The Detections of Dr. Sam Johnson

by Lillian de la Torre

  “My inebrious friend Boswell was a true prophet, your Highness. I have found your diamond—in the bottom of the punch-bowl!”

  The last thing I remember is the rough feel of the carpet under my cheek.

  I opened my eyes with difficulty in the morning light. Dr. Johnson seemed to be sitting at my bedside.

  “How now, Bozzy,” cried he with unwonted geniality, “still unmanned?”

  “Yes, Sir,” I replied sheepishly. “And how do all friends in St. Martin’s Street—” memory began to return—“is Signor Viotti reconciled to lose his Miss and gain his Stradivarius? And has Prince Orloff indeed his Hindoo stone again?”

  “He has, then,” replied Dr. Johnson, “and the thief is much beholden to you for an hour’s clear start.”

  I rose to an elbow in excitement.

  “Pray tell me the story, Dr. Johnson, how came it out of the punch-bowl so pat?”

  Johnson: “Because I put it there.”

  Boswell: “Where did you find it?”

  Johnson: “Where the thief had hidden it to be carried away, in a lump of beeswax affixed to the sound-post of Viotti’s violin. This is an old trick of the professional jewel-thief. He’ll come into a shop, and snatch up a ring or a gem while the ’prentice’s back is turned, and quickly with a lump of softened beeswax he has brought with him he’ll affix it to the under side of the counter. The shopman may search him all day long, he’ll never find the ring; and tomorrow comes in his doxy, she knows where the beeswax is, and will quietly pick it off and carry it away.”

  Boswell: “Yet which of Dr. Burney’s guests was a professional jewel-thief?”

  Johnson: “Not one of them; but two were professional jewellers, to whom the trick is known. Neither do I think it a plot, whether against the diamond or the Stradivarius. But put yourself in the place of the young lapidary. He desires the girl, yet cannot have her without money. He sees her turning from him to a dangerous and charming new rival. He is deft and bold, and seems to himself to have lost all that makes life dear. Into his hands is passed a diamond of 50-odd carats, slightly held to a frame by a loop of soft gold. He examines it under a sconce set with prisms much the same size and shape. Now the theft of such an object, to any other man foolhardy and without profit, is to him exactly a source of pelf. He is himself a lapidary. He can cut the stone himself, thus destroying its identity, and providing himself with valuable gems that can be gradually in the course of his master’s business turned to profit. It is the work of a reckless moment to substitute a prism, and make the diamond his own. Fortune favoured him, in that Miss Burney and not Orloff restored it to its place about the neck of the Prince. Now the diamond is upon his person. He cannot keep it there; the risk is enormous. He must hide it. He remembers the jewel-thief’s trick, abstracts Miss Burney’s softened beeswax, and looks about for a place that cannot be searched, preferably one that he can later come at with ease. The violins! Can he affix the diamond to the inside of one of them, where short of taking it apart it cannot be come at? He is deft and desperate; he will try. He chooses Viotti’s. From this alone we might have concluded the Bettses were innocent; they would have pitched upon their own instrument. But Chinnery would choose Viotti’s, not only to throw the risk upon his rival, but also because Viotti frequents his master’s house; it will be easiest to come at. I do not think he would have blenched at shattering the precious thing to bits to come at the diamond again.”

  I shuddered.

  Johnson: “Leaving first, he could not know how his plans had gone awry when Viotti angrily repudiated the changed violin, and left it for Betts to carry away and open. And when he lay in wait for Viotti and saw him sans violin, what could he conclude but that the instrument was to seek at Burney’s?”

  Boswell: “I made sure ’twas Betts who tampered with the violin that he might make it his own; and fobbed us off with a taradiddle when we found it in his possession.”

  Johnson: “I thought otherwise when I saw ’twas beeswax had done the damage. The jewel-thief’s trick flashed into my mind, and I made sure that I had recovered the Orloff diamond.”

  Boswell: “Yet how were you sure that Betts was not the thief?”

  Johnson: “Because he yielded me the beeswax cheerfully and without a struggle, which he had not done had he hid therein a diamond worth a Mogul’s ransom. Yet I had not to guess, for the finger-mark with the double eddy promised to betray the thief with certainty.”

  Boswell: “Having discovered the thief, why did you let him go?”

