CHAPTERL.A VISIT TO THE BLACK MUSEUM—PEACE AND BANDY-LEGGED BILL—THE BURGLARY AT DENMARK-HILL.After the attempted robbery at the jeweller’s Peace had deemed it advisable to leave his quarters for awhile.Bandy-legged Bill had agreed to take charge of the premises till he returned.Peace therefore betook himself to a coffee-shop at Putney, where he slept for several nights after his mishap.He took the precaution, also, of altering his appearance as much as possible, and to carry this into effect he had made a suit of clothes dissimilar in every respect to those he was accustomed to wear; but, to say the truth, all these arrangements were quite needless, for the police had never had the faintest clue to the real culprit, and in a short time gave the matter up as hopeless.Indeed, to say the truth, they were so ashamed of their own want of foresight, that they were but too glad to let the recollection of blundering die out as speedily as possible.The constable who had but recently joined the force was made a scapegoat by his companions, who threw all the blame upon him.He was reprimanded by the superintendent, who enjoined him to be more careful for the future.The young fellow promised not to make such a mistake again if he could help it, and justice was satisfied, and the majesty of the law vindicated.Peace’s coat and hat, which had been left behind at the jeweller’s, were for some time in charge of the police. When all hope of finding its owner had been given up the garments in question were conveyed to what is termed the “Black Museum” in Scotland-yard.This place is one of the sights of London, but it is rare indeed that any stranger is admitted into its sacred precincts. The uninitiated may possibly feel some interest in a description of this receptacle for criminal curiosities.We subjoin an account of the place, which the reader may rest assured is genuine.“Take care how you step,” said a courteous official, who preceded the visitor up a staircase in one of the houses in Scotland-yard, and opened a door on an upper story.“We are obliged to throw a great deal of this about;” the substance in question was a disenfecting powder.The room into which we were conducted was a large bare-floored apartment, with barred windows, fitted up with wide shelves, which were divided into compartments, and their contents were liberally sprinkled with the all-pervading powder.The room is that in which the articles of property taken from convicts are stowed away until they are claimed by their owners.Of course there was not much chance of any one coming forward to claim Peace’s hat and coat from the stand in the centre of this receptacle, of the objects of the “unlawful possessor” class, to which a large room up stairs is also devoted.Overhead is the “Black Museum,” in which during the last three yearspieces de conviction, which until then had been kept indiscriminately with the other property of criminals, have been arranged and labelled, forming a ghastly, squalid, and suggestive show.On entering the lower room the visitor is struck by its odd resemblance to a seed shop.Hundreds of hooks stud the rims of the shelves and the sides of the compartments, and from them are suspended hundreds of little packets neatly made up in brown paper, tied with white twine, and severally distinguished by large parchment labels, each bearing a neat inscription.The packets contain small articles taken from the prisoners, who in due course, after they are discharged from prison will be brought to Scotland-yard, and their portraits taken by force should they object to that process.The larger things are deposited in the compartments of the shelves, and every item, no matter how insignificant, is entered into the proper register.A motley collection are the larger articles, with a preponderance among them of grimy pocket-books and greasy purses.But there are valuable things in some of those parcels, and downstairs in the officials’ room is a massive iron safe, fitted with sliding shelves, in which is kept a large collection of watches, rings, choice pins, scent bottles, pencil cases, and other jewellery, which are either the lawful property of prisoners or have been found in their unlawful possession and confiscated, but for whom no owners have been discovered.Among the watches are some beautiful specimens. One in particular, taken from a costermonger, of exquisite workmanship and ornamentation, is valued at fifty pounds.The prisoners’ property room is scrupulously clean and tidy, but the look of it is forlorn and squalid, the powder lying thick on everything, and the scent of moth and rot is in the air.Great bales of cloth and woollen stuff occupy the shelves of the central stand.They are shaken and beaten and turned, but all to no avail; the moth and rot get at them, and the unwholesome weirdness peculiar to once worn but long unused garments is upon the articles of wearing apparel which are hung or folded up in the room.This impression comes more strongly upon the visitor when he goes up higher still into the topmost apartment, where heaps of clothing hang upon the walls—some new, some worn.The heaps of shawls have a draggled and furtive look, and some children’s clothing has a touch of its inseparable prettiness, even here.Old books, a picture or two, some worthless table ornaments, innumerable articles which could not be described or classed except as odds and ends, form a portion of the collection which goes on accumulating, and which has no ultimate destination.What is to become of all this? asks the visitor, and is answered to his surprise that nobody knows, that the things are nobody’s property, and nobody has the power to do anything with them.A piece of information which makes them more ghastly and nightmare-like to the imagination than before.An ever-growing dust heap formed of thieves’ clothing and unlawful possessions, which nobody can cart away to distribute or bury out of sight for evermore—an accumulating banquet spread for the moth, the rust, and the rat—the contents of these rooms are far from pleasant to think of.It seems supremely ridiculous, but it is a fact, that nothing but a legislative measure could rid the premises of these rotting garments, out of every fold of which one might shake with the dust an image of squalor, crime, and punishment.Outside the door of the “Black Museum” is a shelf in the wall of the landing place.The visitor passing it is aware of a huddled heap of dirty coats, a serge gown, and a coarse kind of rug—the skin of an animal, with red and white hair upon it.Under the shelf, on the floor, lies some rough packing cloth.He passes the heap carelessly, and enters the museum.What are his first impressions of it?They are various. That it is like a bit out of a gamekeeper’s room, with a bigger bit out of a smith’s forge, a touch of a carpenter’s workshop, a broad suggestion of a harness-room, something of a marine store complexion (and a good deal of its odour), a lump of an open-air stall in front of a pawnbroker’s shop, a little of the barrack-room gun-rack, with no bright barrels, enforced a general air of a lumber-room, with just a dash of an anatomical museum; but above all, and increasing with every moment’s prolonged observation, a likeness to the cutlery booth in a foreign fair, the articles being so rusty that the said booth might have been shut up for full half-a-century, and the salesman and his customers were all ghosts.Opposite the door, and on the face of the wall to the right, are displayed on a wooden shelf with iron rings, which convey to the visitor a hint of the open-air stall in front of a pawn-shop in a very small way of business indeed, a common looking-glass in a wooden frame, four black glass buttons, two wisps of rope, a pair of trumpery ear-rings in card-box, two bullets, a pipe, a cluster of soft light brown hair wound round a pad, a comb, a pocket-knife, and a little wooden stand covered with glass, are the most noticeable articles. On the shelf to the right are a dirty Prayer-book, a pocket dictionary, a pair of boots, a gaudy bag worked in beads, and the crushed remains of a woman’s bonnet, made of the commonest black lace, and flattened into shapelessness.In both these instances the other impressions of the place came in too, for over the shelf fronting the door hung workmen’s tools, hammer, and cleaver, and spade, and beside them to the right is just such a bundle as adorns the walls of a marine-store. It consists of a gown, a petticoat of cheap, poor stuff, bearing dreadful dim stains, and a tattered crinoline.The visitor is in the presence of the objects which perpetuate the memory of two peculiarly horrible crimes.The soft, brown hair is that of Harriet Lane, murdered by Wainwright; the buttons and the earrings are those which were found in the earth where her body had been buried.The bullets were taken out of her skull. The object under the glass case is the several pieces of her skin which completed the identification of her body. The wisps of rope dragged her out of the earth under the warehouse; the cleaver, the hammer, and spade are the implements with which the horrible deed, which led to Wainwright’s detection, was done.The knife was Thomas Wainwright’s, the pipe was Henry’s, and when the visitor is leaving the museum he will be shown in the pack-cloth on the floor under the shelf outside the door the wrapper in which the dismembered body was