At War with Society; or, Tales of the Outcasts

by Rodrigues Ottolengui

  The Wrong Shop.

  It is only a state of _civilisation_ that can produce so strange arelation as that between detectives and robbers. In any other conditionof society it is inconceivable, for love is almost always mutual, andhatred reciprocal in rude states; and it is not very easy to conceive acondition where one party follows and seeks from a spirit ofwell-wishing, and another curses and flies from a spirit of hatred. Ifthere is any one we wish to see more than another, it is a robber; andif there is any creature out of the place of four letters a robberwishes to be away from, it is an officer of the law. It may seem strangeenough if I should be able to give a case where this was reversed, in amanner which has sometimes forced from me a laugh.

  In 1847, a house in Minto Street, and another in Claremont Crescent,were broken into, and robbed of a vast number of portable articles ofgreat value. The families had left the houses to go to the country; andthe robbers, being aware that there was nobody to disturb them, had goneabout their selection of articles with much artistic deliberation andskill, taking only those things which could be melted, such as silverutensils, or altered or dyed, such as silk dresses, shawls, and thelike. We got intimation first of the Minto Street affair, for it wassome time before it came to be known even to the proprietor that thehouse in Claremont Street had been disturbed. Having got my commission,I very soon came to the conclusion that, for a time at least, therecould be no discovery by tracing the articles; and just as soon toanother, that the whole were secreted, probably in a mass, in some ofthe lodging-houses resorted to by the gang--for that there was a gang Ihad no manner of doubt--nor was I at a loss about some of the componentparts of the crew,--at least I knew that one or two well-knownhousebreakers had been seen in the city, and their affinities are almosta matter of course with us.

  There was ingenuity, therefore, required in this affair beyond the merecare in dogging some of the artists to their dormitories, and this Isoon accomplished by tracing Jane Walker, one of their callets, to thehouse of one Sim at the West Port. Other bits of intelligencecontributed to the conclusion, that Sim's house was the sleeping placeof some of them, and the rendezvous of the whole pack. As I have alreadysaid, I have always had a craving for a full haul when I put out my net,and take my seat in the cobble to see the wily tribe get into themeshes. So on this occasion I made my arrangements with this view. At alate hour one night I took with me several constables and proceeded toSim's house. I arranged my men in such a way that egress was scarcelypossible, while some one would be ready to help me inside in the eventof an emergency; for it is no indifferent affair to go bang in upon anentire gang of desperate burglars, especially when there are women amongthem--a remark which requires merely this explanation, that the womenegg up the men to resistance, and the men have often a desire to shewoff their prowess before their dulcineas.

  Having presented myself at Sim's door, I heard a shout of merriment,indicative of a goodly company; and I confess the sound, though roughand brutal, was rather pleasant to me, for it satisfied me they were allthere, and, moreover, off their guard, through the seduction of theirtender dalliances. I am often fine in my self-introductions, but here Ifound my cue in bluntness. I opened the door with a sudden click of thesneck, and stood before as motley a crew of ruffians and viragoes as Iever remember to have seen. Nor was the effect all on one side. If I wasamazed at seeing such a collection of celebrities, they were not lessastonished at seeing me. Laughter did not need to hold her sides, norMockery to twist her chaps into mows, nor even Inebriety to flare upinto a rage. All was quiet in an instant, with every eye fixed upon meas if by a charm. No placating subtlety was of any use among that gang.They were up to every manoeuvre. Sim himself, James M'Culloch, JohnAnderson, Hector M'Sally, James Stewart, Agnes Hunter, Sarah Jack,Christian Anderson, and Jane Walker, had been all too well accustomed tosuch blandishments as mine, to be thrown off their guard beyond theinstant of the working of the first charm. They simply took me for adevil, who might seize their bodies for punishment, but could not insistupon their pledges to be his for ever. In short, they knew the extent ofmy power, as well as their necessities to resist it, but only ifresistance could be successful.

