McLevy (4 page)

He thought for a while. “But I wouldn’t have the life of a dog were I known as a peacher.”

“I’ll take care of you; don’t be afraid, and something may be done for you.”

Still doubts, and still the terror of being set upon by the gang. I could not help pitying the condition of these slaves to a tyranny that leaves them no chance of penitence or amendment; but
seeing the turning-point—the assurance of security—he was easily screwed up, yet I was, by his very first words of disclosure, discomfited. Looking up in my face,—

“It’s no use,” he said.

“What do you mean?” I replied, as I noticed something like a mysterious look about him.

“Why, the things,” said he, as if it was a revelation of something very dark, “are beyond the reach of anyone. Hamilton has got them, and we all know that when he has them they
can never be found.”

“That’s Hamilton the hawing broker in the Canongate,” said I.

“Yes, but you don’t know,” he continued, “that Hamilton has a secret place in his house, which no man has ever found, and nobody will ever find, where he puts all the
stolen articles he gets, and, I tell you, you’ll never find them.”

“Where is the secret place?”

“I don’t know. Nobody knows but himself and his wife.”

“You are certain it is within the house?”

“Yes.”

“And if you cannot tell I which part of the house it is, nor what kind of place it is, whether above ground or under, how do you come to know of it at all?”

“I cannot tell how it came to be known,” said he; all I can say is, that it is a secret among us.”

It now flashed upon me that this man, Thomas Hamilton, had been long able to put us at fault; and the information I now got explained to me his way of doing business. He was thought to be rich,
and rich he might well be, from a lucrative trade said to have been so well conducted. He was known to be a hawker as well as broker, going about the country, and disposing of articles which he
could not have exposed in Edinburgh; and having this secret place of deposit, whereby he could, as he so often had done, elude our diligent search, he was always at his ease. I had no doubt he had
carried on his system for a long period, and been enabled not only to save a deal of money, but to preserve among the fraternity, or rather sisterhood, of brokers a fair reputation.

Taking four men with me to watch, in case, upon my disturbing the secret fountain, some streams might take to running outside, I went in upon Mr Hamilton, whom I found in his lower place of
business, among those piles of furniture and other things which form so peculiar a feature of a broker’s shop in the Canongate. He knew me too well, and did not require to tell my errand;
yet, though perfectly aware that I had come, as many had done before, to search his house, he betrayed no fear; if, indeed, he did not appear perfectly indifferent.

“You are quite welcome,” he said; “I don’t think you will find any property here that has been stolen.”

I saw no necessity for a reply to a statement which I was in the habit of hearing every day, and silently commenced my survey through the shop or warehouse. I saw nothing there to take my fancy,
though one might have supposed that a mass of furniture was a very good covering for a concealed hole in the floor, and I might recur to that if I failed elsewhere. The only thing that I envied was
a hammer lying within reach; and, taking it up,

“Excuse me, said I.

“You may say so,” said he; “for I made that except the head with my own hands.”

“Oh, I’ll not injure it,” I rejoined.

He did not seem to understand this proceeding at all, but he never lost for a moment his confidence, if there was not rather a faint smile on his face, just as if he thought, “oh,
you’re vastly clever, but I’m a-head of you.”

I then proceeded up an inside stair, which communicated between the shop and the dwelling-house above, followed by my man, who led me into a sitting room. I expected nothing from a place into
which I was
led
, but I did not object to look about me, which I did very cursorily.

“Where is your bed-room?” I inquired, as I turned and went to a closet door. “This will be it, I fancy?”

“Ay,” drily, and to me hopefully.

On entering, I immediately began, without a moment’s notice, to apply the hammer to the wall, continuing my soundings gradually along over the fire-place, and on the next wall, and on and
on till I came to where the bed stood. It had curtains on it,—and here the weakness of vice, as usual, betrayed itself by its whispering revelations: Hamilton became uneasy about his bed,
held up the side curtains against the wall, and said, “Nothing there you see.”

“I didn’t expect anything in the bed, Mr Hamilton,” said I, “but please let the curtain fall till I see if the wall is all sound and healthy over the top of the bed, it
may come down and bury you and your wife some morning.”

