McLevy

by James McLevy

  “I was thinking as much,” said I, with a revival of my laugh; “I know the man.”

  And so I might well say, for I had now got to the secret of the shaved whiskers.

  “What mean you?” said the Lieutenant.

  “Why, just that if you want the man, I will bring him to you. I will give you the reason of my confidence at another time.”

  “To be sure we want him,” was the rather sharp reply of my superior.

  “Then I will fetch him,” said I.

  And so I went direct to Brown’s Close, where I knew the copartnership of Gillies and M’Diarmid formerly carried on business, both in the domestic and trading way. Domestic! what a strange word as applied to these creatures—charm, as it is, to conjure up almost all the associations which are contained in the whole round of human happiness! Yes, I say domestic; happiness is a thing of accommodation. These beings will go forth in the morning in the spring of hope, and after threading dangers which are nothing less than wonderful, jinking the throw of the loop of the line which grazes their very shoulders, and turning and doubling in a thousand directions to escape justice, they meet at nightfall to enjoy the happiness of a home. The beefsteak, as it fries, gives out the ordinary sound, the plunk of the drawn cork is heard, and they narrate their hairbreadth escapes, their dangers, and their triumphs. They laugh, they sleep, but their enjoyment terminates with my knock at the door. The solitary inmate is wondering at the absence of the female without whom the word “domestic” becomes something like a mockery. It is needless to deny him affections; he has them, and she has them, as the tiger and the tigress have them. They don’t complain like other folk, because they don’t bark or growl at Providence; but the iron screw is in the heart. I have read its pangs in the very repression of its expression.

  I had been so quick in my movements that I went right in upon my man just as he had entered, no doubt after the cautious doublings consequent upon our prior interview. The salutation given me was a growl of the wrath which had been seething in the Pappin’s digestor of his heart.

  “What right have you to hound me in this way?” he cried, as he closed his fist and then ground his teeth.

  “Why, Dan,” said I, calmly, “I’m still curious about the whiskers.”

  “Whiskers again,” he roared.

  “Aye, just the whiskers,” said I. “I have told you I am curious about them, and I want to know why you parted with what you seemed so proud of?”

  “Gibe on; you’ll make nothing of me,” he cried again. “I defy you.”

  “Well, but I cannot give up the whiskers in that easy way,” said I, “because I have an impression that if the lady in Leith had not lost her purse, your whiskers would still have clothed your cheeks.”

  From which cheeks the colour fled in an instant. Even to the hardest of criminals the pinch of a fact is like the effect of a screw turned upon the heart. It is only we who can observe the changes of their expression. Dan knew, in short, that he was caught; and I have before remarked that the regular thieves can go through the business of a detection in a regular way.

  “Well,” he said, as he felt the closing noose, and with even a kind of grim smile, “I might as well have kept my hair.”

  “Never mind,” said I, “it will have time to grow in the jail. Come along. The cuffs?”

  “Oh no, I think you have no occasion. Them things are only for the irregulars, you know. But do you think you’ll mend Daniel Gillies by the jail?”

  “No,” said I, “I don’t expect it.”

  “Then why do you intend to send me there?”

  “Why,” replied I, in something like sympathy for one who I knew to be of those who are trained to vice before they have the choice of good or evil laid before them, “just because it is my trade.”

  And, strange as it may seem, I observed a tear start into his red eye.

  “Your trade,” said he, as he rubbed the cuff of his coat over his face, “your trade; and have you a better right to follow it than I have to pursue mine? You didn’t learn yours from your father and mother, did you?”

  “No, Dan, but I know you did.”

  “Yes, and the more’s the pity,” replied he, as he got even to an hysterical blubber. “I have had thoughts on the subject. Even when last in the Calton I could not sleep. Something inside told me I was wronged, but not by God—by man. I was trained by fiends who made money by what they taught me, and I have been pursued by fiends all my life. When was a good lesson ever given me, or a kindly word ever said to me, except by a preacher in the jail with a Bible in his hand? Suppose I had listened to him, and when I got out had taken that book into my hand, and had gone to the High Street and bawled out, ‘Put me to a trade, employ me, and give me wages.’ Who would have listened to me? A few pence from one, and the word ‘hypocrite’ from another, and then left to my old shifts, or starve. Take me up, but you’ll never mend me by punishment.”

