McLevy (15 page)

“No harm in seeing. I don’t charge any of you, but I may just say that you are as safe in your seats there, as you could be if you had wings and used them. I have friends at the
door, so—quiet. Sim, I want to speak with you in the other room. Get a candle.”

All authority lies in bearing. The man obeyed like a machine, got his dip lighted, and followed me into the small room, (there were only two in the house,) when I took the light from him, with
the intention of looking into hidden places, but there was strangely enough no necessity for searching. There before me stood a huge trunk or box, more like a coal bunker or ship’s locker
than a chest, and sufficient to have held within its capacious sides a jeweller’s stock. Knocking my foot against it, 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 me till 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 know what’s inside, I will break it open.”

And going into the kitchen, I seized a big salamander, standing by the fire, and without saying a word to the no doubt wondering company, who were working hard to look easy, I returned to the
room. Up to this kind of work, I managed, by getting a lever point for my poker, to send the top of the box in splinters in a very few minutes, but with a crash which, like the laughter of my
friends in the kitchen, had more sound than music in it. And lo! there was a sight—a veritable curiosity box—a bazaar in miniature; in short, as I afterwards ascertained, all the
valuables abstracted not only from the house in Minto Street, but from that in Claremont Crescent, had been brought together, as if by the hand of Prospero’s little friend, for my
gratification, and yet with no bidding from me.

I had taken a large liberty, and I must take a larger to justify the first. I had provided myself with some of Mrs M’G—r’s marks—the lady in Minto Street—so I
straightway began to turn out the fine poplins and silks, which overlaid the jewellery at the bottom, till I could find a handkerchief or some article bearing a name, and that I very soon did, in a
damask towel, bearing “M’G. 6.”

I was now relieved from all fears of a misused freedom.

“All right,” said I.

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

The trunk, and all the remaining members of the gang, were straightway under 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 my mind was set, and for whom I would have given the whole contents of the locker; but I was not to be done out of them by a mere flight, which did not 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 down by the east coast to get to London, and I had no doubt Stewart would
accompany him, so I straightway got the Lieutenant to forward their portraits to Berwick-on-Tweed, Newcastle, and Shields, with directions to the different Lieutenants to seize and send them back,
to Edinburgh, where they were specially wanted. As matters turned out, this was a happy 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 for nothing, where the philanthropic
people of the old town, reversing their former fire-eating character, had prepared the town-hall, of ancient renown 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’s lodging at the very town-hall itself. But who had the privilege of giving out the tickets? Why, who better qualified than the Superintendent of Police himself, who could, from his
office, make the proper distinction between the really deserving applicants, and those to whom a jail was a more fitting place of abode? And so it was the Superintendent had the charge of the house
of refuge as well as the house of bondage. They had run away for housebreaking, and escaped the fiend M’Levy, and there was a neat squareness in playing off a trick upon his brother of
Berwick. A glimpse of the sunshine of fun comes well after the gloom of misfortune; besides, sweet is refuge to the houseless; and then a supper and a breakfast was not to be despised.

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

“Poor workmen, sir, going south in search of work,” said M’Sally; “would your 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 looked at the paper—“blue coat and grey trousers,” he repeated, as he glanced at M’Sally.
“Monkey jacket and buff vest,” looking again at the paper—“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 over features—“sharp nose, grey eyes,
fiery-coloured whiskers—dark eyes and black whiskers”—and so forth, until at last he came to the conclusion—“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 Berwiek.”

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

“What think you of the police-office of Edinburgh,” said the Superintendent, “where you, Hector M’Sally and Joseph Stewart, are, according to this paper I have in my
hands, and which I got just as you entered, charged with breaking into a house in Minto Street, and another in 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’ll find 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 the Superintendent.

“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 to Stewart, “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-up one, and a little awry, I think?”

“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 was easy for you to change them—and we have you to a button. Bertram, pass these gentlemen to a cell for the
night, and I shall get them sent off to Edinburgh in the morning.”

Next day we had a letter setting forth the dodge of the exchange, and the curious way they had fallen into the hands of the Superintendent. It was thence an easy business to get our two
gentlemen to go to the right shop—Norfolk Island—after having tried the wrong one at Berwick. They and Anderson were transported for seven years. M’Culloch was acquitted.

