McLevy

by James McLevy

  “Weel!” replied the girl, “come in.”

  We both entered, and were led along a dark passage till we came to a bedroom—no doubt that of the young woman. We entered it, and the servant, who seemed to be struck with the sympathy of our silence, proceeded to open a blue trunk, from which she took out a small bundle, composed of a roll of a red handkerchief.

  “There it is,” said she, as she put it into the hands of Mrs M’Leod.

  We then left the room, returning again to the kitchen, from which we proceeded into the area.

  “There’s the siller,” said she, as she put the bundle into my hands.

  I took the parcel and placed it in my pocket. We mounted the stair, and Mrs M’Leod left me. It is needless to say that I could not restrain my curiosity; nor did I try. I went down towards Princes Street Gardens, and seating myself on the parapet, proceeded to undo the red handkerchief. I found within a large bundle of bank notes, composed of tens and fives, and upon counting them found the amount to be £180. Now I fairly admit I was not satisfied. I wanted something more; and tying up my bundle I repaired again to Rose Street.

  “Mrs M’Leod,” said I, as I entered, “it will be necessary that you mark these notes for me. My masters, the authorities, will not believe I got them from you unless I get your name to them. Have you pen and ink?”

  “Ay,” said she, “but I daurna mark them, Donald would be angry.”

  “But you forget the authorities,” said I.

  “The authorities!” she repeated, with a kind of a tremble at the very sound of the word.

  “Yes, they may be angry, and you know the anger of the authorities is very different from that of Donald M’Leod.”

  “Very true,” replied she.

  And bringing the pen and ink I got her name to every note. I was now satisfied, and taking the direction of Queen Street, arrived at the Club, where I saw Mr Ellis.

  “How much money was taken altogether?” inquired I.

  “Why,” said he, “I collected the different complaints, and adding up the sums found they amounted to £180.”

  “The Highlanders are a very careful people,” said I. “The sum I have recovered, and which is tied up in this handkerchief, is just £180.”

  “Recovered!” said he, in astonishment. “Why, I thought it was a forlorn hope. Where in all the earth did you get it; or rather, I should ask, how?”

  “Just by means of the old newspaper with the name of the Club upon it. I think I told you that if I took my own way, and not yours, I would get the cash.”

  “You did,” replied he; “but to be very candid with you, I had no hope, though I admitted I had faith in your name. But tell me where you got it, for I am dying to know?”

  “I can hardly explain all in the meantime,” said I. “I am bent for the Office, and up for time. But I may inform you that Donald M’Leod is the man, and we must keep him in custody.”

  “The newspaper!” again ejaculated Mr Ellis, as if he was in great perplexity. “How a piece of printed paper should be the means of getting £180! Was the money marked upon it?”

  “No; yet I repeat it was the means of getting your money. Of course I cannot leave the notes with you. You will get them after Donald receives his sentence.”

  And with this I went away, leaving Mr Ellis to divine how the old newspaper came to have so much virtue. I then proceeded to the Office, where, having deposited the money, and explained the affair to the Superintendent, I was asked, “Where is the woman?”

  And I knew that this question would be asked of me, and I knew also what would be my answer.

  “Why, sir,” said I, “do you really think that I should be the man to apprehend that woman?”

  “Strictly, you should,” said he, with a smile; “but if ever there was a case in which an officer might be passed over for a duty, it is this. I would rather go for her myself than put this duty on you. I acknowledge you were justified in the words you used, that the newspapers would be scored, and that you were entitled to your mental reservation. The question may be said to be a subtle one, suited to the logic of casuists, but I affirm that it may be resolved by a sturdy moralist. As for the rest, you have shown a feeling creditable to the heart of a right man, in leaving the apprehension of the woman to another.”

  Mrs M’Leod was in the evening brought up by my assistant. The two were tried at the High Court, and Donald was sentenced to seven years’ transportation, while Mrs M’Leod, as being under the iron rule ot the Gael, was acquitted.