packed, and one of the dirty coats—a horrid thing, with its hideous rents and smears—Wainwright’s vesture on the occasion.The coat of the captain of the “Lennie,” with the gash in the cloth, torn by the knife of his murderer, and eaten through and through with rot and moth, is not nearly so disgusting an object; and as for the serge robe of that poor rogue, “Professor Zandavesta,” and the little cloak of the confiscated “anatomical” wax African, who grins awfully in one corner of the museum, a real skeleton hand and arm considerably hidden behind him, they are quite cheerful to look at in comparison.The Prayer-book and the other pitiful objects upon the shelf to the right were found on the body of Maria Clousen, who was murdered in Kidbrook-lane; the blood and mud-stained clothes were hers, and they contrast with grim-irony as evidences of an unpunished crime, with the all-gory objects which tell of one brother hanged and the other transported.Along the wall, on the right side of the room, is ranged a choice collection of guns, crowbars, and “jemmies,” the latter implements of the housebreaking industry, which admit of great variety, and are susceptible of highly artistic handling; and among them is a pair of tongs unevenly rusted, and with a dirty paper book written all over with incoherent sentences attached to it.The tongs are those with which a man named Macdonald killed his wife some four or five years ago. He was hanged, as also were many of the proprietors of the horrid labelled assortment of hammers, knives, including the bread-carving and pocket varieties, razors and pistols which suggest a booth in a fair.There is dried blood on all the knives and razors, and some of the hammers also, and every one of them stands for a murder or suicide.In a terrible number of cases they record the murder of a wife by her husband.Several of the pistols, mostly beautiful weapons, are the instruments of suicide, and each is labelled with the name, date, and place.The simple suicides are almost all among the higher class of society; and when the visitor asks how the pistol, with which a gentleman of wealth and station shot himself, came into the keeping of the museum, he is told—“The family mostly do not like to have it, and so they ask the police to take it away.”In a corner hang the clothes of theRev.J. Watson, who murdered his wife at Stockwell, the horse-pistol with which he shot her, and the heavy hammer with which he knocked the nails into the chest, in which he proposed to hide her body.So carefully had the murderer washed his trousers and his coat-sleeves, that the blood stains could only be observed with difficulty at the time of the investigation.But since the coat and trousers have been hanging on the Black Museum’s walls, the stains have come out close and thick.“We have often noticed that,” the visitor is told.The frightful weapons used by the “Lennie” mutineers are here neatly ranged under the photograph of the ringleader, “French Peter.”Hard-by is a bundle of letters, forming the correspondence which furnished much of the evidence against Margaret Waters, the baby-farmer.How much sin, shame, sorrow, and cruelty that small dusty bundle represents it would be hard to say.A small billycock hat, with a mask fastened inside the broad rim, into which is packed a purse, a comforter, a small lantern, and a life-preserver with a terrific lump of lead on it, is quite a cheerful object to turn to from all these grim relics of worse crimes, though the burglar who formerly owned the life-preserver informed the police—who seized but also rescued him, having come up upon hearing his cries when he was caught between the iron bars of a window, through which he was escaping on a false alarm—that he had thoroughly intended to “do for” anyone who should interrupt him with that convenient weapon.A large assortment of burglars’ tools is not the least suggestive object here.The weapons of the thieves’ war upon society are models of good workmanship, and of the adaptation of means to ends.When the neatest “centre-bit” of the carpenter’s shop is compared with the deft, swift, noiselessly working instrument which goes into an iron shutter as a cheesemonger’s scoop goes into a “fresh Dutch;” when one looks at the wedges of finely-tempered steel working between the zinc side-bits; at the two home-made dark lanterns, contrived with extraordinary cleverness out of a mustard tin and metal match-box respectively; at the rope ladder and the “beautiful litte jemmy,” in a carefully buttoned red flannel case—this small, powerful tool is made of a piece of a driving wheel belonging to the finest machinery, and the metal was, of course, stolen to make it; at the bright, slender, skeleton keys; at the safe-breaking tools—which make one think that there is nothing like the old stocking in the thatch after all—one is amazed at and sorry for the misused cleverness and perverted inventiveness to which these things testify.Among the skeleton keys is one delicate little contrivance which, at a first glance, one might take for an ornament to a lady’s chatelaine; it is, in fact, a double instrument for picking latch keyholes, one part forming the key and the other lifting the spring.This pretty trifle was made from the brass clasp of a purse, and used with such success by the inventor that in a short time he found himself in prison.While one is actually inside the Black Museum one cannot be amused at anything, but by the time we have turned into the Strand the impression of the dreary reliquary of crime has so far passed away that one can smile at the story told of the impudent simplicity of this poor clever thief.“When he was discharged from prison,” said the curator of the Black Museum, as he restored the delicate dangling little bit of villainy to its place, “the man came here and asked us to let him have it back.”* * * * *In a few days Peace returned to his lodgings. He was informed by the gipsy that all was going on well. No stranger had been to Leather-lane to inquire for the industrious and exemplary frame-maker.“And so, old man, you needn’t bother yourself any more,” cried the gipsy.“There will be no more stir in the matter. But you’ve done me a good turn, Bill, and I shan’t forget it. How are you getting on?”“How? Much the same as usual—anyhow. But I’m not driven so much in a corner as I have been once or twice in my life. I do a little with horses, and have got a swell as’ll fork out a couple of quid or so when I’m regularly hard up. He’s a rum sort though. I can’t quite reckon him up; he’s so ’nation sly and mysterious. He it was who set me to work to prig the jewels at the ‘Carved Lion.’ My eye, wasn’t he riled when he heard of the end o’ that night’s business; and it was all through you, you beggar,” cried the gipsy, with a laugh. “But Lord love ye, I don’t think any the worse on ye for it—not a morsel.”“Oh!” murmured Peace; “he set you to work to get the jewels, did he?”“Yes.”“I wonder what that was for.”“I don’t know.”“But I think I do.”“You don’t mean that!”“Yes, I do. They were the chief evidence in proof of Aveline Gatliffe’s identity, and this swell, whoever he may be, has reason for not wishing that identity to be established. Who, and what is he?”“Well, that I am not at liberty to make known,” returned the gipsy. “He’s a swell in his way, but he aint of much account as far as I can learn—leastways, he’s a hot-un in many ways, so I’ve been told. I met him by chance when I was with my first gov’nor, and he weren’t much to boast on.”“Oh, he has a motive, depend upon that, and a strong one too, I should say; but it matters not—it does not concern either of us.“Not a bit.”Peace and the gipsy had now become what might be termed cronies or pals. To say the truth, the latter had displayed a considerable amount of faithfulness and disinterested friendship for our hero—much more than he really deserved.In the afternoon of that day “Bandy-legged Bill” brought round his pony trap and took Peace out for a drive.During this little excursion our hero had an eye to business. He never failed to look out for houses which he thought best adapted to his purpose. He preferred those which stood in their own grounds, detached from any others, and those also that were not near the high road, along which a policeman might be passing.While out with the gipsy his attention was attracted to a handsome residence situated in the neighbourhood of Denmark-hill.He noticed the place, and as he did so promised himself the pleasure of paying it a visit at no distant day, or rather night.The gipsy, who had noticed the attention he had given to the house, pointed with his whip to the habitation in question and said, jocularily—“The very place for you, old man—eh?”Peace nodded.“It’s a tempting-looking crib, I must confess,” he murmured.“And is occupied by some wealthy bloke, I’ll wager,” said the gipsy.“Oh, I dare say. No doubt.”“I aint good at that sort of business, but I’ll drive you here any night you like, and wait for you with the trap till the job’s done. Of course for a consideration,” observed the gipsy, with great gravity; “business is business all the world over.”“You shan’t go unrewarded, Bill.”“I don’t expect half, but I must have something.”“Agreed. To-morrow night will do.”