Dr. Sam Johnson, Detector

by Lillian de la Torre

  He slashed the wax of the near hand. It peeled back in a thin integument; under it was a hand of flesh, stiff and cold.

  “So,” said my friend, “the head is gone in the doctor’s portmanteau.”

  “We must lay an information,” I cried, “and set up the hue and cry.”

  “Ay,” responded Johnson, “if we cannot ourselves lay the murdering villain by the heels. Let us go.”

  At the word I was through the door in a trice. Beyond the threshold a sense of something missing, something wrong, halted me.

  I smiled as it came to me.

  “Why sir,” I called to my friend as he lingered, surveying the room about by the light of his candle, “now the master is fled, all is at sixes and sevens; even the famous parting salute of old Mother Shipton has ceased to operate.”

  “What, sir, no kick on the rump?” cried my curious friend. “Come, sir, you have sidled by or leapt through, or the lady had not failed you. You shall see, she will not fail me, for I shall take care to step rightly.”

  So saying, Johnson set down his candlestick, and trod firmly towards the door. There was neither a click nor a clatter, but the foot of Mother Shipton lifted in a mighty sweep of skirts behind Johnson’s back; when to my utter surprise my sturdy friend wheeled, caught the lifted heel, and brought the cloaked figure to the floor with a bone-shaking crash. The steeple hat rolled aside; the hair went with it. Johnson presented a pistol at the side of the head. I hurried up with my candle.

  “You have caught the mad surgeon!” I cried.

  “No, sir,” replied Johnson, stripping the wax mask from the face beneath, “but I have caught his murderer.”

  I advanced the candle, and looked into the sullen face of Micah Blount.

  There was no fight in Micah Blount. He marched meekly enough to the watch-house, and there we lodged him for safe-keeping. Early the next morning we had him before the magistrate.

  Micah made a full confession:

  “I knocked in his head,” he mumbled in his heavy voice, “and then I wondered where to hide him, for I had then no conveniency to make off with the body; nor did I dare to burn it, for the mistress would be sure to smell it. Then I thought of the WaxWork. I cloathed him like Earl Ferrers, and coated the head and hands with wax; but ’twould not do. In the end I took off the head and laid out the body in the WaxWork with the wax head to it. First I thought to melt down the wax body, but then I thought better of it, for I would need it when I could come by with a barrow and take the body off; so I hid it under the coals in the shed.”

  “Why did you burn the waistcoat with the copper buttons?”

  “Blood,” said Micah; his eyes looked inward.

  “Yet how came you,” I cried, “to be wearing your brother’s waistcoat?”

  “’Twas mine,” said Micah, “there were the two alike. They were my mother’s work, and the copper buttons were some my uncle came by in the French wars.”

  “So then,” said Johnson, “you donned the doctor’s cloathes, for you two were of a size, and put on his wig, and flapped his hat over your face and took the head away in his portmanteau.”

  “Ay.”

  “And when one called to you from the window you ran as if the Devil were at your heels; how could you know that, looking down on you from above in the moonlight, your mistress would see only a tall man wearing her husband’s cloathes, and think you the surgeon himself.”

  Micah said nothing.

  “And tonight you returned for the body, for it must be removed before the odour betrayed that it was other than wax. How did you hope to carry it safely off?” enquired Dr. Johnson.

  A light dawned on me.

  “The barrow!” I cried. “The barrow of potatoes!”

  Micah nodded.

  “’Twixt midnight and dawn every costermonger is abroad with his barrow,” he said. “Under the potatoes I might have wheeled him swiftly and safely down Water Lane till I came to the river, and so flung him off Dung Wharf, as I flung his head the night before.”

  The bereaved woman wailed loudly.

  “How could you,” she sobbed, “how could you treat your kind master so?”

  Micah ground his teeth.

  “He killed my brother,” he cried passionately. “He killed Jem and put him in a waxwork.”

  “Ay did he,” struck in the serving-wench, “and for why, Jem found the vault in the cellars where he hides the bones of all the men he kills. Jem told me so, he was mortal afeared of the doctor after he saw them heaps and heaps of bones lying in the vaults, and the doctor killed him to keep his tongue from wagging.”

