he got on in the old strain in praise of the object of his passion.

  “It makes me comfortable,” and so forth, reverting again to the rhyme, to the half of which he again demurred, and which I really rejoiced to hear, nor can help repeating—

  Tobacco and tobacco reek,

  It maks me weel when I’m sick;

  Tobacco and tobacco reek,

  When I’m weel it maks me sick.

  Restraining my laughter, and recurring again to the subject of the shop where such excellent stuff was to be got,

  “In Edinburgh?” said I.

  “No,” said he, grandly, “there’s no such thing in Edinburgh. It’s made by a special manufacturer, who uses the best young leaf from Virginia, and who wouldn’t put a piece of common continental stuff in—no an’ it were to make his fortune. Ah, he likes a good smoke himself, and that’s the reason, as I take it.”

  “It’s so wonderfully good stuff,” said I, preparing for my last whiff, “that if I knew where to send for half a pound, I would be at the expense of the carriage. I see no reason why you should keep it a secret; such a manufacturer deserves encouragement. Come, is it at Leith, where so much of the real thing is smuggled?”

  “Never uses smuggled tobacco,” said he, as he looked to the woman with complacent smile, as if, according to my thought, he wanted to appear big in her presence—a little simple even I myself in this thought, as you will see immediately. “I find no use,” he added, “in blowing in the Queen’s face.”

  “Ratho?” said I.

  And the word was no sooner out, than the girl went off like a flash, proving thereby that she was an accomplice, and he at the same instant; and, before I could seize him, he made up the

  Potterrow like a Cherokee Indian throwing away his calumet of peace in escaping from war. I made instantly after him, quickened by the conviction of my folly in uttering the charmed word without using at the same time my hand. Being supple in those days, and, though I say it, a first-rate runner, sufficient to have coped with Lapsley himself—whom I had afterwards something to do with, though not in the running line—I made up with my man in the entry leading from the Potterrow to Nicolson Square, where, collaring him, I brought him to a stand. He became quite peaceful, and as I walked him to the Office, I let him up to our old acquaintanceship—the recollection of the part he took in which, so like the conversation into which I had so playfully led him, made him bite his lip for his stupidity.

  “I fear you will now know,” said I, “whether your case of the starved wretch and the roll is applicable to your roll. I put you on your guard at the time, and you see what you have made of it.”

  “Tobacco!” said the poor fellow with a groan, which went to my heart like so many other groans necessitated to be shut out. “I began to smoke when a mere child. I imitated my father. The passion grew upon me by degrees, till I came to spend more money on it than I did upon meal. I was never happy unless I was steeped in the beloved lethargy, and always miserable when I could not get it. It has been to me what drink is to so many. I would have pawned my coat for a pipeful; ay, and I have pawned for it. Surely this is God’s work following the devil’s.”

  And letting his head drop upon his breast, he groaned again deeper than before.

  “Yes,” said I, “you have been upon the sliding scale. You began with a whiff; and you will end with a blast that will carry you to Botany Bay.”

  “Yes, yes,” he responded, “I now see that a very small gratification may be fed up into a passion, and that passion to a crime, and then the burst.” And after some time he added, “But maybe the judges may have pity on me; when they know how I was pushed on from less to more.”

  “Then they would pity all that come before them,” said I; “all crimes have small beginnings and big endings.”

  And so I took him to the Office, where I proceeded to search him, and here is something curious: He wore a kind of bonnet—a Gilmerton bonnet, because it is usually worn by the carters of that village. The article has often a hoop in it, to keep it light on the head; and concealed in the case of the hoop there were a numbe
r of plies of the stolen twist. Nor was this all. On pulling up the legs of his trousers, there were discovered three or four ply on each leg, serving the purpose of garters. Then within his neckeloth there were so many plies, that he might have been said to have had a tobacco neckerchief. You might have called him a tobacco idol, fitted for being set up to be worshipped by the votaries of the leaf.

  No doubt he admitted afterwards that he had stolen from the shop the other articles amissing, but he asserted that it was the desire to possess the tobacco that urged him to the robbery, and that once being in he had laid hold of whatever came to his hand. I cannot help remarking, that my poor tobacco-fancier paid dear for his quid, in giving for it seven long years of servitude in Botany Bay. I have sometimes wondered whether, when there, he ever took a pipe into his mouth. Not unlikely.

  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 show 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 Fleshmarket 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 show 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.

  At the time Dan left me, I was not in this grand way of thinking. Nay, to be very plain, I was laughing in my sleeve; because, in the first place, a detective is not a Methodist preacher; and in the second place, because I have a right to my fun as well as others; and in the third place, because I came to the conclusion that Dan Gillies had some reason for shaving his whiskers which ought to interest me. In short, I had no doubt that Dan and his “wife” had been at the ship-launch.

  With the laugh, I suppose, still hanging about my lips as a comfortable solace after my ineffectual hunt after the brewer’s clerk and the jolly maman, I entered the Office, where the first information I got was, that a lady had been robbed of her purse at Leith, and that a young wench was in hands there as having been an accomplice along with a swell of a pickpocket who had escaped.