“Will it? Then I’m your man.”This little matter being settled the two friends parted at the corner of Leather-lane, the gipsy promising to call for Peace at half-past ten or from that to eleven o’clock on the following night.In tracing the lawless career of a great criminal like Charles Peace it is not requisite to trouble the reader with a full discription of all his depredations. The leading events in his career it is our business to chronicle.As a rule he committed most of his daring burglaries without the assistance of confederates or accomplices; but this was not always the case.In the earlier part of his life he had many lawless companions.At Sheffield and Manchester he was associated with a band of desperadoes.The burglary we are about to describe was not undertaken alone, and possibly it was for this reason Peace had made one or two signal failures, and in consequence had escaped in a most marvellous manner on both occasions.He therefore gladly accepted the service of the gipsy, in whom he felt he could place implicit confidence.From a psychological point of view the character of Peace presents rather a curious study.He seems to have been one of those exceptional beings in whom there was an almost innate criminal propensity, and whose infamous practices were in themselves as great a source of pleasure and satisfaction as the booty derived from them.Mrs. Thompson, his companion in the later period of his life, has declared that he committed lawless acts for the love of adventure.Not long ago a distinguished German psychologist said that his studies led him to regard the impulses of criminal nature in the light of natural laws.He said that an “anthropological change,” or, in other words, a defective organisation of the brain lies at the foundation of the criminal propensity of habitual thieves, murderers,&c.; that the cerebral changes were of so gross and palpable a nature as to admit of easy demonstration in the post-mortem room, and that they might even be recognised during life by a careful examination of the criminal’s head.Whether the conformation of Peace’s cranium or brain was different from that of most people we will not venture to say, but, judging from his photographs, a man like Professor Benedikt, of Vienna, might certainly find some further data for his doctrines by an examination of Peace’s head.Be this as it may, we have no doubt the cerebral organisation of such a hardened and determined fellow as Peace must have been very different from that of ordinary individuals, although we do not for a moment believe that the difference was of so gross and palpable a nature as to be detectable after death, much less before it.None the less true, however, is the materialistic view of the criminal propensity—a view which, unfortunately, precludes all hope of our ever permanently ridding society of such characters.As long as human nature is as it is, we shall have amongst us thieves, murderers, forgers,et hoc genus omne.No amount of education, no penal codes, no force of example, no religious or moral suasion, will deter such men from their evil courses, or induce them to lead an honest life.Indeed, the very propensity which seems to be “born and bred” in their flesh is fanned and encouraged by the morbid interest and sympathy of society, which considers itself outraged by their acts.When well-dressed ladies contend for the opportunity of looking at these villains through their opera glasses, and “special correspondents” are “told off” to watch and record every change in the features of the criminal, and every word or whisper that escapes his lips, can we wonder that such men may even feel as much pleasure and pride in being infamous as their more discreet neighbours do in being honest?Bandy-legged Bill kept his appointment, and on the following evening he drove up to Peace’s door at about twenty minutes to eleven.Peace in the meanwhile had been reconnoitring in the course of that day, in the immediate vicinity of the residence upon which he was to perform.From what he could gather in the neighbourhood he was led to the conclusion that there was a considerable amount of property in the house. The mistress and children were said to be away on a visit to a relative. The master, who was a rich city merchant, was at home.All these facts he had wormed out of the idlers and gossips about the place.Before the gipsy made his appearance Peace had stained his face, and otherwise disguised himself; his implements were brought forth from their hiding place; these were in a small box, which is thus discribed by Mrs. Thompson:—“He always had with him a red box. This he generally had left at the nearest station to the house he was about to operate on, with a notice outside that it was to be called for.“His tools consisted of a jemmy about fourteen inches long, having a screw at one end and a chisel at the other, which could be used as a plane also. He also carried a block of wood, which he required when using the jemmy, and a knife like a pork butcher’s, which he used in cutting through panelling.“The screw end of the jemmy was for use when the chisel end could not get a purchase in a door.“He seldom carried lock-picks, having a wonderful facility in making use of a piece of wire, with which he has been known to open locks of the most intricate nature.“One great cause of his success,” says the woman Thompson, “was the fact that he wore small ‘fours’ ladies’ boots without nails; and the police, when they were put on his track, always thought the crime had been committed by a boy, judging from the footsteps.”“Here I be, old man,” cried the gipsy, as Peace presented himself at the door. “Are you ready?”Peace handed the red box to his companion, then went back into his room again, and returned with a bag and his dog Gip, both of which were placed in the cart.In another moment the vehicle was rattling over the stones with its two occupants.“What have you brought the dog for?” inquired Will.“He may be of service; if we have to leave the trap I’ll warrant me that he won’t let anybody overhaul its contents.”“All right, guv’nor; you know best,” cried the gipsy. “So on we goes, and may we be successful, and have good luck, which is what, I know, we both deserve. Eh, old man?”“Oh, we both deserve it,” answered Peace. “But people never get their deserts in this world; they either get ten times what they ought to have, or none at all. However, it isn’t of much use complaining.”The vehicle went rapidly over the stones till the macadamised road was reached, and in due course of time the travellers came within sight of the palatial dwelling which had lured them to the spot.“Now,” said the gipsy, “where had I better wait with the trap?”“There is a narrow lane runs by yonder house, wait there. If a bobby says anything to you, tell him you’ve lost your way, and are uncertain which road to take. But lor, it’s so far removed from the high road, and is, moreover, so dark, that you will not be seen.”Peace alighted with his implements and bag, and crept through the shrubbery in front of the house.The gipsy drove slowly on to the dark lane.No other persons besides their two selves were to be seen.Peace passed through the grounds unobserved by any one.He then took a survey of the residence he was about to perform on.No lights were visible at any of the windows, and to all appearance the inmates of the house had long since retired to rest.Peace had been informed in the early portion of the day that the owner and his domestics were early people; he therefore concluded that the inmates were asleep.But as he had met with one or two failures he was more than usually cautious on this occasion, so that he might render the possibility of discomfiture still more remote.We have on a former occasion made reference to the long screw he occasionally employed in his predatory excursions; these were most ingeniously constructed. At the end of each screw was a sharp point, and the worm was so well made that the screw itself could be forced into the wood of a door without even making a hole first with a gimlet or bradawl.A small screwdriver was the only implement required to drive home the screws.They, however, worked much more freely or easily when a small hole was bored.Peace was furnished with these on the night in question, and to cut off the retreat of the inmates, should any of them be aroused, and to baffle the police, should they endeavour to enter the premises without his permission, he thought it just as well to secure the front door.He, therefore, at once proceeded to insert two of his patent screws—one near the top, and the other near the base of the door.This done, he went to the back of the house. Here he saw two doors, one of which opened on to the lawn.He secured both of these in the same way.When this had been done, he climbed a spout and got on the balcony, which ran in front of one of the back windows.He then proceeded to effect an entrance as speedily and noiselessly as possible.He had but little difficulty in doing this, for the window had been left unfastened, owing to the carelessness of one of the maid servants, who had shot back the clasp presumably in a hurry, for it did not overlap the opposing window sufficiently to prevent its being drawn either up or down.The shutters, however, were fastened, but very insecurely; Peace had therefore but little difficulty in throwing them back.All this had not occupied the space of more than three or four minutes, and the movements of the burglar had not been seen by anyone, either from within or without.Peace dropped gently on the