  Micah’s eyes were full of tears.

  “Poor lad,” said Mr. Johnson with regret, “Dr. Clarke never killed anybody.”

  I stared in amazement.

  “What of the blood on the boy’s apron?”

  “Not blood, Mr. Boswell—cochineal.”

  “Then how came the highwayman to be built upon bones?” I demanded.

  “Ay,” struck in the wench, “and whence came them piles of bones in the cellars? The doctor, he kept the passage locked, but Jem got in and saw ’em, piles and piles of bones lying about.”

  “I carried the highwayman’s finger home with me,” Johnson related, “and when the wax was peeled from it any eye could see that it was no fresh bone, it was old and brittle. To make sure, I called upon my old friend the sexton of St. Dunstan’s, and he admitted me to look upon the bones of the charnel-house, where they have been shovelled out to make room for the newly dead under the church floor. He gave me such another finger bone, of one who had been dead these hundreds of years, before the new church was built and the new churchyard made up the lane.”

  Johnson sighed.

  “’Twas a painful reminder of mortality,” he said, “smelling of the grave, with the dust of ages over all. ’Twas with horror I saw that there were footprints in the dust. I followed them, and so found the passage that connects St. Dunstan’s with the WaxWork, for all these old edifices are honeycombed beneath with passages leading from one to another. I knew then where the doctor had found the highwayman’s bones, and how his scientifick bent had caused him to build his waxworks like one doing an anatomy in reverse, from the inside out.”

  “Then why did you run so quickly to the WaxWork when you heard about Jem Blount’s finger?” I asked.

  “Because the bone I had erected my speculations on,” replied my learned friend, “was a right forefinger. I had to be sure that the surgeon had not supplied a deficiency with the charnel-house bone; I had to see for myself that the other fingers were not the fingers of Jem Blount. They were not; they were all charnel-house bones.”

  “How,” I enquired curiously, “were you so sure that the surgeon was the cadaver and not the murderer?”

  “The face was gone,” replied my perspicacious friend, “but the hands were there. They were not the broad hands of Micah, but the surgeon’s fingers of the doctor.”

  “I marvel,” I admitted, “how you smoaked Micah in the weeds of the waxwork witch.”

  “I did not,” replied Johnson, “though I thought it possible that he might be lurking about; his secret was not safe while the wedding-suit of Earl Ferrers covered the cadaver of his murdered master. But I did not smoak him until the machinery, which had worked the day before, failed to operate. Even then it was but a surmise. I tempted him with my words. If he had not fallen into my trap, and moved, as a human being must, like a human being, not a clockwork, he might have got clear off; for a clockwork which has failed once may fail twice, and rouze no suspicion.”

  “What is this,” enquired the magistrate, who had heard thus far with keen interest, “of Jem Blount’s right forefinger?”

  “’Tis missing,” replied I.

  “Did this boy wear a red waistcoat with very particular copper buttons?”

  “Ay.”

  “Then,” said the magistrate, “I can lead you to the boy. He came to me three days gone with a cock-and-bull story of
his master having a heap of bones in his cellar; but he was brought to confess that he was a runaway ’prentice, and I could not credit him; and in short, he was committed to gaol for correction, and there he bides.”

  “Look to the young man!” cried Johnson.

  Micah’s face was a sickly green. As I watched him, he let go the bar he leaned on and slowly slid down in a heap.

  “’Tis a sturdy rogue,” said the magistrate, as the unfortunate boy was hauled to his feet. “Pray, Mr. Johnson, how had you the address to take him single-handed?”

  “’Twas not done with address,” replied Johnson with a smile, “’twas done with an empty pistol, which I made bold to borrow from my waxwork friend, James Maclaine, the gentleman highwayman.”

  The Second Sight of Dr. Sam: Johnson

  “Sir,” said the learned Dr. Sam: Johnson to the Laird of Raasay, “he who meddles with the uncanny, meddles with danger; but none the less for that, ’tis the duty of the philosopher, diligently to enquire into the truth of these matters.”

  All assented to my learned friend’s proposition, none dreaming how soon and how terribly his words were to be verified, and his intrepidity put to the test.