  Johnson: “Because I never doubted but that Prince Orloff spoke no more than the truth when he said the thief should die—and I could not turn the boy over to death, once I had discovered the diamond. He took the warning and fled for it; though ’twas most obliging in Viotti to be in such a mighty passion with him, and so cover my meaning.”

  Boswell: “You presumed on fortune, in letting him go before you had assured yourself that you had recovered the diamond indeed.”

  Johnson: “Am I so foolish? I stripped back from the under side only enough beeswax to assure myself that it contained the Orloff diamond indeed, before ever I left the sign of the Golden Violin.”

  Boswell: “Pray, Sir, tell me one more thing: how did you account to Prince Orloff, for having found his diamond at the bottom of a bowl of punch?”

  Johnson fairly laughed aloud.

  “Easily. I told him ’twas the will of God.”

  [Everybody visited the Burneys—fiddlemakers and fiddlers, Viotti with his famous Strad, Orloff with his diamond—but not at the same time. Though the people are real, the events are fictitious.]

  THE BLACK STONE OF DR. DEE

  (Strawberry Hill, 1771)

  “’Tis a strange kind of thief, my dear nephew,” wrote Horace Walpole on a day in March, 1771, “that goes to the devil’s own trouble to break and enter, and then goes away with nothing for his trouble, not even a golden guinea out of a drawer full of them. But stay, you shall have the tale from the beginning.

  “’Twas Monday I had a courier from cousin Conway to tell me that my house in Arlington Street had been broken open in the night, and all my cabinets and trunks forced and plundered.

  “I was a good quarter of an hour before I recollected that it was very becoming to have philosophy enough not to care about what one does care for, if you don’t care there’s no philosophy in bearing it. I despatched my upper servant, breakfasted, fed the bantams as usual, and made no more hurry to town than Cincinnatus would if he had lost a basket of turnips. I left in my drawers 270 £. of bank bills and three hundred guineas, not to mention all my gold and silver coins, some inestimable miniatures, a little plate, and a good deal of furniture, under no guard but that of two maidens.

  “When I arrived, I found in three different chambers three cabinets, a large chest, and a glass case of china wide open, the locks not picked, but forced, and the doors of them broken to pieces. The miracle was, that I did not find the least thing missing!

  “In the cabinet of modern medals, there were, and so there are still, a series of English coins, with downright John Trot guineas, half-guineas, shillings, six-pences, and every kind of current money. Not a single piece was removed. Just so in the Greek and Roman cabinet; though in the latter were some drawers of papers, which they had tumbled and scattered about the floor. A great exchequer chest, which belonged to my father, the Prime Minister, was in the same room. Not being able to force the lock, the philosophers (for thieves that steal nothing deserve the title much more than Cincinnatus or I) had wrenched a great flapper of brass with such violence as to break it into seven pieces. The trunk contained a new set of chairs of French tapestry, two screens, rolls of prints, and a suit of silver stuff that I had made for the King’s wedding. All was turned topsy-turvy, and nothing stolen.

  “In short, they had broken out a panel in the door of the area, and unbarred and unbolted it, and gone out at the street-door, which they left wide open at five o’clock in the morning. A passe
nger had found it so, and alarmed the maids, one of whom ran naked into the street, and by her cries waked my Lord Romney, who lives opposite.

  “All London has fallen to reasoning on this marvellous adventure, and not an argument presents itself that some other does not contradict. I insist that I have a talisman.

  “You must know that last winter, being asked by Lord Vere to assist in settling Lady Betty Germaine’s auction, I found in an old catalogue of her collection this article, ‘The Black Stone into which Dr. Dee used to call his spirits.’ Dr. Dee, you must know, was a great conjuror in the days of Queen Elizabeth, and has written a folio of the dialogues he held with his imps. I asked eagerly for the stone. Lord Vere said he knew of no such thing, but if found, it should certainly be at my service. Alas, the stone was gone!

  “This winter I was again employed by Lord Frederick C—to do him the same service about his late father’s (the Duke of A—’s) collection. Among other odd things he produced a round piece of shining black marble in a leathern case, as big as the crown of a hat, and asked me what that possibly could be?

  “I screamed out, ‘O Lord, I am the only man in England that can tell you! It is Dr. Dee’s Black Stone!’