floor of the apartment, which was covered with a thick Turkey carpet.He had on at this time a pair of women’s boots, and his footsteps were almost as soft and noiseless as those of a cat.The room in which he found himself was furnished in the best possible manner, but there were not many articles therein which were sufficiently portable to be transferred to the burglar’s bag, and Peace did not therefore waste much time in examining its contents.He ignited one of his silent matches, and took a cursory but rapid review of its most noticable features.Before leaving it, however, he drew back the shutters and opened the bottom window sufficiently wide to admit of his passing through in case of any surprise or alarm.He crept downstairs and entered the front parlour. In this there were several articles of value, which he at once deposited safely in his bag.He then proceeded towards the back parlour. This was fitted up as a library. To all appearance the owner of the habitation made use of it for business purposes, for on a library table there were spread out vast heaps of papers, tied up in bundles, with letters, ledger account books, and other objects usually found in a merchant’s counting house or a lawyer’s office.In a recess at one corner of the room was a large iron safe; this at once attracted the burglar’s attention. Closing the door of the room softly Peace drew from his pocket a curled waxed taper, the end of which he ignited with one of his matches.He then made a careful examination of the safe which, he felt assured, contained property—possibly notes and gold were encased therein.Drawing forth his bent wire, he endeavoured therewith to pick the lock.He twisted and turned the wire in every possible direction, but was not successful in opening the safe. But he was not a man, as we have already seen, to give up a thing easily.No.24.Illustration: PITY AND PARDON ME.“OH! MY LORD,” SAID AVELINE, “PITY AND PARDON ME.”He had set his heart upon ransacking the safe, and to leave the house without effecting this object was the very last idea that would enter his mind.He persevered with most laudable ambition, but the lock was too much for him—it was of peculiar construction.He tried his skeleton keys with no better result. He sat down in one of the library chairs, the very image of despair; he never remembered to have been so baffled.He had another turn at the door of the safe, which was as immovable as the Rock of Gibraltar—a place, by the way, he was afterwards destined to become acquainted with.He now made an attempt to force open the door with his jemmy and the piece of wood he carried with him, but it resisted all his efforts, and he at last began to despair.A sudden thought struck him—the key of the safe was doubtless somewhere in the house. Probably the owner of it had it in his pocket.Peace crept up stairs again. Not a soul was to be seen. No one was in either the back or front room first floor.He went up cautiously to the next story. In the front room of this he heard some one snoring.He concluded that this was the master of the house. He opened the door for about an inch, and peered in—a man, with a dark beard and a moustache, was in bed.He was evidently sleeping soundly. On a chair, by the side of the bed, were several garments.There was just sufficient light for the burglar to discern these.He felt the time had come for him to make an effort. Grasping his revolver in his right hand he crept on all fours to the side of the bed, watching as he did so the face of the sleeping man with the eyes of a lynx.He placed his hand on a pair of black trousers, and felt something heavy in one of the pockets. Gathering them together in a heap he crept back towards the door, which he passed through in safety.When on the landing he rifled the pockets, in one of which was a large bunch of keys.He slid downstairs and gained the back parlour, or library, as it was usually termed by the household.Once more he ignited his wax taper, and breathed more freely.To his infinite delight one of the keys fitted the lock, which was turned back; then the massive doors of the safe were thrown open.Peace looked curiously at its contents. One shelf contained a mass of documents, some books, and other articles which were of no value to the burglar.But on one of the other shelves there was a cash-box and two canvas bags.“All right,” murmured Peace; “this is worth fighting for. My word, but it is lucky I thought of the keys being in the house.”The bags were at once placed in the one he had brought with him, the cash-box was opened with a small key he had found on the bunch abstracted from the gentleman’s pocket.Between fifty and sixty sovereigns were in the cash-box, together with a roll of notes. It is needless to observe that these found their way into Peace’s pocket.A gold cup, a silver salver, and a box containing jewels were also in the safe. These were placed in the burglar’s bag to keep company with the other valuables.Peace had been fortunate enough to have a good haul, and, having been so far successful, he thought it best to get clear off with his booty while the coast was clear.He at once made for the back-room first-floor. From the balcony of this he let his bag gently down on to the grass plot beneath with a small piece of cord; then he climbed over the balcony, and hanging for a moment by his hands, he dropped from thence on to the grass.Unfortunately for him, his coat-tail swept down one of the shrubs in a flower-pot; this fell on to a glass skylight over the back kitchen.The crash of glass awoke one of the maidservants, who jumped out of bed, and, opening one of the back-windows, peered forth.She saw a man running across the grass plot towards the shrubbery by the side of the house, and at once suspected that something was amiss.Panting and almost breathless, Peace arrived at the spot where Bandy-legged Bill was awaiting his reappearance.He jumped into the cart, and told his companion to drive off at once.Bill urged on his pony to its fullest speed, and in a very short time he and his companion were far away from the scene of the burglary.In a short time they reached Leather-lane in safety, without the faintest degree of suspicion being attached to them.The burglary at Denmark-hill was pronounced to be a great success both by the principal and his abettor.Peace presented his companion with fifty pounds as a recompense for his valuable services.It was a great deal more than the gipsy had ever expected, and he expressed himself more than satisfied—indeed, he was modest enough to intimate that it was more than he deserved.Meanwhile the inmates of the house at Denmark-hill were aroused from their slumbers by the screaming of the servant girl, who had seen the burglar make a precipitate retreat over the lawn in the rear of her master’s house.Her fellow-servants jumped out of their beds, huddled on their things, and hastened at once to see what was the matter.The owner of the establishment looked in vain for his trousers, which our hero had so cleverly possessed himself of.The gentleman sought for another pair, but his wardrobe as well as the drawers in his room were locked, and his bunch of keys was not at hand.Wrapping himself in his long dressing gown and drawers, and putting his feet into his slippers, he sallied forth.The open safe, the black trousers on one of the chairs of the library, together with the missing property, clearly demonstrated that a burglar had been in the premises.A search was at once instituted for the robber, but without any satisfactory result.The merchant was furious.He ordered one of his man-servants to hasten at once to the station and give notice to the police.But here a difficulty presented itself.The front door could not be opened. Peace had firmly secured it with his screws.The whole party rushed to the back entrance, which was equally well secured.Everybody was astonished, as well they might be. It seemed like sorcery.One of the man-servants unfastened the shutters of the front parlour, and threw open the window, and by this means succeeded in leaving the premises.In about a quarter of an hour he returned with three police officers.The usual formula had to be gone through. A list of the missing articles, as far as these could be ascertained, was made by the inspector, who declared the robbery had been committed by a practised hand.He was perfectly right, but this was but poor consolation to the owner of the property.He asked the girl if she could identify the burglar. She answered in the negative.She had only seen his back. His face she never caught sight of, and even assuming she had, identification would have been almost impossible.There was not even a remote chance of discovering the depredator, and Peace was perfectly well assured of this.The booty he had obtained by this burglary was considerably over two hundred pounds, after deducting the fifty he had given to Bandy-legged Bill, and as he had received a letter from his mother urging him in the strongest terms to return to Sheffield, he determined upon quitting the metropolis and taking up his quarters in his native town.
After the attempted robbery at the jeweller’s Peace had deemed it advisable to leave his quarters for awhile.
Bandy-legged Bill had agreed to take charge of the premises till he returned.
Peace therefore betook himself to a coffee-shop at Putney, where he slept for several nights after his mishap.