  No premonition of events to come disturbed the pleasure with which I saw my learned companion thus complacently domesticated upon the Isle of Raasay. Our long-cherished scheam of visiting the Western Islands of Scotland was now a reality; and it was in acknowledgement of the plans of the Laird for exploring the wonders of the isle that the respectable author of the Dictionary uttered these words.

  As he did so, he gazed with complacency upon his companions by the Laird’s fireside; a group of Highland gentlemen, shewing in face and bearing that superiority which consciousness of birth and learning most justifiably supplies. Of the family of MacLeod were the Laird himself, a sensible, polite, and most hospitable gentleman, and his brother, Dr. MacLeod, a civil medical man of good skill. These gentlemen shewed a strong family resemblance, being tall and strongly made, with firm ruddy countenances; genteelly apparelled in sad-coloured suits with clean ruffles.

  Their companions in the ingle-nook by the glowing peat fire were two brothers, Angus and Colin MacQueen, sons of the incumbent rector of the parish of Snizoort on Skye. They resembled one another, being lean, light, and active, with bony dark faces; wearing suits of scholarly black, and their own heavy dark hair cut short.

  The elder, Mr. Angus MacQueen, was a learned young man, a close observer of the natural phænomena of the island. He filled the trusted post of tutor to Raasay’s heir. The younger son, Colin, new returned from the University, had all his elder brother’s wide and curious learning, but displayed withal an ill-regulated instability of mind and a hectick behaviour, poorly held in check by respect for Raasay and my learned companion.

  Dr. Samuel Johnson’s character—nay, his figure and manner, are, I believe, more generally known than those of almost any man, yet it may not be superfluous here to attempt a sketch of him. His person was large, robust, I may say approaching to the gigantick, and grown unwieldy from corpulency. His countenance was naturally of the cast of an antient statue, but somewhat disfigured by the scars of that evil which it was formerly imagined the royal touch would cure. He was now in his sixty-fourth year, and was become a little dull of hearing. His sight had always been somewhat weak, yet so much does mind govern and even supply the deficiency of organs that his perceptions were uncommonly quick and accurate. His head and sometimes also his body shook with a kind of motion like the effect of a palsy; he appeared to be frequently disturbed by cramps or convulsive contractions, of the nature of that distemper called St. Vitus’s dance. He wore a full suit of plain brown cloathes with twisted-hair buttons of the same colour, a large bushy greyish wig, a plain shirt, black worsted stockings, and silver buckles. He had a loud voice and a slow deliberate utterance, which no doubt gave some additional weight to the sterling metal of his conversation. He had a constitutional melancholy the clouds of which darkened the brightness of his fancy and gave a gloomy cast to his whole course of thinking; yet, though grave and awful in his deportment when he thought it necessary or proper, he frequently indulged himself in pleasantry and sportive sallies. He was prone to superstition but not to credulity. Though his imagination might incline him to a belief of the marvellous, his vigorous reason examined the evidence with jealousy.

  Such was my learned friend during our visit to the Western Islands; and thus it was that on this first evening of our sojourn on Raasay our talk turned on the topography, the antiquities, and especially the superstitions of the Isle of Raasay.

  Dr. Johnson had professed himself eager to enquire into our Highland phænomenon of second sight.

  “Sir,” said Angus MacQueen, “I am resolved not to believe it, because it is founded on no principle.”

  “Then,” said Dr. Johnson, “there are many verified facts that you will not believe. What principle is there why the lodestone attracts iron? Why an egg produces a chicken by heat? Why a tree grows upward, when the natural tendency of all things is downward? Sir, it depends on the degree of evidence you have.”

  Young Angus MacQueen made no reply. Colin MacQueen rolled his wild dark eyes on the awe-inspiring figure of my friend as he asked:

  “What evidence would satisfy you?”

  “Whist, then, Colin,” interposed his brother, “let past things be.”

  “I knew a MacKenzie,” Dr. MacLeod said cheerfully, “who would faint away, and when he revived again he had visions to tell of. He told me upon one occasion, I should meet a funeral just at the fork of the road, and the bearers people I knew, and he named them, too. Well, sir, three weeks after, I did meet a funeral on that very road, and the very bearers he named. Was not that second sight?”

