Chapter Twenty One.Tells of a Series of Terrible Surprises.“Well, what did you think of that, old girl?” asked Peter Pax of Tottie, on issuing from the Literary Message-Boys’ Hall, after having performed his duties there.“It was wonderful. I ’ad no idear that the Post-Office was so old or so grand a’ institootion—But please don’t forget father,” said Tottie, with an anxious look at the battered clock.“I don’t forget ’im, Tot. I’ve been thinkin’ about ’im the whole time, an’ I’ve made up my mind what to do. The only thing I ain’t sure of is whether I shouldn’t take my friend Phil Maylands into partnership.”“Oh, please, don’t,” pleaded Tottie; “I shouldn’t like ’im to know about father.”“Well, the less he knows about ’im the better. P’r’aps you’re right. I’ll do it alone, so you cut away home. I’ll go to have my personal appearance improved, and then off to Charing Cross. Lots of time, Tottie. Don’t be anxious. Try if you can trust me. I’m small, no doubt, but I’m tough.—Good-night.”When Abel Bones seated himself that night in a third-class carriage at Charing Cross, and placed a neat little black hand-bag, in which he carried his housebreaking tools, on the floor between his feet, a small negro boy entered the carriage behind him, and, sitting down directly opposite, stared at him as if lost in unutterable amazement.Mr Bones took no notice of the boy at first, but became annoyed at last by the pertinacity of his attention.“Well, you chunk of ebony,” he said, “how much are you paid a week for starin’?”“No pound no shillin’s an’ nopence, massa, and find myself,” replied the negro so promptly that Bones smiled in spite of himself. Being, however, in no mood for conversation, he looked out at the carriage window and let the boy stare to his heart’s content.On drawing up to the platform of the station for Rosebud Cottage, Mr Bones seemed to become anxious, stretched his head out at the carriage window, and muttered to himself. On getting out, he looked round with a disappointed air.“Failed me!” he growled, with an anathema on some one unknown. “Well, I’ll do it alone,” he muttered, between his teeth.“O no! you won’t, my fine fellow,” thought the negro boy; “I’ll help you to do it, and make you do it badly, if you do it at all.—May I carry your bag, massa?” he added, aloud.Mr Bones replied with a savage kick, which the boy eluded nimbly, and ran with a look of mock horror behind a railway van. Here he put both hands to his sides, and indulged in a chuckle so hearty—though subdued—that an ordinary cat, to say nothing of a Cheshire one, might have joined him from sheer sympathy.“O the brute!” he gasped, on partially recovering, “and Tottie!—Tottie!! why she’s—” Again this eccentric boy went off into subdued convulsions, in which state he was discovered by a porter, and chased off the premises.During the remainder of that night the “chunk of ebony” followed Mr Bones like his shadow. When he went down to the small public-house of the hamlet to moisten his throat with a glass of beer, the negro boy waited for him behind a hay-stack; when he left the public-house, and took his way towards Rosebud Cottage, the boy walked a little behind him—not far behind, for the night was dark. When, on consulting his watch, with the aid of a match, Bones found that his time for action had not arrived and sat down by the side of a hedge to meditate, the chunk crept through a hole in the same hedge, crawled close up like a panther, lay down in the grass on the other side, and listened. But he heard nothing, for the burglar kept his thoughts, whatever they might have been, to himself. The hour was too still, the night too dark, the scene too ghostly for mutterings. Peering through the hedge, which was high and thick, the boy could see the red glow of Mr Bones’s pipe.Suddenly it occurred to Pax that now was a favourable opportunity to test his plan. The hedge between him and his victim was impassable to any one larger than himself; on his side the ground sloped towards a plantation, in which he could easily find refuge if necessary. There was no wind. Not a leaf stirred. The silence was profound—broken only by the puffing of the burglar’s lips. Little Pax was quick to conceive and act. Suddenly he opened his mouth to its widest, took aim where he thought the ear of Bones must be, and uttered a short, sharp, appalling yell, compared to which a shriek of martyrdom must have been as nothing.That the effect on Bones was tremendous was evinced by the squib-like action of his pipe, as it flew into the air, and the stumbling clatter of his feet, as he rushed blindly from the spot. Little Pax rolled on the grass in indescribable ecstasies for a few seconds, then crept through the hole, and followed his victim.But Bones was no coward. He had only been taken by surprise, and soon stopped. Still, he was sufficiently superstitious to look frequently over his shoulder as he walked in the direction of Miss Stivergill’s Cottage.Pax was by that time on familiar ground. Fearing that Bones was not to be scared from his purpose by one fright, he made a détour, got ahead of