❖

I
t would be a lucky thing for thieves and robbers, when they are suspected, that people should make no inquiries after them; but, just as if they
became of greater importance by guilt, their friends seem often inclined to feel greater interest in them—a tendency which has often resulted very favourably to me. In June 1847, Josiah
Milstead, a clerk in a pawn-office at Woolwich, absconded with a sum of £60, a quantity of valuable jewellery, and many articles of wearing apparel. Information was sent to various towns,
among the rest to Edinburgh. We had of course the ordinary description of the person of Milstead, to which I gave my best study; but there was not such a peculiarity in his face and appearance as
to form a good representation in my mind, so as that I could seize him, if I met him promiscuously. I required in a case of this kind to be wary, lest I should pounce upon some gentleman, and bring
trouble upon myself, as well as injure the
prestige
of the force for prudence and perspicuity.

I have seldom found that a runaway does not leave some trace of where he is to be found with some person, who is dear to him either through relationship or love; or, if his flight has been
sudden, he will find some means of telling that person where he is. It is from such considerations that we are so often led to the vestibule of the Post-office, where we smell for other odours than
that of the musk which so often perfumes that place, as a kind of memory left by love-letters to those who send them away so hopefully. I was accordingly on my post there, and soon observed a young
man of genteel appearance and placid, if not melancholy countenance, who seemed to me to come dangerously within the description of my man. He called at the counter, and, finding no letter, came
out to the vestibule; and, as a matter of course—though at present it would, I was aware, do me no good, for he would get no letter addressed to him in his own name—I ascertained from
the clerk, that he had asked for a letter to a certain address, which I now forget. I instantly again got to the vestibule, where I found him hanging about with a melancholy look upon his face,
suggesting to me that he was a waif, and did not know what to make of himself; but I had other motives for loving him, for every time I looked at him, I was the more certain he was the object on
whom my heart ought to have been fixed, and was fixed. Yet I did not feel myself authorised to embrace him; not that I was a bashful lover, but a prudent one, who would make sure against a
rejection, with perhaps an insult.

While thus keeping my eye on him with the view of seeing him home,—an attention I have bestowed on many who never thanked me for it,—I observed among the crowd one or two
pickpockets; and, what was more strange, these light-fingered gentry seemed to be as fond of my swain as I was myself—a circumstance altogether singular, as in general they have very good
reasons for bestowing their favours on those to whom I show the greatest indifference. Watching them with even more interest than I generally feel, I saw one of them jerk a pocket-handkerchief out
of one of his outer pockets, and at the same instant a letter fell out upon the ground. I instantly seized the pickpocket; but just as instantly, my interesting gentleman of the melancholy face
picked up the letter, and making a bolt, was off. The whole affair occupied only an instant. I found that I had committed a slight mistake. If I had cared less about the pickpocket than the letter,
I would likely have had my man; but at least I had got something—the handkerchief; and, what was more, I got my suspicions of my man confirmed to a certainty, because, if that letter had not
been sufficient to betray him, he never would have made off, and left the silk handkerchief behind him.

Having taken the pickpocket to the office, I began to think of the singularity of this occurrence—what if this handkerchief, so wonderfully thrown before me as it were, should turn out to
be a part of the stolen property? That could soon be ascertained, but then in the meantime I might lose my man. I must, therefore, try to fall in with him again, trusting to the rule that lovers
meet, by some kind of chance, oftener than other people; but just while intending to take one of my contemplative walks, I learned at the office a piece of information which altered my scheme. A
letter had come from Woolwich, stating that Milstead had a sweetheart there, who had been indiscreet enough to let out that she corresponded with him under a name which he had found means to convey
to her. That name was enclosed, and what was my astonishment to find that it was the very one given me by the clerk at the Post-office? And here, too, was the rare example of two lovers after the
same man, and yet one of them not only not jealous, but absolutely grateful to and loving the rival!

I had now got hold of the clue, with which I had as yet been merely toying. I must keep a watch at the Post-office, for I was satisfied, from his not having got a letter when he called that
forenoon, he had one to get. He was clearly enough acquainted with the arrival of the mails, and I had only to be at my post next day at the same hour to get him into my embrace. I had, however, a
little difficulty in my way, for it was clear enough that he had some premonition, from my apprehension of the boy, that I might be again about the Post-office; and he might send some other person
for the letter. I required, therefore, to keep out of the way, and my plan was not to go into the clerks’ room at first, but to edge about in the vestibule, till I saw him come up. I
therefore took my stand in such a position that I could see him without being myself seen. I was aided in this by some collection of people.