  I had stopt their merriment;--but just allow me, as I stand for a momentbefore them, to say, it is no merriment that these strange beings enjoy:their hearts have no part in their laughter, which is a mere dry shakingof the lungs, and better named as a cackle, or sometimes a vociferation.It is almost always the result of a personal gibe; for there is no realfriendship to restrain them, and their art is a deadly fly that kills atthe first leap. They seem to find some relief from the tearing devilwithin, by tearing their brother devils without; and though it is doneunder the semblance of fun, it is as cruel and wicked as they can makeit. But then the very cruelty in the personality gets applause; thelaugh rings, and every one has his turn to be quizzed and gibed--thebearing of which, again, is a kind of stern virtue among them. It is alla heart-burning, with a flickering ebullition over the surface; and theeffort seems to be to produce pain, and yet to make it pass as a kindof pleasure. I know them well; and could, at a distance, distinguishbetween the merriment of people with sound hearts, and that of theseartificial beings, as well as I could do were I among them, and knew thetwo sets of characters.

  A moment sufficed for my introduction.

  "There are some things that have gone amissing," said I, "and I want toknow whether any of them are here."

  "Nothing," said Sim; but the manner of his "nothing" shewed me it was amisnomer for "something."

  "No harm in seeing. I don't charge any of you, but I may just say thatyou are as safe in your seats there, as you could be if you had wingsand used them. I have friends at the door, so--quiet. Sim, I want tospeak with you in the other room. Get a candle."

  All authority lies in bearing. The man obeyed like a machine, got hisdip lighted, and followed me into the small room, (there were only twoin the house,) when I took the light from him, with the intention oflooking into hidden places, but there was strangely enough no necessityfor searching. There before me stood a huge trunk or box, more like acoal bunker or ship's locker than a chest, and sufficient to have heldwithin its capacious sides a jeweller's stock. Knocking my foot againstit, and finding it heavy with contents,

  "Why," said I, "how comes this to be here?"

  "All right," replied the man; "nothing of yours there."

  "Let me see," said I. "Get me the key."

  "The key is with the proprietor," said he, coolly. "Why you know, sir,it's an emigrant's box that there, and he has merely left it with metill the ship sails, when he will return for it--all right."

  "And there's nothing in it belonging to these gentry in the kitchen?"

  "Not a handkerchief."

  "Well," said I, "as I don't wish this trunk to _emigrate_ before I knowwhat's inside, I will break it open."

  And going into the kitchen, I seized a big salamander, standing by thefire, and without saying a word to the no doubt wondering company, whowere working hard to look easy, I returned to the room. Up to this kindof work, I managed, by getting a lever point for my poker, to send thetop of the box in splinters in a very few minutes, but with a crashwhich, like the laughter of my friends in the kitchen, had more soundthan music in it. And lo! there was a sight--a veritable curiositybox--a bazaar in miniature; in short, as I afterwards ascertained, allthe valuables abstracted not only from the house in Minto Street, butfrom that in Claremont Crescent, had been brought together, as if by thehand of Prospero's little friend, for my gratification, and yet with nobidding from me.

  I had taken a large liberty, and I must take a larger to justify thefirst. I had provided myself with some of Mrs M'G----r's marks--thelady in Minto Street--so I straightway began to turn out the finepoplins and silks, which overlaid the jewellery at the bottom, till Icould find a handkerchief or some article bearing a name, and that Ivery soon did, in a damask towel, bearing "M'G. 6." I was now relievedfrom all fears of a misused freedom.

 
; "All right," said I.

  And going to the door, I called on my men. There was here a littlemismanagement. They were not so close as they should have been, andM'Sally and Stewart, the real burglars, getting desperate, jostled thefirst officer, and pushing him up against the wall, escaped; nor werethe other men sufficiently on the alert to be able to intercept them, sothat they got themselves reserved, as it were, for a fate which is thereal burden of my story.

  The trunk, and all the remaining members of the gang, were straightwayunder better keeping than that of Mr Sim, who considered all _so_ right;but I had to lament the want of my _chiefs_, the very men on whom mymind was set, and for whom I would have given the whole contents of thelocker; but I was not to be done out of them by a mere flight, which didnot exclude me from a long shot, and that shot I proceeded to prepare.The prior history of M'Sally enabled me to suspect that he was away downby the east coast to get to London, and I had no doubt Stewart wouldaccompany him, so I straightway got the Lieutenant to forward theirportraits to Berwick-on-Tweed, Newcastle, and Shields, with directionsto the different Lieutenants to seize and send them back to Edinburgh,where they were specially wanted. As matters turned out, this was ahappy suggestion, and proved a comfort to me after my distress.

