McLevy (22 page)

Then came the rumble of the train down the tunnel, at the sound of which the passengers began to move, carrying their luggage to the edge of the platform, and all on the tiptoe of expectation.
But now I fairly admit that I never more regretted so much the want of half-a-dozen of eyes. The nimble artistes were all at work at the same time—they were, in short, in a hurry of
pocket-picking; and though myself cool enough, I was for an instant or two under the embarrassment of a choice to direct my vision from one to another, or to fix upon one. Miss Mary Smith was at
the farther end—Evans busy helping a fat lady with her luggage—the little Beaumont deep among floating silks, and invisible. My mark was Miss Grant, who was devoted to the first-class
passengers, and though versatile in the extreme, had a main chance in her eye, a lady who afterwards turned out to be Mrs C——n in Danube Street. From this lady, I saw her take a purse,
just as the silk gown was being pulled in after the body. The whistle blows, away goes the train, and our friends are left all but alone on the platform.

It was now our time. Moving slowly—for though they had been in a great hurry, that was no reason for my being so too—accompanied by Riley, I entered the door at the top of the
gangway, where we met the party coming up. Miss Mary Grant had not had time even to deposit her purse in her pocket, and Riley seizing her hand took it from her. They saw at once that they had been
watched, and the face of the Miss Mary, whom I had directed to the scene, paled under my eye. A sign to the porters behind me brought them ready to help, and the station-master coming forward, with
his assistance we bundled the whole four into the station-house. A telegraphic message was instantly sent to Burntisland, calling for the lady who had been robbed to return, and I then proceeded to
search my “party of pleasure”. The purse captured contained only 9s. 6d., but from their pockets altogether I took notes to the amount of £50. And next came an evidence of the
strength of that friendship which exists among this class of people, and which in those four, in particular, appeared to be so strong and heartfelt only a short time before. They swore beautiful
English oaths that no one of them was known to the other; and as to the unfortunate Mary, who had the purse, they all repudiated her, even the dapper Beaumont, who swore that he was an English
gentleman of family, connected distantly—how far, a point of honour prevented him from condescending on—with the noble family of that name. But if the unhappy Mary was thus disowned,
she could be a self-sacrifice, for she acknowledged that she did not know them, and that she had angled on her own hook. We had thus, like a bomb thrown among combustibles, severed a very close
connexion; but then I had the consolation to think that we would be able to bring them together again at the bar of the court, where, if they should be once more separated, they might celebrate the
occasion with tears.

It was, I admit, rather an occasion that, on which, helped by the station-master and the gallant porters, and escorted by an admiring crowd who wondered at such fine gentry being in the hands of
the police, I conducted my swells to my place of deposit. I’m not sure if we had not some hurras, though I did not court notoriety of this kind; but the moment the people got an inkling they
were English thieves, the old feelings between the nations seemed to rise up again—at least I could see nothing but satisfaction in the faces around us; nor was my satisfaction less when I
introduced my friends to my superior, who doubtless did not expect the honour of receiving in his chambers four persons so distinguished, one being no less than a Beaumont—by Jupiter, 5 feet
2 inches, by the line!

The great Jack Cade, after swaying thousands of people, at last fell into the hands of a very simple clown. So here, as we soon understood, I had had the good fortune, in a very accidental way,
of catching, at the very commencement of their Scotch career, four of the most celebrated of the English swells. They were quite well known to the authorities of London, Liverpool, and Manchester,
where they had exercised their skill with so much adroitness that they had slipt through many well-drawn loops of the law; and having escaped so often there, where the detectives are supposed to be
so much cleverer than ours, they had some grounds for the hope so well expressed by their hilarity, short-lived as it was, that they would again cross the borders well loaded with Scotch booty.