him, and prepared to receive him near the old well of an adjoining farm, which stood close by the road. When the burglar’s footsteps became audible, he braced himself up. As Bones drew near Pax almost burst his little chest with an inhalation. When Bones was within three feet of him, he gave vent to such a skirl that the burglar’s reason was again upset. He bounded away, but suddenly recovered self-possession, and, turning round, dashed at the old well, where Pax had prematurely begun to enjoy himself.To jump to his feet and run like the wind was the work of a moment. Bones followed furiously. Rage lent him for the moment unwonted power. He kept well up for some distance, growling fiercely as he ran, but the lithe limbs and sound lungs of the boy were too much for him. He soon fell behind, and finally stopped, while Pax ran on until out of breath.Believing that he had now rid himself of some mischievous boy of the neighbourhood, the burglar turned back to transact his business at Rosebud Cottage.Peter Pax also turned in the same direction. He felt that things were now beginning to look serious. To thwart Mr Bones in his little game by giving information as to his intentions, would have been easy, but then that would have involved his being “took,” which was not to be thought of. At the same time, it was evident that he was no longer to be scared by yells.Somewhat depressed by his failure, Pax hastened towards the cottage as fast as he could, resolved to give his enemy a last stunning reception in the garden, even although, by so doing, he would probably scare Miss Stivergill and her household out of their wits.He reached the garden some minutes before Bones, and clambered over the wall. While in the very act of doing so, he felt himself seized by the throat and nearly strangled.“Now then, young ’un,” growled a deep voice, which was not that of Bones, “what little game may you be up to?”“Ease your grip and I’ll tell you,” gasped Pax.It was the constable of the district who had caught him. That faithful guardian of the night, having been roused by the unwonted yells, and having heard Pax’s footsteps, had followed him up.“I’m not a burglar, sir,” pleaded Pax, not well knowing what to say. Suddenly he opened his mouth in desperation, intending to give one final yell, which might scare Bones from his impending fate, but it was nipped in the bud by the policeman’s strong hand.“Ha! you’d give your pal a signal, would you?” he said, in a gruff whisper. “Come now, keep quiet if you don’t want to be choked. You can’t save ’im, so you’d better give in.”Poor Pax now saw that nothing more could be done. He therefore made a virtue of necessity, and revealed as much of the object of his mission as he deemed prudent. The man believed him, and, on his promising to keep perfectly still, released him from his deadly grip.While the policeman and the boy lay thus biding their time in the shrubbery, Bones got over the wall and quietly inspected the premises.“I’ll let him begin, and take him in the act,” whispered the policeman.“But he’s an awful big, strong, determined feller,” said Pax.“So am I,” returned the policeman, with a smile, which was lost in the dark.Now it so happened that Miss Lillycrop, who had been spending that day with Miss Stivergill, had been induced to spend the night also with her friend. Of course these two had much to talk about—ladies generally have in such circumstances—and they were later than usual in going to bed. Mr Bones was therefore, much against his will, obliged to delay the execution of his plans. Little dreaming that two admirers lay in ambush about fifty yards off, he retired to a dark corner behind a bit of old wall, and there, appropriately screened by a laurel bush, lit his pipe and enjoyed himself.“My dear,” said Miss Stivergill to her friend about midnight, “we must go to bed. Do you go up to my room; I’ll follow after looking round.”It was the nightly practice of this lady to go over her premises from cellar to garret, to make quite sure that the servant had fastened every bolt and bar and lock. She began with the cellars. Finding everything right there, she went to the dining-room windows.“Ha! the gipsy!—unbolted, and the shutters open!” exclaimed Miss Stivergill, fastening the bolt.“H’m! The old fool,” thought the burglar, observing her tall square figure while thus engaged, “might as well bolt the door of Newgate with a steel pen. Cottage window-gear is meant for show, not for service, old girl.”“I look round regularly every night,” observed Miss Stivergill, entering her bedroom, in which Miss Lillycrop usually occupied a chair bed when on a visit to The Rosebud. “You’ve no idea how careless servants are (‘Haven’t I, just?’ thought her friend), and although I have no personal fear of burglars, I deem it advisable to interpose some impediments to their entrance.”“But what would you do if they did get in?” asked Miss Lillycrop, in some anxiety, for she had a very strong personal fear of burglars.