  My gentlemen, just as I suspected, had made their way down to Berwick,with very little money as it appeared, yet with such a locker at home,upon which they had expected to live and feast for many months, (alas,the vanity of human wishes!) and arrived there pretty late at night.They, of course, wanted lodgings, and why should they not get them fornothing, where the philanthropic people of the old town, reversing theirformer fire-eating character, had prepared the town-hall, of ancientrenown for bellicose orations, as a place of refuge for the destitute.The two refugees were even in their misfortunes inclined to be humorous,and took it into their heads to act the part of industrious "tramps,"travelling to the south in search of work, and apply for a night'slodging at the very town-hall itself. But who had the privilege ofgiving out the tickets? Why, who better qualified than theSuperintendent of Police himself, who could, from his office, make theproper distinction between the really deserving applicants, and those towhom a jail was a more fitting place of abode? And so it was theSuperintendent had the charge of the house of refuge as well as thehouse of bondage. They had run away for housebreaking, and escaped thefiend M'Levy, and there was a neat squareness in playing off a trickupon his brother of Berwick. A glimpse of the sunshine of fun comes wellafter the gloom of misfortune; besides, sweet is refuge to thehouseless; and then a supper and a breakfast was not to be despised.

  They were accordingly soon brought before the dispenser of refuge andjustice, who was busy at the time scanning a paper.

  "Poor workmen, sir, going south in search of work," said M'Sally; "wouldyour honour pass us to the town-hall?"

  "Where from?" said the Superintendent.

  "Aberdeen."

  "Your names?"

  "James M'Intosh and John Burnet," was the reply.

  "Blue coat and grey trousers," muttered the Superintendent, as he lookedat the paper--"blue coat and grey trousers," he repeated, as he glancedat M'Sally. "Monkey jacket and buff vest," looking again at thepaper--"monkey jacket and buff vest," directing his eyes to Stewart.

  "We have been travelling all day, sir," said Stewart, "and are weary;please pass us on."

  But the Superintendent was in no hurry.

  "Grey eyes and foxey whiskers," he muttered, again getting more curious,as he read and looked, and looked and read, still going overfeatures--"sharp nose, grey eyes, fiery-coloured whiskers--dark eyes andblack whiskers"--and so forth, until at last he came to theconclusion--"the very men."

  "Yes," he said, as he rose and touched a small bell, "I will pass you,but not to the town-hall of Berwick."

  "Any other quarters for poor destitutes will do, sir," said Stewart.

  "What think you of the police-office of Edinburgh," said theSuperintendent, "where you, Hector M'Sally and Joseph Stewart, are,according to this paper I have in my hands, and which I got just as youentered, charged with breaking into a house in Minto Street, and anotherin Claremont Crescent, and stealing therefrom many valuable articles."

  "We are not the men," said the two, determinedly.

  "Read your paper again, sir," said M'Sally, "and compare, and you'llfind we are not the men."

  The Superintendent was taken aback, and did look again.

  "Would you read out the description?" said M'Sally.

  "I think you have got on a blue coat and grey trousers," said theSuperintendent.

  "Yes, sir."

  "And you have got grey eyes and foxey whiskers?"

  "No, sir; black eyes and black whiskers."

  "And you," said the Superintendent, a little put out, turning toStewart, "you have a monkey-jacket and buff vest?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "And black eyes and beard?"

  "No, sir; grey eyes and light whiskers."

  "Well, then, how stand your noses? You"--to M'Sally--"have a turned-upone, and a little awry, I think?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "And you"--to Stewart--"have a very long one, raised in the middle?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Well, well; suppose the clothes of the one put upon the other--it waseasy for you to change them--and we have you to a button. Bertram, passthese gentlemen to a cell for the night, and I shall get them sent offto Edinburgh in the morning."

  Next day we had a letter setting forth the dodge of the exchange, andthe curious way they had fallen into the hands of the Superintendent. Itwas thence an easy business to get our two gentlemen to go to the rightshop--Norfolk Island--after having tried the wrong one at Berwick. Theyand Anderson were transported for seven years. M'Culloch was acquitted.