A grim smile followed my remark, and I could have read the fate of my enterprise in his face. I continued my soundings, till, after half-a-hundred dull and very unsatisfactory answers, there was
one which thrilled through me, and I have no doubt, Hamilton also. Perhaps he had never in all his life heard any sound so like that produced by the shovelful of mould on the coffin-lid. Yet, so
differently do we estimate things, it was to me more like the ringing of a marriage-bell.

“You’re not sound here, just at this spot, Mr Hamilton; and then, to think it is quite over the head of your bed, where you and Mrs Hamilton sleep so innocently after the day’s
toil.”

On getting a chair and mounting, I observed a slight ruffle on the paper,—a part of that which covered all the four walls,—and, examining still more minutely, I thought I observed a
very thin fine crack, appearing as if a knife had been brought along it to the extent of a couple of inches. I then took out a small penknife, inserted it into the crack, gave it a slight pressure
down, and out started a very miniature door, which, on afterwards measuring, I found to be 8 inches by 6. It had a very peculiar and ingeniously-made hinge, on which it went so secretly, that the
paper over it appeared to be entire.

“A regular pigeon-hole, Mr Hamilton,” said I; “what is the use of this?”

“I never knew there was such a hole there,” he said; “it must have been made and left by the last tenant.”

“Who has perhaps left some jewels in it,” I rejoined; and, putting in my hand, I pulled out a very valuable gold watch.

“A good beginning,” I said, as I laid it on the bed. My next handful was a parcel containing a great portion of Mr Gravat’s jewellery.

“Quite a pose,” I continued, as I now laid that down; “there’s no use in people going so far for gold, when one can dig it out here with a penknife.”

And proceeding in the same way with all proper and decorous deliberation, I pulled handful after handful of all kinds of valuable things, from gold time-pieces to tiny rings, till I emptied the
large jewel-box and covered the bed.

“And now, Mr Hamilton, have you any large box or trunk about you, of small value, which you can lend me for an hour, to contain these things, and then my men will take them up to the
Police-office?”

“They must all have belonged to the last tenant,” he persisted in saying, as he turned out to comply with my request.

Presently he brought in a chest, and then I called in two of my men, who soon got the valuables packed, and carried them away.

“There are just two other jewels I want,” said I,—you and your wife.”

And, calling the other men, we marched the couple—the wife having come in, and been below, wondering what all their work was about—up to the office.

The parties were all brought to trial except Hunter. Hamilton was sentenced to seven years’ transportation, and the two lads to eighteen months’ imprisonment. The wife was acquitted
on the plea that she was under the command and influence of the husband.

No one can say that the fate of Hamilton was too severe. His resetship was probably not more criminal than the others, but the effect, in giving confidence to young men sufficiently inclined to
their evil ways otherwise, aggravated his case. I believe that the common remark that the resetter is worse than the thief, and upon which our judges proceed, is correct, if it may not, indeed, be
nearly self-evident; for while he in effect makes the thieves, he profits more than they, and besides, escapes the risks of personal danger.

❖

S
ome years ago, the scavenger whose district lies about the Royal Exchange, came to the office in a state of great excitement. He had a parcel in
his hand, and laying it on the table, said, “I’ve found something this morning you won’t guess.”

“A bag of gold, perhaps?” said I.

“I wish it had been,” said the man, looking at the parcel, a dirty rolled-up napkin, with increased fear; “it’s a bairn’s leg.”

“A bairn’s leg!” said I, taking up the parcel, and undoing it with something like a tremor in my own hand, which had never shaken when holding by the throat such men as Adam
M’Donald.

And there, to be sure, was a child’s leg, severed about the middle of the thigh. On examining it, it was not difficult to see that it was a part of a new-born infant, and a natural
curiosity suggested a special look to the severed end, to know what means had been taken to cut it from the body. The result was peculiar. It appeared as if a hatchet had been applied to cut the
bone, and that the operator had finished the work by dragging the member from the body,—a part of the muscle and integuments looking lacerated and torn. The leg was bleached, as if it had
lain in water for a time, and it was altogether a ghastly spectacle.

“Where did you find it?” I asked.

“Why,” replied the man, “I was sweeping about in Writers’ Court at gray dawn, and, with a turn of my broom, I threw out of a sewer something white; then it was so dark I
was obliged to stoop down to get a better look, and the five little toes appeared so strange that I staggered back, knowing very well now what it was. But I have always been afraid of dead bodies.
Then I tied it up in my handkerchief, more to conceal it from my own sight than for any other reason.”