“Oh! I have several little plans for their reception,” replied the lady, with a quiet smile. There’s a bell in the corner there, which was meant for the parish church, but was thought to be a little too small. I bought it, had a handle affixed to it, as you see, and should ring it at an open window if the house were attempted.“But they might rush in at the door and stop you—kill you even!” suggested the other, with a shudder.“Have you not observed,” said Miss Stivergill, “that I lock my door on the inside? Besides, I have other little appliances which I shall explain to you in the morning, for I scorn to be dependent on a man-servant for protection. There’s a revolver in that drawer beside you”—Miss Lillycrop shrank from the drawer in question—“but I would only use it in the last extremity, for I am not fond of taking human life. Indeed, I would decline to do so even to save my own, but I should have no objection to maim. Injuries about the legs or feet might do burglars spiritual as well as physical good in the long-run, besides being beneficial to society.—Now, my dear, good-night.”Miss Stivergill extinguished the candle as violently as she would have maimed a burglar, and poor Miss Lillycrop’s heart leapt as she was suddenly plunged into total darkness—for she was naturally timid, and could not help it.For some time both ladies lay perfectly still; the hostess enjoying that placid period which precedes slumber; the guest quaking with fear caused by the thoughts that the recent conversation had raised.Presently Miss Lillycrop raised herself on one elbow, and glared in the direction of her friend’s bed so awfully that her eyes all but shone in the dark.“Did you hearthat, dear?” she asked, in a low whisper.“Of course I did,” replied Miss Stivergill aloud. “Hush! listen.”They listened and heard “that” again. There could be no doubt about it—a curious scratching sound at the dining-room window immediately below theirs.“Rats,” said Miss Stivergill in a low voice.“Oh! Idohope so,” whispered Miss Lillycrop. She entertained an inexpressible loathing of rats, but compared with burglars they were as bosom friends whom she would have welcomed with a glad shudder.In a few minutes the scratching ceased and a bolt or spring snapped. The wildest of rats never made a sound like that! Miss Lillycrop sat bolt up in her bed, transfixed with horror, and could dimly see her friend spring from her couch and dart across the room like a ghostly phantom.“Lilly, if you scream,” said Miss Stivergill, in a voice so low and stern that it caused her blood to curdle, “I’ll do something awful to you.—Get up!”The command was peremptory. Miss Lillycrop obeyed.“Here, catch hold of the bell-handle—so. Your other hand—there—keep the tongue fast in it, and don’t ring till I give the word.”Miss Lillycrop was perfect in her docility.A large tin tea-tray hung at the side of Miss Stivergill’s bed. Beside it was a round ball with a handle to it. Miss Lillycrop had wondered what these were there for. She soon found out.Miss Stivergill put the dressing-table a little to one side, and placed a ewer of water on it.At that moment the dining-room window was heard to open slowly but distinctly.Miss Stivergill threw up the bedroom window.The marrow in Miss Lillycrop’s spine froze.Mr Bones started and looked up in surprise. He received a deluge of water on his face, and at the same moment a ewer burst in atoms on the gravel at his feet—for Miss Stivergill did nothing by halves. But Bones was surprise-proof by that time; besides, the coveted treasure was on the sideboard—almost within his grasp. He was too bold a villain to be frightened by women, and he knew that sleeping country-folk are not quickly roused to succour the inmates of a lonely cottage. Darting into the room, he tumbled over chairs, tables, work-boxes, fire-irons, and coal-scuttle.“Ring!” said Miss Stivergill sharply. At the same moment she seized the tea-tray in her left hand and belaboured it furiously with the drumstick.“Ring out at the window!” shouted Miss Stivergill.Miss Lillycrop did so until her spinal marrow thawed.The noise was worse than appalling. Little Pax, unable to express his conflicting emotions in any other way, yelled with agonising delight. Even the hardened spirit of Bones trembled with mingled feelings of alarm and surprise. He found and grasped the coveted box, and leaped out of the window with a bound. It is highly probable that he would have got clear off but for the involuntary action of Miss Lillycrop. As that lady’s marrow waxed warm she dashed the great bell against the window-sill with such fervour that it flew from her grasp and descended full on the burglar’s cranium, just as he leaped into the arms of the policeman, and both fell heavily to the ground. The guardian of the night immediately jumped up uninjured, but Bones lay prone on the green sward—stunned by the bell.“That’s well done, anyhow, an’ saved me a world o’ trouble,” said the constable, looking up at the window as he held the burglar down, though there was little necessity for that. “You couldn’t shy me over a bit of rope, could you, ma’am?”Miss Stivergill, to whom nothing seemed difficult, and who had by that time stopped her share in the noise, went into a cupboard and fetched thence a coil of rope.