  “It certainly is; Lady Betty had formerly given away or sold, time out of mind, for she was a thousand years old, that part of the collection which contained natural philosophy. So, or since, the Black Stone had wandered into an auction, for the lotted paper is still on it. The late Duke of A—,who bought everything, bought it. Lord Frederick gave it to me; and if it was not this magical stone, which is only of high-polished coal, that preserved my chattels, in truth I cannot guess what did.”

  Thus, in gay mood, wrote Horace Walpole to his nephew, Lord Orford; and ’twas Lord Orford who, taking a soberer view, brought the letter to Dr. Sam: Johnson. ’Twas his belief, that the thief who had missed his mark in Arlington Street, might try again, and succeed, at his uncle’s Twickenham estate, the famous Gothick Castle of Strawberry Hill.

  Dr. Johnson, concurring with this view, found himself forthwith whisked off to Strawberry Hill; and to my delight, for I had never seen the place, Lord Orford accommodated me also with a seat in his coach.

  We found Strawberry Hill to be a little miniature imitation of the Gothick, with lath-and-plaster battlements and a smell of raw wood. Nevertheless, it had every Gothick appurtenance, a chapel a-building in the garden, a great garden-seat like a shell, an oratory with its niches, a hermitage under a bank. A little toy house across the mead housed Kitty Clive, late the darling of the stage.

  The chatelain of Strawberry greeted us in the library, when I perceived to my disquiet not only that he had not desired our presence or our assistance, but also that it was far from welcome to him. Indeed he looked at me askance when Orford named me, and knapped his thin lips together with ostentatious and ludicrous determination, as who should say, “Not one word shall pass my lips until this man and his notebook are out of earshot.”

  “What the devil do you mean, George,” he muttered aside to Lord Orford, “by bringing ursa major”—by this disrespectful designation he intended Dr. Johnson—“to Strawberry?”

  Dr. Johnson, by good fortune, was engrossed at the book-cases, oblivious of all else, but I watched the little passage enthralled. Mankind is my study.

  Mr. Walpole is a point-device creature with a faded kind of fineness to his countenance, and large eyes full of sensibility. He frowned pettishly upon his nephew. Lord Orford is higher than his uncle, and broader, and smells of Newmarket race meeting. His scalded red visage and his blank boiled eyes are susceptible of little change of expression, but a kind of grin broadened his loose mouth. He made no reply whatever, merely leered like a codfish, and after a moment our unwilling host shrugged, and dispatched a flunky to conduct us to our chambers.

  “The Blue Bedchamber, George. The Red Bedchamber, Dr. Johnson. And for Mr. Boswell, as you affect the Gothick, you shall lie in the Round Tower.”

  I heard Orford laughing to himself as he retired to the Blue Bedchamber. He sounded rather as if he could not stop.

  Leaving Dr. Johnson at the Red Bedchamber adjoining, I followed my guide the fifty-foot length of the Great Gallery. At the west end a noble Gothick doorway led by way of a passage into the newly completed Round Tower, which on this floor housed a handsome drawing-room. The flunky conducted me to the Round bedchamber above, on the two-pair-of-stairs floor.

  I took a romantick satisfaction in lodging in the Tower. The windows were mere slits in deep embrasures. Opposite the bed hung a portrait of a gentleman in tilting-armour; he held his casque in his hand. Over the deep fireplace was Hogarth’s portrait of Sarah Malcolm the Temple murderess, which he painted in Newgate the night before her execution. In her uneasy company I erased the stains of travel before descending.

  I found a distinguished company gathering in the Round Tower drawing-room. Mr. Walpole named me to them rather as if I had been a slug upon his roses. To my intense satisfaction, I found myself greeting the noble company upon a footing of acquaintanceship and mutual respect. They were Mr. Walpole’s neighbour, the handsome Duke of Argive, his equally handsome brother Lord Frederick Cammill, and Lord Frederick’s wife, Lady Mary.

  I stared covertly upon Lady Mary’s sweet face. She was the relict of the notorious Lawrence, Earl Fetters, who for her sake murdered his steward, and was hanged for it. Suffering had stamped its mark upon her, but she held her head proudly.