  The Laugh

  ❖

  I believe I have said, that the devil, if well examined, would be found to have a limp; and perhaps, this notion of mine may aptly enough be termed a detection, seeing I have had so many opportunities of getting near to him in those places where he rests himself in his long journeys from his principal dominions. Nor am I less satisfied that Chance is one of his female angels, who having been slighted by him, “peaches”, and tells the like of me his infirmity. Surely I cannot be blamed for an opinion, however absurd it may appear to those slow-pacing people who go so little to a side, where the real curiosities of human nature lie, when I have such a case to report as the robbery of Mr Blyth’s shop in the High Street, a little above the Fleshmarket Close, by M’Quarry, and a friend of that accomplished shoplifter.

  One morning, a good number of years ago,—1847, I think,—I was going from my house in the Canongate to my duties in the office, at my usual hour of eight in the morning. I had not much on my mind on that occasion. No charges were then on the books, and I was beginning to think I was gaining ground against the workers of iniquity. Perhaps my mind was perfectly vacant; no one of my images being called upon to stir in their quiet resting-place in my head, and show the likenesses to their originals. In this negative state of mind, whom should I see coming up but a well-known personage of the name of M’Quarry, with whom, though so well known to me, I wished much to be even more intimate, probably with the selfish view of knowing some of his secret adventures?

  It was quite natural I should fix my eye on him before he saw me, because, while I has nothing else to do, he was bent upon something.

  As I wish to mix a little instruction with the benefit derived from the mere lesson I teach of the insecurity of criminals, allow me to go aside with you for a moment to a close-end,—always my school-room,—and tell you that there is a great deal more in faces than is generally supposed. All men and women pretend, less or more, to the subject, but really their study is generally limited to the inquiry whether one is pleased or displeased with you when in talk. How few ever aspire to read people as they run, to guess what they are bent upon, and how things are going with them; and yet, what a field is open to the student of human nature here! I exclude the perambulators and loungers, of course, who are always simply engaged in being looked at. Their faces are set in a fix, and you can find nothing there but a steady waiting for admiration; but in the business people, and those not above domestic troubles, you can always find something readable. I keep to my own peculiar race, and I say I am seldom out when I get my eyes on them. I can, for instance, always tell an unlucky thief from a lucky one,—one with “speculation in his eye” from one without a job in contemplation,—one with full fobs from one with empty pockets,—one who suspects being scented from one who is on the scent. And therefore I derive a kind of benefit; for, just as I observe a great and sudden amount of cheerfulness in the eye of a celebrity, so do I become cheerful, and a dull dog infects me like sympathy. The reason is plain enough; their cheerfulness is that cause of the cheerfulness which is in me, insomuch as it inspires me with the wish to know the particular transaction which makes them happy and so many others sad, while their sadness implies that I have nothing to discover.

  On that morning, when M’Quarry came down the High Street, he was so cheerful that, as I have said, he did not see me. “Luck makes people lightly their best friends,” and so he lightlied me—the very thing that fixed my gaze on him. There was som
ething more than the mere blythesomeness in the usual clod face, which was sure proof that he had made some other unhappy—perhaps even Mr Blyth, whose shop he passed in a kind of half run, darting his eye inside with a kind of humorous triumph,—and continuing the same excited pace, he passed me. His copartner, whose name I don’t recollect, but who was quite familiar to me, was behind him some few yards. He went at the same pace, had the same look of merriment, threw the same darting look into the shop, passed on, and overtook his friend. Though not quite polite to look back upon your friends, I could not resist the impulse, and I just looked in time to see them burst out in a pretty joyous laugh together, and away they went arm-in-arm.

  A very simple affair. There was nothing wrong with Mr Blyth’s shop, so far as I could see; and after all, what was there in a look into a shop to interest me? It might have been different at night, when a lounger is reconnoitring for the purposes of a bolt in and a bolt out; but, independently of its being the morning, the young men were off with merely a laugh on their cheek. Yes, but I was satisfied of one thing, and that was, that some game of draughts had been played in that shop the previous night. “Ah!” thought I, “the little fishes, when too happy with the light of the sun on the top of the waters, get tipsy, and then topsy-turvy, and turning up their white bellies so as to be seen by the gulls, get both picked up and gobbled up.”