  I always knew Dan to be a clever fellow, but I was not prepared for this burst. Yet I knew in my heart it was true.

  “Well,” said I, “Dan, I pity you. I have often thought that if that old villain David, and that old Jezebel Meg, who were your parents, had not corrupted you, you had heart and sense to be a good boy.”

  “Ay, and it has often wrung my heart,” he replied, “when I have seen others who were born near me, though only in Blackfriars’ Wynd, respectable and happy, and I a criminal in misery by the chance of birth; but all this is of no use now. Then where’s Bess, poor wretch?”

  “She’s in Leith jail.”

  “Right,” cried he, as he blubbered again. “I sent her there. She was a playmate of mine, and I led her on in the path into which I was led. She might have been as good as the best of them.”

  And the poor fellow, throwing himself on a chair, cried bitterly.

  I have encountered more than one of these scenes. They have only pained me, and seldom been of any service to the victims themselves. Were a thousand such cases sent up to the Privy Council, I doubt if their obduracy in endowing ragged and industrial schools would be in the slightest degree modified.

  I believe little more passed. I had my duty to perform, and Dan was not disobedient. That same evening he was sent to Leith. He was afterwards tried. He was identified by the lady and a boy who knew him, and sentenced to twelve months. Bess got off on the plea of not proven. I lost all trace of them, but have no hopes that either the one or the other was mended by the detection through the whiskers. The hair would grow again not more naturally than would spring up the old roots of evil planted by those who should have engrafted better shoots on the stock of nature.

  The Club Newspaper

  ❖

  The sliding scale is so far applicable to us as well as to thieves. As the latter proceed from crime to crime, the less to the greater—in the scarlet tint from the lighter to the deeper, so we slide on from trace to trace till we get to the fountain. And there is this similarity, too, between the cases. Our beginnings are small, but they are hopeful, and as the traces increase, we get more energetic and bolder: so with the thieves; there is an achieved success which leads to the greater triumph. Nay, I have known the parallel carried further. If we fail in one attempt, we try again; and I have a case to give, but not just now, where the urchin Gibbon’s first attempt at a till, from which he appropriated one farthing, and for which he was punished by confinement, was quickly succeeded by a greater triumph, to the amount of seventeen shillings and sixpence. My present case has a peculiarity, in so far as I contrived to make a paltry theft the lever whereby to raise up another of a serious description.

  In 1840, Mr Ellis, the manager of the Queen Street Club, was exposed to much trouble, suspicion, and difficulty, by complaint after complaint, on the part of the officers frequenting and sleeping in the house, that money, in five and ten-pound notes, had been taken from their portmanteaus. The case was painful to Mr Ellis in more respects than one; for although no suspicion could attach to him, yet in all such
concealed robberies, the natural shades that spread everywhere over all in positions liable to be suspected, require to be elevated or dispersed by the light of reason, and that light comes always with an effort. Mr Ellis came to the Office, and I got my charge. I saw at once that the culprit was one of the waiters; but then there were several in the house, and I knew all the difficulties of a case of that kind. The wider spread the suspicion, the less easy the concentration. I would do my best, and Mr Ellis had confidence at least in my zeal.

  Repairing, accordingly, to the Club one forenoon, I questioned Mr Ellis as to the habits of the waiters, and, in particular, which of them lived out of the house. I found that one man, Donald M’Leod, had a house in Rose Street, with a wife and no children; and in order that I may not take too much credit to myself, I may state that that man was more suspected by his master than any of the others. I was now so far on my way. I called the waiters together in a room with closed doors.