He took the precaution, also, of altering his appearance as much as possible, and to carry this into effect he had made a suit of clothes dissimilar in every respect to those he was accustomed to wear; but, to say the truth, all these arrangements were quite needless, for the police had never had the faintest clue to the real culprit, and in a short time gave the matter up as hopeless.
Indeed, to say the truth, they were so ashamed of their own want of foresight, that they were but too glad to let the recollection of blundering die out as speedily as possible.
The constable who had but recently joined the force was made a scapegoat by his companions, who threw all the blame upon him.
He was reprimanded by the superintendent, who enjoined him to be more careful for the future.
The young fellow promised not to make such a mistake again if he could help it, and justice was satisfied, and the majesty of the law vindicated.
Peace’s coat and hat, which had been left behind at the jeweller’s, were for some time in charge of the police. When all hope of finding its owner had been given up the garments in question were conveyed to what is termed the “Black Museum” in Scotland-yard.
This place is one of the sights of London, but it is rare indeed that any stranger is admitted into its sacred precincts. The uninitiated may possibly feel some interest in a description of this receptacle for criminal curiosities.
We subjoin an account of the place, which the reader may rest assured is genuine.
“Take care how you step,” said a courteous official, who preceded the visitor up a staircase in one of the houses in Scotland-yard, and opened a door on an upper story.
“We are obliged to throw a great deal of this about;” the substance in question was a disenfecting powder.
The room into which we were conducted was a large bare-floored apartment, with barred windows, fitted up with wide shelves, which were divided into compartments, and their contents were liberally sprinkled with the all-pervading powder.
The room is that in which the articles of property taken from convicts are stowed away until they are claimed by their owners.
Of course there was not much chance of any one coming forward to claim Peace’s hat and coat from the stand in the centre of this receptacle, of the objects of the “unlawful possessor” class, to which a large room up stairs is also devoted.
Overhead is the “Black Museum,” in which during the last three yearspieces de conviction, which until then had been kept indiscriminately with the other property of criminals, have been arranged and labelled, forming a ghastly, squalid, and suggestive show.
On entering the lower room the visitor is struck by its odd resemblance to a seed shop.
Hundreds of hooks stud the rims of the shelves and the sides of the compartments, and from them are suspended hundreds of little packets neatly made up in brown paper, tied with white twine, and severally distinguished by large parchment labels, each bearing a neat inscription.
The packets contain small articles taken from the prisoners, who in due course, after they are discharged from prison will be brought to Scotland-yard, and their portraits taken by force should they object to that process.
The larger things are deposited in the compartments of the shelves, and every item, no matter how insignificant, is entered into the proper register.
A motley collection are the larger articles, with a preponderance among them of grimy pocket-books and greasy purses.
But there are valuable things in some of those parcels, and downstairs in the officials’ room is a massive iron safe, fitted with sliding shelves, in which is kept a large collection of watches, rings, choice pins, scent bottles, pencil cases, and other jewellery, which are either the lawful property of prisoners or have been found in their unlawful possession and confiscated, but for whom no owners have been discovered.
Among the watches are some beautiful specimens. One in particular, taken from a costermonger, of exquisite workmanship and ornamentation, is valued at fifty pounds.
The prisoners’ property room is scrupulously clean and tidy, but the look of it is forlorn and squalid, the powder lying thick on everything, and the scent of moth and rot is in the air.
Great bales of cloth and woollen stuff occupy the shelves of the central stand.
They are shaken and beaten and turned, but all to no avail; the moth and rot get at them, and the unwholesome weirdness peculiar to once worn but long unused garments is upon the articles of wearing apparel which are hung or folded up in the room.
This impression comes more strongly upon the visitor when he goes up higher still into the topmost apartment, where heaps of clothing hang upon the walls—some new, some worn.
The heaps of shawls have a draggled and furtive look, and some children’s clothing has a touch of its inseparable prettiness, even here.
Old books, a picture or two, some worthless table ornaments, innumerable articles which could not be described or classed except as odds and ends, form a portion of the collection which goes on accumulating, and which has no ultimate destination.
What is to become of all this? asks the visitor, and is answered to his surprise that nobody knows, that the things are nobody’s property, and nobody has the power to do anything with them.
A piece of information which makes them more ghastly and nightmare-like to the imagination than before.
An ever-growing dust heap formed of thieves’ clothing and unlawful possessions, which nobody can cart away to distribute or bury out of sight for evermore—an accumulating banquet spread for the moth, the rust, and the rat—the contents of these rooms are far from pleasant to think of.
It seems supremely ridiculous, but it is a fact, that nothing but a legislative measure could rid the premises of these rotting garments, out of every fold of which one might shake with the dust an image of squalor, crime, and punishment.
Outside the door of the “Black Museum” is a shelf in the wall of the landing place.
The visitor passing it is aware of a huddled heap of dirty coats, a serge gown, and a coarse kind of rug—the skin of an animal, with red and white hair upon it.
Under the shelf, on the floor, lies some rough packing cloth.
He passes the heap carelessly, and enters the museum.
What are his first impressions of it?
They are various. That it is like a bit out of a gamekeeper’s room, with a bigger bit out of a smith’s forge, a touch of a carpenter’s workshop, a broad suggestion of a harness-room, something of a marine store complexion (and a good deal of its odour), a lump of an open-air stall in front of a pawnbroker’s shop, a little of the barrack-room gun-rack, with no bright barrels, enforced a general air of a lumber-room, with just a dash of an anatomical museum; but above all, and increasing with every moment’s prolonged observation, a likeness to the cutlery booth in a foreign fair, the articles being so rusty that the said booth might have been shut up for full half-a-century, and the salesman and his customers were all ghosts.
Opposite the door, and on the face of the wall to the right, are displayed on a wooden shelf with iron rings, which convey to the visitor a hint of the open-air stall in front of a pawn-shop in a very small way of business indeed, a common looking-glass in a wooden frame, four black glass buttons, two wisps of rope, a pair of trumpery ear-rings in card-box, two bullets, a pipe, a cluster of soft light brown hair wound round a pad, a comb, a pocket-knife, and a little wooden stand covered with glass, are the most noticeable articles. On the shelf to the right are a dirty Prayer-book, a pocket dictionary, a pair of boots, a gaudy bag worked in beads, and the crushed remains of a woman’s bonnet, made of the commonest black lace, and flattened into shapelessness.
In both these instances the other impressions of the place came in too, for over the shelf fronting the door hung workmen’s tools, hammer, and cleaver, and spade, and beside them to the right is just such a bundle as adorns the walls of a marine-store. It consists of a gown, a petticoat of cheap, poor stuff, bearing dreadful dim stains, and a tattered crinoline.
The visitor is in the presence of the objects which perpetuate the memory of two peculiarly horrible crimes.
The soft, brown hair is that of Harriet Lane, murdered by Wainwright; the buttons and the earrings are those which were found in the earth where her body had been buried.
The bullets were taken out of her skull. The object under the glass case is the several pieces of her skin which completed the identification of her body. The wisps of rope dragged her out of the earth under the warehouse; the cleaver, the hammer, and spade are the implements with which the horrible deed, which led to Wainwright’s detection, was done.
The knife was Thomas Wainwright’s, the pipe was Henry’s, and when the visitor is leaving the museum he will be shown in the pack-cloth on the floor under the shelf outside the door the wrapper in which the dismembered body was packed, and one of the dirty coats—a horrid thing, with its hideous rents and smears—Wainwright’s vesture on the occasion.