“I meant it to be used in the event of fire,” she said quietly to her friend, who had thrown herself flat on her bed, “but it will serve other purposes as well.—There, policeman.”She threw it down, and when Bones recovered consciousness he found himself securely tied and seated in a chair in the Rosebud kitchen—the policeman looking at him with interest, and the domestics with alarm. Miss Stivergill regarded him with calm severity.“Now he’s quite safe, ma’am, but I can’t venture to take ’im to the station alone. If you’ll kindly consent to keep an eye on him, ma’am, till I run down for a comrade, I’ll be greatly obleeged. There’s no fear of his wrigglin’ out o’ that, ma’am; you may make your mind easy.”“My mind is quite easy, policeman; you may go. I shall watch him.”When the man had left, Miss Stivergill ordered the servants to leave the kitchen. Little Pax, who had discreetly kept out of range of the burglar’s eye, went with them, a good deal depressed in spirit, for his mission had failed. The burglary had not indeed, been accomplished, but—“father” was “took.”When Miss Stivergill was left alone with the burglar she gazed at him for some time in silence.“Man,” she said at length, “you are little Bones’s father.”“If you means Tottie, ma’am, I is,” replied Bones, with a look and tone which were not amiable.“I have a strong feeling of regard for your child, though not a scrap of pity for yourself,” said Miss Stivergill, with a frown.Mr Bones muttered something to the effect that he returned the compliment with interest.“For Tottie’s sake I should be sorry to see you transported,” continued the lady, “therefore I mean to let you off. Moreover, bad as you are, I believe you are not so bad as many people would think you. Therefore I’m going to trust you.”Bones looked inquiringly and with some suspicion at his captor. He evidently thought there was a touch of insanity about her. This was confirmed when Miss Stivergill, seizing a carving-knife from the dresser, advanced with masculine strides towards him. He made a desperate effort to burst his bonds, but they were too scientifically arranged for that. “Don’t fear,” said the lady, severing the cord that bound the burglar’s wrists, and putting the knife in his hands. “Now,” she added, “you know how to cut yourself free, no doubt.”“Well, youarea trump!” exclaimed Bones, rapidly touching his bonds at salient points with the keen edge.In a few seconds he was free.“Now, go away,” said Miss Stivergill, “and don’t let me see you here again.”Bones looked with admiration at his deliverer, but could only find words to repeat that shewasa trump, and vanished through the back-door, just as a band of men, with pitchforks, rakes, spades, and lanterns, came clamouring in at the front garden gate from the neighbouring farm.“What is it?” exclaimed the farmer.“Only a burglar,” answered Miss Stivergill.“Where is he?” chorussed everybody.“That’s best known to himself,” replied the lady, who, in order to give the fugitive time, went into a minute and slow account of the whole affair—excepting, of course, her connivance at the escape—to the great edification of her audience, among whom the one who seemed to derive the chief enjoyment was a black boy. He endeavoured to screen himself behind the labourers, and was obviously unable to restrain his glee.“But what’s come of ’im, ma’am?” asked the farmer impatiently.“Escaped!” answered Miss Stivergill.“Escaped!” echoed everybody, looking furtively round, as though they supposed he had only escaped under the dresser or into the keyhole.“Escaped!” repeated the policeman, who entered at the moment with two comrades; “impossible! I tied ’im so that no efforts of his own could avail ’im. Somebodymust’ave ’elped ’im.”“The carving-knife helped him,” said Miss Stivergill, with a look of dignity.—“Perhaps, instead of speculating how he escaped, policeman, it would be better to pursue him. He can’t be very far off, as it is not twenty minutes since he cut himself free.”In a state of utter bewilderment the policeman rushed out of the cottage, followed by his comrades and the agriculturists. Peter Pax essayed to go with them, but was restrained by an iron grip on his collar. Pulling him back, Miss Stivergill dragged her captive into a parlour and shut the door.“Come now, little Pax,” she said, setting the boy in a chair in front of her, “you needn’t try to deceiveme. I’d know you among a thousand in any disguise. If you were to blacken your face with coal-tar an inch thick your impertinence would shine through. You know that the burglar is little Bones’s father; you’ve a pretty good guess that I let him off. You have come here for some purpose in connection with him. Come—out with it, and make a clean breast.”Little Pax did make a clean breast then and there, was washed white, supped and slept at The Rosebud, returned to town next day by the first train, and had soon the pleasure of informing Tottie that the intended burglary had been frustrated, and that her father wasn’t “took” after all.