  With these thought I proceeded up the High Street, and entered the office. The Captain was already there, with a gentleman standing by him—no other then Mr Blyth, whose shop had so occupied my attention in my walk.

  “Oh, M’Levy, you’re just in time,” said the Captain. “Here is Mr Blyth with information that his shop has been broken into last night from behind, and a great quantity of silks carried off.

  “It is just a case for you, M’Levy,” said Mr Blyth, who gave me no time to speak; “for I fear that it is almost a desperate one. I mean we have no means of tracing, except through the goods. No one in the neighbourhood saw the burglars.”

  “It is a mere case of a search for the articles,” continued the Captain. “M’Levy, you can take charge. Call up some of the best searchers, and distribute them in the course of the day among the brokers. But we can expect nothing for a day or two—until the robbers begin to ‘give out’.”

  “There’s no occasion for calling in any of the men,” said I; “neither is there any occasion for troubling the brokers. I know who the robbers are, and will have them up in a couple of hours. Nay, if you wait, I will bring them to you.”

  “What,” cried the astonished silk-mercer, “already! You’re surely joking. Have you been up all night?”

  “No; in bed all night, sleeping as sound as a bat in winter.”

  “Then some policeman has been on the look-out, and told you.”

  “I have not spoken to a policeman today yet.”

  “Then how, in the name of wonder, have you got it?”

  “Just through the means of a laugh,” I replied, laughing myself.

  “Why, you are making a joke of my loss of a hundred guineas.”

  “A laugh is not quite so useless a thing as you imagine. The cackle of a goose saved a city on one occasion, and the cackle of these men, who are not geese, will save your silk-mercery. I tell you I will have the burglars with you, ay, in one hour, and with them your goods. Wait till I come.”

  “Well, no doubt you’re famous in your way, but I fear it won’t do to apprehend a man for a laugh.”

  “I’ve done it for a breath,” said I, “merely because it told me there was some fear in the breather of his breath being interrupted by a certain kind of handkerchief which you don’t deal in. Sit down, and keep yourself easy.”

  I accordingly set to my task, going direct to M’Quarry’s mother, in Hume’s Close; my assistant, as usual, with me. I opened the door, and went in just as his mother was giving him his breakfast.

  “You didn’t notice me this morning, M’Quarry, when you passed me at Mr Blyth’s door?” said I.

  The word Blyth struck him to the heart.

  “Blyth, wha is Mr Blyth?” said the mother, as she looked into her son’s pale face, her own being nearly of the same colour.

  “Why, bless you, don’t you know the man you bought these silks of, up in that bole there?” pointing to the likeliest place, at the same moment that I observed something like a fringe hanging out from the crevice made by the shrunk door.

  “There’s nae silk there,” said the mother.

  “All a d—d lie,” growled the son.

  “There’s no use for any words about that,” said I, placing a chair and mounting.

  On opening the door of the old cupboard, sunk in the wall, there were Mr Blyth’s scarfs, neckcloths, and ribbons, all stuffed in except that bit of fringe, which had claimed my eye, and convinced me more and more that the devil has a halt; but at that very moment the door of the room burst open, overturning the chair on which I stood, and laying me sprawling on my back, confounded, but still able enough to hear the words of the intruder.

  “Run, M’Quarry, M’Levy’s in the close!”

  “Yes, and here,” I cried, starting up and seizing the speaker, just as he got alarmed; no other but my friend whose laugh, along with M’Quarry’s, so delighted me in the morning.

  “The laugh’s on the other side now,” said I.

  The fellow struggled, but he was only a sapling; and as M’Quarry saw there were two to one, he started upon his feet and laid hold of me by the throat. I instantly changed hands, seizing the younger and weaker with my left, and, using the other against M’Quarry, pulled away his right, at the same time getting hold of his neckcloth, which I pulled so tight that he instantly became red in the face. I was afraid of the mother, who still held the knife in her hand with which she had been cutting the bread for her son’s breakfast; but the sight of her choking son produced such an effect upon her that she set up a scream sufficient to reach the head of the close. The sound had been heard by Mulholland, who, hastening up, relieved me of one of my opponents.