Next day Mrs C——n obeyed the telegraph—an instrument, by the by, which seems to have more command at the end of the wire than spoken or written words, the more by token,
perhaps, that it speaks like old Jove, through lightning. She at once identified the purse with the 9s. 6d.—yes, that 9s. 6d. which condemned parties who had ravished England of hundreds, and
brought down a pillar of the house of Beaumont. The trial was just as easy an affair as the capture. Sheriff Hallard, that judge so steeled against all difference between rich and poor, genteel or
ungenteel, tried them. I figured more than I desired or merited in his speech—which, by the by, I would like to reproduce, but I fear to affront the honour able judge’s eloquence. There
is no harm in an attempt at showing my powers of memory, when I give warning that they are feeble in forensic display, whatever they may be in retaining the faces of thieves.

“Prisoners, you have been found guilty of robbing from the person. It is not often that I have to pass sentence on people of your description from England, but I hope the circumstance of
my being a Scottish judge will not be held to sway me in the discharge of my duty. Yet I am not sure if the circumstance of your being English men and women is not a considerable aggravation of
your crime. What did Scotland ever do to you that you should come here, hundreds of miles, to prey upon her unwary subjects? Was it not rather that you thought her honest and simple people would
become easy victims in hands made expert by efforts to elude the grasp of English authorities? You forgot, too, that in comparison of England we are poor, and less able to lose what we earn by hard
labour. But such considerations have small weight with persons of your description, who, if you can get money to be spent in debauchery, care little whether it come from the rich or the poor. Now
the issue has proved that you had made a wrong calculation, not only as to the intelligence and sharpness of our people, but the boldness and adroitness of our detectives; and I hope you will bear
in mind, and tell your compeers in England, what we fear they sometimes forget, that we have not renounced our emblem of a thistle—the pricks of which you may expect to feel, when I now
sentence you to sixty days’ hard labour. I am only sorry it cannot be made months,—a period more suited to your offence. For the advantage you thus gain, you are indebted to that
cleverness in Mr M’Levy and his assistant by which you were so soon caught; for if you had been allowed to go on, you would have earned the attention of the High Court, and the privilege of
being transported. I hope you may profit by the lesson he has taught you.”

The Tobacco-Glutton

❖

I
t is almost a peculiarity of the thief that he is in his furtive appetite omnivorous. Everything that can be reduced to the chyle of money is
acceptable to him. While others have predilections, he has absolutely one. It is not that he is always, however, or even often in need, and therefore glad to seize whatever comes in his way. I have
known instances where he was by no means driven to his calling by necessity, and yet not only was the passion to appropriate strong in him, but he was at same time regardless of the kind of prey.
Yes; it would seem as if his passion sprang out of an inverted view of property, so that the word “yours” incited him to change its meaning. As a certain valorous bird becomes ready for
war the moment a brother of the same species is placed opposite to him on the barn-floor, so the regularly-trained “appropriator” gluggers and burns to be at a “possessor,”
as representing in his person some actual commodity. As a consequence of this strange feeling I have found, however unlikely it may appear, that thieves have really nothing of the common sense of
property—that is, love to it—after they obtain it. Unless for the supply of a want, they often treat what they have stolen as if they not only did not care for it, but absolutely wished
it out of their possession,—not from fear of being detected by its presence, but for some
loathing
not easily accounted for. I have a case, however, of a real predilective
artiste
, the more curious that it stands in my books almost alone.

The way in which I became acquainted with Peter Sutherland was singular enough. I was, in April 1837, walking in the Meadows, where I have more than once met wandering stagers whom I could turn
to account of my knowledge of mankind. I came up to a young man very busy sending from a black pipe large clouds of tobacco smoke. Always on the alert to add to my number of profiles, I felt some
curiosity about this lover of the weed, and going up to him, I made my very usual request for a light.

“By all means,” said he, as he drew out his matchbox (and matches were then dear, sometime after Jones’s monopoly) and struck for me what I wanted; “and I can fill your
pipe too,” said he, “for I like a smoker.”

“Very well,” said I, as I handed him my pipe, which was not out of the need of a supply; “I like a smoke, though I cannot very well tell why.”