The coat of the captain of the “Lennie,” with the gash in the cloth, torn by the knife of his murderer, and eaten through and through with rot and moth, is not nearly so disgusting an object; and as for the serge robe of that poor rogue, “Professor Zandavesta,” and the little cloak of the confiscated “anatomical” wax African, who grins awfully in one corner of the museum, a real skeleton hand and arm considerably hidden behind him, they are quite cheerful to look at in comparison.
The Prayer-book and the other pitiful objects upon the shelf to the right were found on the body of Maria Clousen, who was murdered in Kidbrook-lane; the blood and mud-stained clothes were hers, and they contrast with grim-irony as evidences of an unpunished crime, with the all-gory objects which tell of one brother hanged and the other transported.
Along the wall, on the right side of the room, is ranged a choice collection of guns, crowbars, and “jemmies,” the latter implements of the housebreaking industry, which admit of great variety, and are susceptible of highly artistic handling; and among them is a pair of tongs unevenly rusted, and with a dirty paper book written all over with incoherent sentences attached to it.
The tongs are those with which a man named Macdonald killed his wife some four or five years ago. He was hanged, as also were many of the proprietors of the horrid labelled assortment of hammers, knives, including the bread-carving and pocket varieties, razors and pistols which suggest a booth in a fair.
There is dried blood on all the knives and razors, and some of the hammers also, and every one of them stands for a murder or suicide.
In a terrible number of cases they record the murder of a wife by her husband.
Several of the pistols, mostly beautiful weapons, are the instruments of suicide, and each is labelled with the name, date, and place.
The simple suicides are almost all among the higher class of society; and when the visitor asks how the pistol, with which a gentleman of wealth and station shot himself, came into the keeping of the museum, he is told—
“The family mostly do not like to have it, and so they ask the police to take it away.”
In a corner hang the clothes of theRev.J. Watson, who murdered his wife at Stockwell, the horse-pistol with which he shot her, and the heavy hammer with which he knocked the nails into the chest, in which he proposed to hide her body.
So carefully had the murderer washed his trousers and his coat-sleeves, that the blood stains could only be observed with difficulty at the time of the investigation.
But since the coat and trousers have been hanging on the Black Museum’s walls, the stains have come out close and thick.
“We have often noticed that,” the visitor is told.
The frightful weapons used by the “Lennie” mutineers are here neatly ranged under the photograph of the ringleader, “French Peter.”
Hard-by is a bundle of letters, forming the correspondence which furnished much of the evidence against Margaret Waters, the baby-farmer.
How much sin, shame, sorrow, and cruelty that small dusty bundle represents it would be hard to say.
A small billycock hat, with a mask fastened inside the broad rim, into which is packed a purse, a comforter, a small lantern, and a life-preserver with a terrific lump of lead on it, is quite a cheerful object to turn to from all these grim relics of worse crimes, though the burglar who formerly owned the life-preserver informed the police—who seized but also rescued him, having come up upon hearing his cries when he was caught between the iron bars of a window, through which he was escaping on a false alarm—that he had thoroughly intended to “do for” anyone who should interrupt him with that convenient weapon.
A large assortment of burglars’ tools is not the least suggestive object here.
The weapons of the thieves’ war upon society are models of good workmanship, and of the adaptation of means to ends.
When the neatest “centre-bit” of the carpenter’s shop is compared with the deft, swift, noiselessly working instrument which goes into an iron shutter as a cheesemonger’s scoop goes into a “fresh Dutch;” when one looks at the wedges of finely-tempered steel working between the zinc side-bits; at the two home-made dark lanterns, contrived with extraordinary cleverness out of a mustard tin and metal match-box respectively; at the rope ladder and the “beautiful litte jemmy,” in a carefully buttoned red flannel case—this small, powerful tool is made of a piece of a driving wheel belonging to the finest machinery, and the metal was, of course, stolen to make it; at the bright, slender, skeleton keys; at the safe-breaking tools—which make one think that there is nothing like the old stocking in the thatch after all—one is amazed at and sorry for the misused cleverness and perverted inventiveness to which these things testify.
Among the skeleton keys is one delicate little contrivance which, at a first glance, one might take for an ornament to a lady’s chatelaine; it is, in fact, a double instrument for picking latch keyholes, one part forming the key and the other lifting the spring.
This pretty trifle was made from the brass clasp of a purse, and used with such success by the inventor that in a short time he found himself in prison.
While one is actually inside the Black Museum one cannot be amused at anything, but by the time we have turned into the Strand the impression of the dreary reliquary of crime has so far passed away that one can smile at the story told of the impudent simplicity of this poor clever thief.
“When he was discharged from prison,” said the curator of the Black Museum, as he restored the delicate dangling little bit of villainy to its place, “the man came here and asked us to let him have it back.”
* * * * *
In a few days Peace returned to his lodgings. He was informed by the gipsy that all was going on well. No stranger had been to Leather-lane to inquire for the industrious and exemplary frame-maker.
“And so, old man, you needn’t bother yourself any more,” cried the gipsy.
“There will be no more stir in the matter. But you’ve done me a good turn, Bill, and I shan’t forget it. How are you getting on?”
“How? Much the same as usual—anyhow. But I’m not driven so much in a corner as I have been once or twice in my life. I do a little with horses, and have got a swell as’ll fork out a couple of quid or so when I’m regularly hard up. He’s a rum sort though. I can’t quite reckon him up; he’s so ’nation sly and mysterious. He it was who set me to work to prig the jewels at the ‘Carved Lion.’ My eye, wasn’t he riled when he heard of the end o’ that night’s business; and it was all through you, you beggar,” cried the gipsy, with a laugh. “But Lord love ye, I don’t think any the worse on ye for it—not a morsel.”
“Oh!” murmured Peace; “he set you to work to get the jewels, did he?”
“Yes.”
“I wonder what that was for.”
“I don’t know.”
“But I think I do.”
“You don’t mean that!”
“Yes, I do. They were the chief evidence in proof of Aveline Gatliffe’s identity, and this swell, whoever he may be, has reason for not wishing that identity to be established. Who, and what is he?”
“Well, that I am not at liberty to make known,” returned the gipsy. “He’s a swell in his way, but he aint of much account as far as I can learn—leastways, he’s a hot-un in many ways, so I’ve been told. I met him by chance when I was with my first gov’nor, and he weren’t much to boast on.”
“Oh, he has a motive, depend upon that, and a strong one too, I should say; but it matters not—it does not concern either of us.
“Not a bit.”
Peace and the gipsy had now become what might be termed cronies or pals. To say the truth, the latter had displayed a considerable amount of faithfulness and disinterested friendship for our hero—much more than he really deserved.
In the afternoon of that day “Bandy-legged Bill” brought round his pony trap and took Peace out for a drive.
During this little excursion our hero had an eye to business. He never failed to look out for houses which he thought best adapted to his purpose. He preferred those which stood in their own grounds, detached from any others, and those also that were not near the high road, along which a policeman might be passing.
While out with the gipsy his attention was attracted to a handsome residence situated in the neighbourhood of Denmark-hill.
He noticed the place, and as he did so promised himself the pleasure of paying it a visit at no distant day, or rather night.
The gipsy, who had noticed the attention he had given to the house, pointed with his whip to the habitation in question and said, jocularily—
“The very place for you, old man—eh?”
Peace nodded.
“It’s a tempting-looking crib, I must confess,” he murmured.
“And is occupied by some wealthy bloke, I’ll wager,” said the gipsy.
“Oh, I dare say. No doubt.”
“I aint good at that sort of business, but I’ll drive you here any night you like, and wait for you with the trap till the job’s done. Of course for a consideration,” observed the gipsy, with great gravity; “business is business all the world over.”