“Well, what did you think of that, old girl?” asked Peter Pax of Tottie, on issuing from the Literary Message-Boys’ Hall, after having performed his duties there.
“It was wonderful. I ’ad no idear that the Post-Office was so old or so grand a’ institootion—But please don’t forget father,” said Tottie, with an anxious look at the battered clock.
“I don’t forget ’im, Tot. I’ve been thinkin’ about ’im the whole time, an’ I’ve made up my mind what to do. The only thing I ain’t sure of is whether I shouldn’t take my friend Phil Maylands into partnership.”
“Oh, please, don’t,” pleaded Tottie; “I shouldn’t like ’im to know about father.”
“Well, the less he knows about ’im the better. P’r’aps you’re right. I’ll do it alone, so you cut away home. I’ll go to have my personal appearance improved, and then off to Charing Cross. Lots of time, Tottie. Don’t be anxious. Try if you can trust me. I’m small, no doubt, but I’m tough.—Good-night.”
When Abel Bones seated himself that night in a third-class carriage at Charing Cross, and placed a neat little black hand-bag, in which he carried his housebreaking tools, on the floor between his feet, a small negro boy entered the carriage behind him, and, sitting down directly opposite, stared at him as if lost in unutterable amazement.
Mr Bones took no notice of the boy at first, but became annoyed at last by the pertinacity of his attention.
“Well, you chunk of ebony,” he said, “how much are you paid a week for starin’?”
“No pound no shillin’s an’ nopence, massa, and find myself,” replied the negro so promptly that Bones smiled in spite of himself. Being, however, in no mood for conversation, he looked out at the carriage window and let the boy stare to his heart’s content.
On drawing up to the platform of the station for Rosebud Cottage, Mr Bones seemed to become anxious, stretched his head out at the carriage window, and muttered to himself. On getting out, he looked round with a disappointed air.
“Failed me!” he growled, with an anathema on some one unknown. “Well, I’ll do it alone,” he muttered, between his teeth.
“O no! you won’t, my fine fellow,” thought the negro boy; “I’ll help you to do it, and make you do it badly, if you do it at all.—May I carry your bag, massa?” he added, aloud.
Mr Bones replied with a savage kick, which the boy eluded nimbly, and ran with a look of mock horror behind a railway van. Here he put both hands to his sides, and indulged in a chuckle so hearty—though subdued—that an ordinary cat, to say nothing of a Cheshire one, might have joined him from sheer sympathy.
“O the brute!” he gasped, on partially recovering, “and Tottie!—Tottie!! why she’s—” Again this eccentric boy went off into subdued convulsions, in which state he was discovered by a porter, and chased off the premises.
During the remainder of that night the “chunk of ebony” followed Mr Bones like his shadow. When he went down to the small public-house of the hamlet to moisten his throat with a glass of beer, the negro boy waited for him behind a hay-stack; when he left the public-house, and took his way towards Rosebud Cottage, the boy walked a little behind him—not far behind, for the night was dark. When, on consulting his watch, with the aid of a match, Bones found that his time for action had not arrived and sat down by the side of a hedge to meditate, the chunk crept through a hole in the same hedge, crawled close up like a panther, lay down in the grass on the other side, and listened. But he heard nothing, for the burglar kept his thoughts, whatever they might have been, to himself. The hour was too still, the night too dark, the scene too ghostly for mutterings. Peering through the hedge, which was high and thick, the boy could see the red glow of Mr Bones’s pipe.
Suddenly it occurred to Pax that now was a favourable opportunity to test his plan. The hedge between him and his victim was impassable to any one larger than himself; on his side the ground sloped towards a plantation, in which he could easily find refuge if necessary. There was no wind. Not a leaf stirred. The silence was profound—broken only by the puffing of the burglar’s lips. Little Pax was quick to conceive and act. Suddenly he opened his mouth to its widest, took aim where he thought the ear of Bones must be, and uttered a short, sharp, appalling yell, compared to which a shriek of martyrdom must have been as nothing.
That the effect on Bones was tremendous was evinced by the squib-like action of his pipe, as it flew into the air, and the stumbling clatter of his feet, as he rushed blindly from the spot. Little Pax rolled on the grass in indescribable ecstasies for a few seconds, then crept through the hole, and followed his victim.