  “We give in,” said M’Quarry, as he gasped for breath.

  “That’s sensible” said I. “Then you walk up with me you know where; on with your bonnet. As for you, Mrs M’Quarry, I have to ask you to accompany us; not, perhaps, that I will trouble you much, as the silks may have been placed there without your knowledge; but as I need the room for half-an-hour, and must be sure of your not entering it when I am away, you go with us, and I lock the door.”

  They all came very quietly. I locked the door and took the key with me, and in a few minutes had them all lodged, without communicating my capture yet to Mr Blyth, who, I understood, was still waiting. I would go by and by, however, and taking two men I hastened and got up the silks.

  “Now, Mr Blyth, here are your silks and the robbers,” said I, as the prisoners were brought and the mercery. “It is not two hours yet, and as this affair began with a laugh I wish it to terminate with one.”

  A wish complied with on the instant by every one except the culprits.

  My story is ended, but there is a postscript. Mr Blyth could not, after he went away, understand my allusion to the laugh, and one day, as I was passing, he called me in, with a view to an explanation. That I gave him, much in the same way as I have given it to the reader. After considering a little, he said,—

  “Well, how simple this affair is after all. It was not so much your cleverness, M’Levy, as their folly, that got me my goods.

  “You never said a truer thing in your life, sir;” said I, “for people give M’Levy great praise for extraordinary powers. It is all nonsense. I am just in the position of the candid juggler, who tells his audience that there is no mystery at all in his art, when all is explained. My detections have been and are simple pieces of business,—far more simple than the schemes that end in non-detections,—and yet these have all the intricacy of some engines, which look fine on paper, but the very complexity of which prevents them from grinding your meal.”
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br />   ALSO AVAILABLE FROM POLYGON BY DAVID ASHTON

  SHADOW OF THE SERPENT

  Known as the father of forensics and a likely influence on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, real-life police inspector James McLevy is here reinvented by David Ashton in a thrilling mystery, Shadow of the Serpent.

  1880, Edinburgh, Election fever grips the city. But while the rich and educated argue about politics, in the dank wynds of the docks it’s a struggle just to stay alive. When a prostitute is brutally murdered, disturbing memories from thirty years ago are stirred in McLevy who is soon lured into a murky world of politics, perversion and deception - and the shadow of the serpent.

  FALL FROM GRACE

  The second in a new series of McLevy books, Fall from Grace revolves around the terrible Tay Bridge disaster. The story begins with a break-in and murder at the Edinburgh home of Sir Thomas Bouch, the enigmatic, egotistical builder of the Tay Bridge. McLevy is brought in to investigate. With the help of brothel madam Jean Brash, McLevy finds the murderer, but there is much, much more to unfold: murder, arson, sexual obsession and suicide.

  TRICK OF THE LIGHT

  The third in David Ashton’s series of McLevy thrillers, A Trick of the Light sees McLevy team up with Arthur Conan Doyle to pursue a ruthless killer. It is 1860 and a Confederate officer, Jonathen Sinclair, arrives in Edinburgh with a sheaf of money to purchase a blockade-runner from Clydeside shipbuilders. He is betrayed to the Union forces and is shot dead by their secret agents. Who are they and where is Sinclair’s money? Meanwhile, a beautiful young American spiritualist, Sophia Adler, is the toast of upper-class Edinburgh with her dramatic séances. However, she could yet prove to be the deadliest woman McLevy and Conan Doyle will ever encounter.

  NOR WILL HE SLEEP

  1887. The streets of Edinburgh seethe with youthful anarchy as two rival gangs of students, Scarlet Runners and White Devils, try to outdo each other in wild exploits. After a pitched battle between them, an old woman is found savagely battered to death in Leith Harbour. Enter Inspector James McLevy, a little more grizzled, but unchanging in his fierce desire to mete out justice. As the inspector delves further he meets up with one Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Jekyll and Hyde, in the city to bury his recently deceased father.