“You shan’t go unrewarded, Bill.”
“I don’t expect half, but I must have something.”
“Agreed. To-morrow night will do.”
“Will it? Then I’m your man.”
This little matter being settled the two friends parted at the corner of Leather-lane, the gipsy promising to call for Peace at half-past ten or from that to eleven o’clock on the following night.
In tracing the lawless career of a great criminal like Charles Peace it is not requisite to trouble the reader with a full discription of all his depredations. The leading events in his career it is our business to chronicle.
As a rule he committed most of his daring burglaries without the assistance of confederates or accomplices; but this was not always the case.
In the earlier part of his life he had many lawless companions.
At Sheffield and Manchester he was associated with a band of desperadoes.
The burglary we are about to describe was not undertaken alone, and possibly it was for this reason Peace had made one or two signal failures, and in consequence had escaped in a most marvellous manner on both occasions.
He therefore gladly accepted the service of the gipsy, in whom he felt he could place implicit confidence.
From a psychological point of view the character of Peace presents rather a curious study.
He seems to have been one of those exceptional beings in whom there was an almost innate criminal propensity, and whose infamous practices were in themselves as great a source of pleasure and satisfaction as the booty derived from them.
Mrs. Thompson, his companion in the later period of his life, has declared that he committed lawless acts for the love of adventure.
Not long ago a distinguished German psychologist said that his studies led him to regard the impulses of criminal nature in the light of natural laws.
He said that an “anthropological change,” or, in other words, a defective organisation of the brain lies at the foundation of the criminal propensity of habitual thieves, murderers,&c.; that the cerebral changes were of so gross and palpable a nature as to admit of easy demonstration in the post-mortem room, and that they might even be recognised during life by a careful examination of the criminal’s head.
Whether the conformation of Peace’s cranium or brain was different from that of most people we will not venture to say, but, judging from his photographs, a man like Professor Benedikt, of Vienna, might certainly find some further data for his doctrines by an examination of Peace’s head.
Be this as it may, we have no doubt the cerebral organisation of such a hardened and determined fellow as Peace must have been very different from that of ordinary individuals, although we do not for a moment believe that the difference was of so gross and palpable a nature as to be detectable after death, much less before it.
None the less true, however, is the materialistic view of the criminal propensity—a view which, unfortunately, precludes all hope of our ever permanently ridding society of such characters.
As long as human nature is as it is, we shall have amongst us thieves, murderers, forgers,et hoc genus omne.
No amount of education, no penal codes, no force of example, no religious or moral suasion, will deter such men from their evil courses, or induce them to lead an honest life.
Indeed, the very propensity which seems to be “born and bred” in their flesh is fanned and encouraged by the morbid interest and sympathy of society, which considers itself outraged by their acts.
When well-dressed ladies contend for the opportunity of looking at these villains through their opera glasses, and “special correspondents” are “told off” to watch and record every change in the features of the criminal, and every word or whisper that escapes his lips, can we wonder that such men may even feel as much pleasure and pride in being infamous as their more discreet neighbours do in being honest?
Bandy-legged Bill kept his appointment, and on the following evening he drove up to Peace’s door at about twenty minutes to eleven.
Peace in the meanwhile had been reconnoitring in the course of that day, in the immediate vicinity of the residence upon which he was to perform.
From what he could gather in the neighbourhood he was led to the conclusion that there was a considerable amount of property in the house. The mistress and children were said to be away on a visit to a relative. The master, who was a rich city merchant, was at home.
All these facts he had wormed out of the idlers and gossips about the place.
Before the gipsy made his appearance Peace had stained his face, and otherwise disguised himself; his implements were brought forth from their hiding place; these were in a small box, which is thus discribed by Mrs. Thompson:—
“He always had with him a red box. This he generally had left at the nearest station to the house he was about to operate on, with a notice outside that it was to be called for.
“His tools consisted of a jemmy about fourteen inches long, having a screw at one end and a chisel at the other, which could be used as a plane also. He also carried a block of wood, which he required when using the jemmy, and a knife like a pork butcher’s, which he used in cutting through panelling.
“The screw end of the jemmy was for use when the chisel end could not get a purchase in a door.
“He seldom carried lock-picks, having a wonderful facility in making use of a piece of wire, with which he has been known to open locks of the most intricate nature.
“One great cause of his success,” says the woman Thompson, “was the fact that he wore small ‘fours’ ladies’ boots without nails; and the police, when they were put on his track, always thought the crime had been committed by a boy, judging from the footsteps.”
“Here I be, old man,” cried the gipsy, as Peace presented himself at the door. “Are you ready?”
Peace handed the red box to his companion, then went back into his room again, and returned with a bag and his dog Gip, both of which were placed in the cart.
In another moment the vehicle was rattling over the stones with its two occupants.
“What have you brought the dog for?” inquired Will.
“He may be of service; if we have to leave the trap I’ll warrant me that he won’t let anybody overhaul its contents.”
“All right, guv’nor; you know best,” cried the gipsy. “So on we goes, and may we be successful, and have good luck, which is what, I know, we both deserve. Eh, old man?”
“Oh, we both deserve it,” answered Peace. “But people never get their deserts in this world; they either get ten times what they ought to have, or none at all. However, it isn’t of much use complaining.”
The vehicle went rapidly over the stones till the macadamised road was reached, and in due course of time the travellers came within sight of the palatial dwelling which had lured them to the spot.
“Now,” said the gipsy, “where had I better wait with the trap?”
“There is a narrow lane runs by yonder house, wait there. If a bobby says anything to you, tell him you’ve lost your way, and are uncertain which road to take. But lor, it’s so far removed from the high road, and is, moreover, so dark, that you will not be seen.”
Peace alighted with his implements and bag, and crept through the shrubbery in front of the house.
The gipsy drove slowly on to the dark lane.
No other persons besides their two selves were to be seen.
Peace passed through the grounds unobserved by any one.
He then took a survey of the residence he was about to perform on.
No lights were visible at any of the windows, and to all appearance the inmates of the house had long since retired to rest.
Peace had been informed in the early portion of the day that the owner and his domestics were early people; he therefore concluded that the inmates were asleep.
But as he had met with one or two failures he was more than usually cautious on this occasion, so that he might render the possibility of discomfiture still more remote.
We have on a former occasion made reference to the long screw he occasionally employed in his predatory excursions; these were most ingeniously constructed. At the end of each screw was a sharp point, and the worm was so well made that the screw itself could be forced into the wood of a door without even making a hole first with a gimlet or bradawl.
A small screwdriver was the only implement required to drive home the screws.
They, however, worked much more freely or easily when a small hole was bored.
Peace was furnished with these on the night in question, and to cut off the retreat of the inmates, should any of them be aroused, and to baffle the police, should they endeavour to enter the premises without his permission, he thought it just as well to secure the front door.
He, therefore, at once proceeded to insert two of his patent screws—one near the top, and the other near the base of the door.
This done, he went to the back of the house. Here he saw two doors, one of which opened on to the lawn.
He secured both of these in the same way.
When this had been done, he climbed a spout and got on the balcony, which ran in front of one of the back windows.
He then proceeded to effect an entrance as speedily and noiselessly as possible.
He had but little difficulty in doing this, for the window had been left unfastened, owing to the carelessness of one of the maid servants, who had shot back the clasp presumably in a hurry, for it did not overlap the opposing window sufficiently to prevent its being drawn either up or down.
The shutters, however, were fastened, but very insecurely; Peace had therefore but little difficulty in throwing them back.