  “Sir,” said my friend, “what if this man lay a-dying, and your MacKenzie and the whole town knew who his friends would be to carry him to the grave?—Ay, and by the one nearest way to the graveyard?”

  “What do you say then to the women of Skye,” said the honest Laird, “who stopped me on the road to say that they had heard two taisks, and one an English one—”

  “What is a taisk?” I ventured to enquire. It is the part of a chronicler to omit no opportunity to clarify his record.

  “A taisk, Mr. Boswell, is the voice of one about to die. Many of us in the Highlands hear taisks though we have not the second sight.”

  “Sir,” said Dr. Johnson, “it is easy enough for the women of Skye to say what they heard. Did you hear it?”

  “I have not the gift,” said the Laird of Raasay, “but returning the same road, I met two funerals, and one was of an Englishwoman.”

  “Is there none in the Isle of Raasay with the second sight?” enquired my learned friend.

  “There is indeed,” replied Colin MacQueen in a low voice. “There is an old wife on the other side the island with the second sight. She foresaw my brother’s murder.”

  “How, sir!” exclaimed Dr. Johnson. “Murder! I had no intent to distress you.”

  “I will tell you the story.” Young MacQueen’s eyes glittered in the firelight. “Rory was younger than I, and meddled with the lasses where he had no concern. Old Kirstie comes one night to Angus and me, and falls to weeping, crying out that she has heard Rory’s taisk, and seen him lying dead with his head broke. Wasn’t it so, Angus?”

  “It was so,” said the young tutor sombrely.

  “And did it fall out so?” I enquired.

  “So it fell out, for Angus was there and saw it,” replied young Colin, “and if ’twas a grief to us, it broke old Kirstie’s heart; for it was her own son killed him. A strapping surly ghillie he was, Black Fergus they called him, and he broke Rory’s head for him over the bouman’s lass.”

  “Did the villain suffer for his crime?” enquired Dr. Johnson, profoundly struck by this tale of moral obliquity.

  “He did, sir, though we have neither court nor judge upon Raasay since the troubled days of the ’45; but rather than be
took he flung himself into the sea; and his mother saw him in a dream rising up out of the sea dripping wet, with his face rotted away.”

  “’Twould interest me much,” said Dr. Johnson, “if I might meet with this aged Sybil.”

  “Nothing is easier,” replied Dr. MacLeod, “for tomorrow I propose to shew you the strange caves of our eastern coast, and the old woman lives hard by. You shall interrogate her to your heart’s content.”

  “Sir,” said Dr. Johnson, “I am obliged to you. What is the nature of the caves you mention?”

  “They are sea caves,” replied Dr. MacLeod, “of great age and extent. No one has ever explored all their ramifications.”

  “My young friend MacQueen,” added the Laird, bowing to Angus, “who is botanist, lapidarian, and antiquary of our island, knows them better than any man; but even he has never penetrated to their depths.”

  “He fears the Kelpie,” said young Colin recklessly.

  “The Kelpie?” I echoed.

  “A water-demon,” said Colin. “He lives in the Kelpie Pool under the Kelpie’s Window, and he eats men.”

  “Such is the belief of the islanders,” assented Angus MacQueen. “In their superstition they connect this supernatural being with a certain natural orifice in the cave wall, giving upon a deep pool of the sea.”

  “The pool is bottomless,” struck in Colin, “and under it sits the Kelpie and hates mankind.”

  “It is impossible,” pronounced Dr. Johnson, “by its very nature, that any depression which contains water should lack a bottom.”

  “This one does,” muttered Colin.

  “’Tis perfectly true,” said Raasay, “that the Kelpie Pool has never been sounded.”

  “Thus do we see the credulity of ill-instructed men,” cried Dr. Johnson, with a glance of fire at young Colin, “who because a thing has never been done, conclude illogically that it cannot be done.”

  “Tomorrow you shall see the Kelpie Pool,” said the learned young tutor, “and judge for yourself. I can promise you also some interesting petrifications; and you shall see there a device which I have constructed to measure the rise and fall of the tides.”