  To my mingled relief and chagrin, the Duchess of Argive was not one of us. She was the most famous beauty of the age. She had come to London a raw Irish girl, so beautiful she could not walk in St. James’s Park without a mob attending her; she had married the Duke of Hasilton one midnight with a ring from the bed-curtains; and when she tried to obtain for their son the Douglas patrimony, among those who defeated her was your humble servant, James Boswell—but that is all another story. Now she was by a second marriage the Duchess of Argive—and what would she say to James Boswell?

  “My wife will follow,” the Duke told Mr. Walpole, “in the carriage. The boy is ailing, and engages her attention.”

  “I fear you will never raise him,” said Lady Mary gently.

  “Nay, ma’am, he blooms in Argive; ’tis but the air of London sends him into a decline.”

  “Pray, Mr. Walpole,” Lord Frederick diverted the conversation, “has Dr. Johnson seen the treasures of Strawberry?”

  “No, sir,” replied our host, “he is newly arrived this past hour.”

  “May not he see them now,” begged Lord Frederick, “and we will all assist in the perambulation, and thus expend our time until our table at cards is complete?”

  I thought the Duke looked mighty bored, as the new saying is; but Dr. Johnson bowed polite acquiescence, and Mr. Walpole seized upon the proposal with enthusiasm.

  A great fire burned in the gallery as we admired the paintings with which the walls were hung, and the antique marbles that lined the hall.

  “Make way,” cried a rich deep voice with a chuckle in it, “for still another of Horrie’s antiquities!”

  Into the gallery like a City Company’s state barge surged Kitty Clive, the beloved actress, now a hearty ample woman of some sixty years.

  Orford, up to this time sunk in the sullens, brightened at sight of her.

  “Damme,” he shouted, “filly or mare, ’tis all one to me! Have at thee, Kitty!”

  He rumpled her, and had a box o’ the ear for his pains.

  “God bless you, Horrie,” cried Clive, spying my philosophick friend, “God bless you for bringing us Dr. Johnson. Sure I love to sit next to Dr. Johnson; he always entertains me.”

  So saying, she greeted the philosopher with a hearty buss, which Dr. Johnson, who esteemed himself for his gallant attentions to the ladies, returned with interest.

  I was assessing Mistress Clive’s ample frame, her broad red nosing shining like the sun in her broad red face, her brocaded gown as red, when turning to me she greeted me with
a great smacking kiss. She smelled of otto and sillabubs.

  In the hubbub of greeting the Clive, who must perforce buss every man present, the Duchess of Argive slipped quietly into the gallery. She wore pale grey, her colour was high, she greeted no one.

  “The boy?” asked the Duke quietly.

  “He mends,” she said, “he has purged, and he mends.”

  From the gallery we passed into the Tribune, which lay by the Round Tower. As the gentlemen stood back to bow the ladies through the door, Lady Mary, who stood nighest, made as if to enter. The Duchess touched her sleeve. Lady Mary stood still the length of a heart-beat. Then the colour stained her throat, and she drew back with downcast eyes to give her sister-in-law precedence. A little sigh escaped her lips. Behind the Duchess, Kitty Clive flounced through with her blunt nose at an even sharper angle than the beautiful Duchess’s chiselled one, burlesque in every waggle of her draperies. Dr. Johnson permitted himself a faint smile, Walpole looked pinched, and Orford guffawed; but the Cammills ignored the little scene.

  The Tribune was a curious barroco room, shaped like a square, with four bays. A star of yellow glass centered the ceiling. Here were housed many of our host’s choicest objects of curiosity. We gazed upon the dagger of Henry VIII, the silver-studded comb of Mary Queen of Scots, and the red hat of Cardinal Wolsey. In a glazed china cabinet we came upon the Black Stone of Dr. Dee. Everyone, Cammills included, crowded about to stare at it. Mr. Walpole was exalted as a showman.

  “’Tis my newest treasure,” said he, “the generous gift of the Duke of Argive by his brother, Lord Frederick—”

  The brothers acknowledged his bow, the Duke, I thought, a little grudgingly, Lord Frederick with that look of self-satisfaction which habitually adorned his handsome, rather vacant countenance.

  “You must know, Dr. Johnson,” continued Walpole blandly, “that Dee was an alchemist, and made gold for the King of Bohemia; and into this gazing glass he was wont to call his spirits.”