All this had not occupied the space of more than three or four minutes, and the movements of the burglar had not been seen by anyone, either from within or without.
Peace dropped gently on the floor of the apartment, which was covered with a thick Turkey carpet.
He had on at this time a pair of women’s boots, and his footsteps were almost as soft and noiseless as those of a cat.
The room in which he found himself was furnished in the best possible manner, but there were not many articles therein which were sufficiently portable to be transferred to the burglar’s bag, and Peace did not therefore waste much time in examining its contents.
He ignited one of his silent matches, and took a cursory but rapid review of its most noticable features.
Before leaving it, however, he drew back the shutters and opened the bottom window sufficiently wide to admit of his passing through in case of any surprise or alarm.
He crept downstairs and entered the front parlour. In this there were several articles of value, which he at once deposited safely in his bag.
He then proceeded towards the back parlour. This was fitted up as a library. To all appearance the owner of the habitation made use of it for business purposes, for on a library table there were spread out vast heaps of papers, tied up in bundles, with letters, ledger account books, and other objects usually found in a merchant’s counting house or a lawyer’s office.
In a recess at one corner of the room was a large iron safe; this at once attracted the burglar’s attention. Closing the door of the room softly Peace drew from his pocket a curled waxed taper, the end of which he ignited with one of his matches.
He then made a careful examination of the safe which, he felt assured, contained property—possibly notes and gold were encased therein.
Drawing forth his bent wire, he endeavoured therewith to pick the lock.
He twisted and turned the wire in every possible direction, but was not successful in opening the safe. But he was not a man, as we have already seen, to give up a thing easily.
No.24.
Illustration: PITY AND PARDON ME.“OH! MY LORD,” SAID AVELINE, “PITY AND PARDON ME.”
“OH! MY LORD,” SAID AVELINE, “PITY AND PARDON ME.”
He had set his heart upon ransacking the safe, and to leave the house without effecting this object was the very last idea that would enter his mind.
He persevered with most laudable ambition, but the lock was too much for him—it was of peculiar construction.
He tried his skeleton keys with no better result. He sat down in one of the library chairs, the very image of despair; he never remembered to have been so baffled.
He had another turn at the door of the safe, which was as immovable as the Rock of Gibraltar—a place, by the way, he was afterwards destined to become acquainted with.
He now made an attempt to force open the door with his jemmy and the piece of wood he carried with him, but it resisted all his efforts, and he at last began to despair.
A sudden thought struck him—the key of the safe was doubtless somewhere in the house. Probably the owner of it had it in his pocket.
Peace crept up stairs again. Not a soul was to be seen. No one was in either the back or front room first floor.
He went up cautiously to the next story. In the front room of this he heard some one snoring.
He concluded that this was the master of the house. He opened the door for about an inch, and peered in—a man, with a dark beard and a moustache, was in bed.
He was evidently sleeping soundly. On a chair, by the side of the bed, were several garments.
There was just sufficient light for the burglar to discern these.
He felt the time had come for him to make an effort. Grasping his revolver in his right hand he crept on all fours to the side of the bed, watching as he did so the face of the sleeping man with the eyes of a lynx.
He placed his hand on a pair of black trousers, and felt something heavy in one of the pockets. Gathering them together in a heap he crept back towards the door, which he passed through in safety.
When on the landing he rifled the pockets, in one of which was a large bunch of keys.
He slid downstairs and gained the back parlour, or library, as it was usually termed by the household.
Once more he ignited his wax taper, and breathed more freely.
To his infinite delight one of the keys fitted the lock, which was turned back; then the massive doors of the safe were thrown open.
Peace looked curiously at its contents. One shelf contained a mass of documents, some books, and other articles which were of no value to the burglar.
But on one of the other shelves there was a cash-box and two canvas bags.
“All right,” murmured Peace; “this is worth fighting for. My word, but it is lucky I thought of the keys being in the house.”
The bags were at once placed in the one he had brought with him, the cash-box was opened with a small key he had found on the bunch abstracted from the gentleman’s pocket.
Between fifty and sixty sovereigns were in the cash-box, together with a roll of notes. It is needless to observe that these found their way into Peace’s pocket.
A gold cup, a silver salver, and a box containing jewels were also in the safe. These were placed in the burglar’s bag to keep company with the other valuables.
Peace had been fortunate enough to have a good haul, and, having been so far successful, he thought it best to get clear off with his booty while the coast was clear.
He at once made for the back-room first-floor. From the balcony of this he let his bag gently down on to the grass plot beneath with a small piece of cord; then he climbed over the balcony, and hanging for a moment by his hands, he dropped from thence on to the grass.
Unfortunately for him, his coat-tail swept down one of the shrubs in a flower-pot; this fell on to a glass skylight over the back kitchen.
The crash of glass awoke one of the maidservants, who jumped out of bed, and, opening one of the back-windows, peered forth.
She saw a man running across the grass plot towards the shrubbery by the side of the house, and at once suspected that something was amiss.
Panting and almost breathless, Peace arrived at the spot where Bandy-legged Bill was awaiting his reappearance.
He jumped into the cart, and told his companion to drive off at once.
Bill urged on his pony to its fullest speed, and in a very short time he and his companion were far away from the scene of the burglary.
In a short time they reached Leather-lane in safety, without the faintest degree of suspicion being attached to them.
The burglary at Denmark-hill was pronounced to be a great success both by the principal and his abettor.
Peace presented his companion with fifty pounds as a recompense for his valuable services.
It was a great deal more than the gipsy had ever expected, and he expressed himself more than satisfied—indeed, he was modest enough to intimate that it was more than he deserved.
Meanwhile the inmates of the house at Denmark-hill were aroused from their slumbers by the screaming of the servant girl, who had seen the burglar make a precipitate retreat over the lawn in the rear of her master’s house.
Her fellow-servants jumped out of their beds, huddled on their things, and hastened at once to see what was the matter.
The owner of the establishment looked in vain for his trousers, which our hero had so cleverly possessed himself of.
The gentleman sought for another pair, but his wardrobe as well as the drawers in his room were locked, and his bunch of keys was not at hand.
Wrapping himself in his long dressing gown and drawers, and putting his feet into his slippers, he sallied forth.
The open safe, the black trousers on one of the chairs of the library, together with the missing property, clearly demonstrated that a burglar had been in the premises.
A search was at once instituted for the robber, but without any satisfactory result.
The merchant was furious.
He ordered one of his man-servants to hasten at once to the station and give notice to the police.
But here a difficulty presented itself.
The front door could not be opened. Peace had firmly secured it with his screws.
The whole party rushed to the back entrance, which was equally well secured.
Everybody was astonished, as well they might be. It seemed like sorcery.
One of the man-servants unfastened the shutters of the front parlour, and threw open the window, and by this means succeeded in leaving the premises.
In about a quarter of an hour he returned with three police officers.
The usual formula had to be gone through. A list of the missing articles, as far as these could be ascertained, was made by the inspector, who declared the robbery had been committed by a practised hand.
He was perfectly right, but this was but poor consolation to the owner of the property.
He asked the girl if she could identify the burglar. She answered in the negative.
She had only seen his back. His face she never caught sight of, and even assuming she had, identification would have been almost impossible.
There was not even a remote chance of discovering the depredator, and Peace was perfectly well assured of this.
The booty he had obtained by this burglary was considerably over two hundred pounds, after deducting the fifty he had given to Bandy-legged Bill, and as he had received a letter from his mother urging him in the strongest terms to return to Sheffield, he determined upon quitting the metropolis and taking up his quarters in his native town.