“And you can’t tell where it came from?” said I.

“Not certainly,” answered he; “but I have a guess.”

And the man, an Irishman, looked very wise, as if his guess was a very dark ascertained reality, something terribly mysterious.

“Out with your guess, man,” said I; “it looks like a case of murder, and we must get at the root of it.”

“And I will be brought into trouble,” answered he; “faith, I’ll say no more. I’ve given you the leg, and that’s pretty well, anyhow. It’s not every day
you get the like o’ that brought to ye, all for nothing; and ye’re not content.”

“You know more than you have told us,” said I; “and how are we to be sure that you did not put the leg there yourself?”

“Put the leg there myself, and then bring it to you!” said he; “first kill the bairn, and then come to be hanged! Not just what an Irishman would do. We’re not so fond of
trouble as all that.”

“Trouble or no trouble, you must tell us where you think it came from, otherwise we will detain you as a suspected murderer.”

“Mercy save us! me a suspected murderer!” cried he, getting alarmed; “well now, to be plain, you see, the leg was lying just at the bottom of the main soil-pipe that comes from
the whole of the houses on the east side of the court, and it must be somebody in some family in some flat in some house in some part of the row that’s the mother,—that’s pretty
certain; and I think I have told you enough to get at the thief of a mother.”

The man, no doubt, pointed at the proper source, however vaguely; so taking him along with me I walked over to Writers’ Court, and, after examining the place where the leg was found, I was
in some degree satisfied the man was right. I was exceedingly unlikely that the member would be thrown down there by any one entering the court, or by any one from a window, for this would just
have been to exhibit a piece of evidence that a murder, or at least a concealed birth had taken place somewhere in the neighbourhood, and to send the officers of the law upon inquiry. Besides, the
leg was found in the gutter leading from the main pipe of the tenements, and, though there was no water flowing at the time there had been a sufficiency either on the previous night or early
morning to wash it to where it had lain.

But after coming to this conclusion, the difficulty took another shape, not less unpromising. The pipe, as the man truly said, was a main pipe, into which all the pipes of the different houses
led. One of these houses was Mr W—te’s inn, which contained several females, and the other divisions of flats had each its servant; but, in addition to all this there were females of a
higher grade throughout the lands, and I shrunk from an investigation so general, and carrying an imputation so terrible. My inquiry was not to be among people of degraded character, where a search
or a charge was only a thing of course,—doing no harm where they could not be more suspected than they deserved,—but among respectable families, some with females of tender feelings,
regardful of a reputation which, to be suspected, was to be lost for ever; and I required to be on my guard against precipitation and imprudence.

Yet my course so far was clear enough. I could commit no imprudence, while I might expect help, in confining my first inquiries to the heads of the families; and this I had resolved upon while
yet standing in the court in the hazy morning. The man and I were silent—he sweeping, and I meditating—when, in the stillness which yet prevailed, I heard a window drawn up in that
stealthy way I am accustomed to hear when crime is on the outlook. It was clear that the greatest care had been taken to avoid noise; but ten times the care, and a bottle of oil to boot, would not
have enabled this morning watcher to escape my ear. On the instant I slipt into an entry, the scavenger still sweeping away, and, notwithstanding of his shrewdness, not alive to an important part
of the play. I could see without being seen; and looking up, I saw a white cap with a young and pale face under it, peering down upon the court. I had so good a look of the object, that I could
have picked out that face, so peculiar was it, from among a thousand. I could even notice the eye, nervous and snatchy, and the secret-like movement of withdrawing the head as she saw the man, and
then protruding it a little again as she observed him busy. Then there was a careful survey, not to ascertain the kind of morning, or to converse with a neighbouring protruded head, but to watch,
and see, and hear what was going on below, where probably she had heard the voices of me and the man. Nay, I could have sworn that she directed her eye to the conduit—a suspicion on my part
which afterwards appeared to me to be absurd, as in the event of her being the criminal, and knowing the direction of the pipes, she never would have trusted her life to such an
open
mode
of concealment as sending the mutilated body down through the inside pipes, to be there exposed.