  “Now, gentlemen,” (that’s my polite way) “I have to inform you that there is a robber among you. Bags and portmanteaus have for a lengthened period been opened in this house, and sums of money extracted. All who are innocent will be glad to answer in the affirmative to my question. Will you consent to your trunks and persons being searched?”

  “Yes,” answered every one.

  “Donald M’Leod,” continued I, “an honest married man, with a decent wife, I have no doubt can have no objection to my going to his house and taking a look about it—not that I have any suspicion of him because he lives out of the Club, but that his trunks being at home, I must make him like the others.”

  “No objection,” replied honest Donald, whose honesty, however, did not sit so easy upon him as honest Rab’s of certain romantic notoriety.

  “You will all remain here till I finish my process in the house.”

  To which last question having got the answer I expected, I went out and told Mr Ellis to take care that no messenger should, in the meantime, be allowed to leave the house. The search among the trunks yielded me just as much as I expected—perhaps a little more, in the shape of certain love epistles, which might have made a little fortune to the street speech-criers. What a strange undercurrent, swirling in eddies, does love keep for ever moving! But what had I to do with love, who only wanted money,—two things that are so often cruelly separated, but which should be for ever joined.

  I then proceeded to Rose Street, and soon finding my house, I knocked gently. A quiet, decent-looking woman opened it.

  “Are you Mrs M’Leod?”

  “Ay,” she answered without fear or suspicion, for what did she know of James M’Levy the thief-catcher?

  “Well, my good woman,” said I, as I shut the door behind me somewhat carefully, and afterwards sat down, “you don’t know, I fancy, that some things have been amissing belonging to the gentlemen of the Club? Donald, no doubt, so far as I know, is innocent; but as all the waiters, like honest men, have consented that their trunks should be searched, it is but fair, you know, that I should take a look through your house, to put them all on a footing of equality.”

  “And that’s right,” said she, with really so little timidity, or rather with so much apparent sincerity, that, if I had not been M’Levy, I would have thought that Donald was an honest man after all.

  With this permission, and under so kindly a sanction, I commenced my search, by no means a superficial one—perhaps deeper in proportion to Mrs M’Leod’s seeming sincerity. It was not altogether unsuccessful—small thefts lead on in the scale to big ones, and superficial traces to deeper. I got some newspapers, one with the Club’s address, and putting them together, said—

  “Mrs M’Leod, you will allow me to take these papers; I fancy Mr Ellis allows Donald, as a favourite, to take away an old one now and then to amuse him at home, and, perhaps, to read to you.”

  “Nae doot,” said she, “ye dinna fancy Donald wad steal them.”

  “By no means. I never said it,” replied I. I was not bound to say I never thought it-—a little beyond my candour.

  So I bade Mrs M’Leod good day, and making my way to the Club, I told Mr Ellis the result of my search.

  “Well,” replied he, “you have got something, and you have got nothing.”

  “Had Donald M’Leod any authority from you to take these papers, and this one especially directed to the Club?”

  “Certainly not; but the matter is so small, that I can’t see how anything can be made of it.”

  “And you would give up the charge?”

  “Yes; it cannot lead to my money.”

  “Well,” said I, “if that is your decision, I bow to it; but I tell you this, that out of that solitary old newspaper I will get your money. Will you give me my own way?”

  “Well, I have heard so much of your success in desperate cases, I don’t care though I do.”

  “Agreed,” said I.

  And without further parley, I went to Donald, who was at the time in the lobby.

  “Donald,” said I, “I want you up to the Office.”

  “Me,” replied Donald, with an ounce less blood in his cheek-veins than he had a minute before, “do you think I’m the robber?”

  “I don’t say so,” said I; “but I want some information from you which I cannot so well get here.”

  And Donald, a little reconciled, and with a little of the blood in the act of returning, took his hat.

  When I got him to the Office, I immediately clapped him into a cell, and locking the door, was under way once more for Rose Street.

  “Mrs M’Leod,” said I, as the honest Gael opened the door, and shut it, “I am a little vexed.”