“Why, just because, like me, you like it,” said he laughing; “it makes one comfortable. I deny the half of the rhyme—

It never makes me sick,—I smoke at all times, sick or well, night or day, in or out, working or idle.”

“You carry it farther than I do,” said I, “or, I rather think, than any body I ever knew. I cannot touch the pipe when I’m unwell.”

“I never found myself in that way yet,” replied he. “I believe if death could take a cutty within those grinning teeth of his, I would smoke a pipe with him.”

“But it must cost you much money,” said I, as I glanced at his seedy coat and squabashed hat.

“Oh, I can keep it off the price of my dinner,” was the reply.

“But does it not dry your throat and make you yearn for ale?”

“Never a bit; though water, I admit, is a bad smoking drink. I take the ale when I can get it, and if you’ll stand a pot, this minute I’m ready. If I can’t get it, I
stick to the tobacco.”

“And if you can’t get the tobacco,” said I, with more meaning perhaps than he wotted, “what do you do?”

“That never happened yet,’ replied he, with a chuckle, “and it never will.”

“You wouldn’t steal it would you?”—a question much in my way.

“I hope not,” said he; “but if I did, ’twould only be the starved wretch taking a roll out of the baker’s basket, and you know that’s not punishable. My roll
is just of another kind.”

“You’d better not try the experiment.”

“Never fear,” said he; “I intend always to smoke my own twist, and have a bit to give to a friend in need.”

And under the influence of this generous sentiment, he sent forth a cloud worthy of Jove’s breath to send it away into thin air, and leaving me, he struck off in the direction of the
links, probably to see the golfers. As I looked after him, there he was blowing away in the distance, and apparently not less happy than King Coil, albeit that king was of a nation that loved
another weed. I have known great smokers, but never found that the passion, like that of opium, goes on without a term. It has a conservative way about it, I think, and cares its own excess by
producing a reaction in the stomach somehow. I have noticed, too, that the greatest smokers give up at some period of their lives, almost always—at least much oftener than the moderate-cloud
compellers.

But be all that as it may, it is certain that I looked upon my friend as a kind of tobacco-glutton, only a curiosity not in my way, nor did I expect that he would ever be so. I say not, being
unaware that I have learned my readers a bad habit in looking for some ingenious connexion where none as yet exists—just as if I were a weaver of a cunning web, where the red thread is taken
up where it suits me. By no means so, I may say; but will I thereby prevent you throwing your detective vision before my narrative, when I begin to tell you that some considerable time after this
interview with my tobacco-fancier, I got information of a robbery of a grocer’s shop at Ratho, from which a great many articles were taken, among the rest several rolls of tobacco, besides a
number of ounces? Just the man, you will say, and so said I, as I went over the description of the thief as given to the grocer by some neighbours who saw him hanging about the shop. I recollected
my friend perfectly; but in order to abate your wonder at such coincidences, please to remember that I was in the habit of going up to every lounger I met, and that I have so retentive a
remembrance of faces, that I have a hundred times picked out my man from impressions derived from these casual encounters. I had never seen my tobacco-lover before nor after, and knew no more where
to go for him, than where to look for another such jolly smoker out of Holland.

One night (just the old way) I was walking, with Mulholland behind me, down towards the west end of West Crosscauseway. My object at the time, I recollect, was to observe what was going on about
Flinn’s house in that quarter; and I frankly confess, that so little hope had I of ever seeing my old friend of the Meadow Walk, that I was thinking nothing about him; nor when I saw a
lounging-like fellow—it was in the gloaming—standing at the turn of the street speaking to a woman, had I the slightest suspicion that he was one on whom I had any claims for attention;
and perhaps if there is to be a miracle in the matter, by hook or crook, it consisted in this, that with a view to get a nearer look of him to see whether he belonged to Flinn’s, I again went
up to ask, what I did not want, a light. My first glance satisfied me that I had my tobacco-fancier before me; but I was perfectly satisfied he had no recollection of his friend of the Meadow Walk,
and with this confidence I could enjoy a little fun. He took my pipe quite frankly.