  “What’s the matter? I hope naething’s wrang wi’ Donald?”

  “Why, not much,” said I; “I am only troubled about these old useless newspapers. The authorities up the way—dangerous creatures these authorities—have taken it into their wise heads that Donald stole the papers from the Club; nay, they have locked him up in a cell as dark as pitch, with bread and water for fare, and, I fear, no hope of anything but judgment and punishment.”

  “Fearfu’ news!” said the woman. “Oh, terrible news! condemn a man for an auld newspaper!” and hiding her face in her hands, she burst into tears.

  I need not say I pitied her, for in reality I did; for at that time I had not the slightest reason to suppose that she could know that the papers were not given to Donald, or allowed to be taken as having served their purpose, and being consequently useless.

  “But there’s hope,” said I.

  “Hope!” she cried, “Hope!” as she took away her hands, “Whaur?—how?—speak, for God’s sake!”

  “The charge is a small one,” said I, “and I have no doubt it would be scored off, provided the missing money were got. I’m sure you don’t have it; I have searched the house; but perhaps”—

  “What?” she broke in, “what?”

  “Perhaps you may know through Donald where it is?”

  I watched her face, which was now pale. She began to think, and she did think; for if ever thought came out of a face, it might have been read in the point of her nose, sharpened by the collapse of the muscles through fear.

  If in this agony she sat a minute, she sat fully five; but I was patient. I turned my face from her, and looked at nothing, perhaps because my mind was directed to something. She was under a struggle; I heard the signs,—the quick breath, the heaving chest, the sobs, the efforts to suppress them,—still I was patient and pitiful. Sad duties ours! Yes, we must steel ourselves against human woes; nay, we must turn nature’s yearnings to the advantage of official selfishness. At length,

  “Are you sure the newspapers will be scored aff?”

  “Sure.”

  And then another sinking into the battle of her thoughts,—the lips quivering, the desultory movements of the hands, the jerking from one position to the other,—at length calmness—the calmness of one whose agony is over,—a rest of many minutes.

  “And
you’re sure,” she said again, as she fixed her eyes upon me, with such speech in them that my soul revolted at its very wickedness. Must I admit it? Yes, it is put upon us. A lie is one thing, the keeping deep down in our hearts the truth another. The one I abhor, the other is a duty. I knew that the money, if produced, would form a charge in place of the newspapers. I knew she didn’t think this; but I knew also I was not bound to tell her that she was wrong in not thinking it. Nay, there are worse cases than mine, that may be and are justified every day. When robbers are at the window, and you cry, “Bring me the gun,” when there is no gun in the house, you lie; but you are not bound to tell men whose hands are at your throat that you lie. There are necessities that go beyond all moral codes, and laugh at them. If this woman knew where that stolen money was, she was, by her own doing, under the sharp consequences of that necessity, and must abide the result as an atonement for an act not perpetrated under that necessity. Behold my logic! I am at the mercy of the public.

  These were not my thoughts at the time; my conduct; was merely the effect of them, and I was simply watchful. At length Mrs M’Leod rose from the chair,—she stood for a moment firm,—she then went into a closet, where, having remained a little, she came forth, to my astonishment, changed; she was dressed—shawl, bonnet, and veil.

  “Come with me,” she said in a low voice, sorrowful, but without a tremor.

  I said nothing, only obeyed. She shut the door, and proceeding down the stair, beckoned me to follow her. Not a word was spoken. We got down to the foot of the stair, then to the street, and I followed her as she led. We proceeded in this silent way until we came to Frederick Street. We then went along that street till she came to the area gate of a gentleman’s house; that gate she opened, and going down the stair, she again beckoned me to follow her. We now stood before the kitchen-door, at which she rapped. The knock was obeyed, and a young woman made her appearance.

  “Peggy,” said Mrs M’Leod in a whisper, which I heard very well, “I ha’e come for yon.”

  “Yon!” muttered I to myself; strange Scotch word—something like the mysterious “it,” when applied to a ghost.