But Bones was no coward. He had only been taken by surprise, and soon stopped. Still, he was sufficiently superstitious to look frequently over his shoulder as he walked in the direction of Miss Stivergill’s Cottage.
Pax was by that time on familiar ground. Fearing that Bones was not to be scared from his purpose by one fright, he made a détour, got ahead of him, and prepared to receive him near the old well of an adjoining farm, which stood close by the road. When the burglar’s footsteps became audible, he braced himself up. As Bones drew near Pax almost burst his little chest with an inhalation. When Bones was within three feet of him, he gave vent to such a skirl that the burglar’s reason was again upset. He bounded away, but suddenly recovered self-possession, and, turning round, dashed at the old well, where Pax had prematurely begun to enjoy himself.
To jump to his feet and run like the wind was the work of a moment. Bones followed furiously. Rage lent him for the moment unwonted power. He kept well up for some distance, growling fiercely as he ran, but the lithe limbs and sound lungs of the boy were too much for him. He soon fell behind, and finally stopped, while Pax ran on until out of breath.
Believing that he had now rid himself of some mischievous boy of the neighbourhood, the burglar turned back to transact his business at Rosebud Cottage.
Peter Pax also turned in the same direction. He felt that things were now beginning to look serious. To thwart Mr Bones in his little game by giving information as to his intentions, would have been easy, but then that would have involved his being “took,” which was not to be thought of. At the same time, it was evident that he was no longer to be scared by yells.
Somewhat depressed by his failure, Pax hastened towards the cottage as fast as he could, resolved to give his enemy a last stunning reception in the garden, even although, by so doing, he would probably scare Miss Stivergill and her household out of their wits.
He reached the garden some minutes before Bones, and clambered over the wall. While in the very act of doing so, he felt himself seized by the throat and nearly strangled.
“Now then, young ’un,” growled a deep voice, which was not that of Bones, “what little game may you be up to?”
“Ease your grip and I’ll tell you,” gasped Pax.
It was the constable of the district who had caught him. That faithful guardian of the night, having been roused by the unwonted yells, and having heard Pax’s footsteps, had followed him up.
“I’m not a burglar, sir,” pleaded Pax, not well knowing what to say. Suddenly he opened his mouth in desperation, intending to give one final yell, which might scare Bones from his impending fate, but it was nipped in the bud by the policeman’s strong hand.
“Ha! you’d give your pal a signal, would you?” he said, in a gruff whisper. “Come now, keep quiet if you don’t want to be choked. You can’t save ’im, so you’d better give in.”
Poor Pax now saw that nothing more could be done. He therefore made a virtue of necessity, and revealed as much of the object of his mission as he deemed prudent. The man believed him, and, on his promising to keep perfectly still, released him from his deadly grip.
While the policeman and the boy lay thus biding their time in the shrubbery, Bones got over the wall and quietly inspected the premises.
“I’ll let him begin, and take him in the act,” whispered the policeman.
“But he’s an awful big, strong, determined feller,” said Pax.
“So am I,” returned the policeman, with a smile, which was lost in the dark.
Now it so happened that Miss Lillycrop, who had been spending that day with Miss Stivergill, had been induced to spend the night also with her friend. Of course these two had much to talk about—ladies generally have in such circumstances—and they were later than usual in going to bed. Mr Bones was therefore, much against his will, obliged to delay the execution of his plans. Little dreaming that two admirers lay in ambush about fifty yards off, he retired to a dark corner behind a bit of old wall, and there, appropriately screened by a laurel bush, lit his pipe and enjoyed himself.
“My dear,” said Miss Stivergill to her friend about midnight, “we must go to bed. Do you go up to my room; I’ll follow after looking round.”
It was the nightly practice of this lady to go over her premises from cellar to garret, to make quite sure that the servant had fastened every bolt and bar and lock. She began with the cellars. Finding everything right there, she went to the dining-room windows.
“Ha! the gipsy!—unbolted, and the shutters open!” exclaimed Miss Stivergill, fastening the bolt.
“H’m! The old fool,” thought the burglar, observing her tall square figure while thus engaged, “might as well bolt the door of Newgate with a steel pen. Cottage window-gear is meant for show, not for service, old girl.”
“I look round regularly every night,” observed Miss Stivergill, entering her bedroom, in which Miss Lillycrop usually occupied a chair bed when on a visit to The Rosebud. “You’ve no idea how careless servants are (‘Haven’t I, just?’ thought her friend), and although I have no personal fear of burglars, I deem it advisable to interpose some impediments to their entrance.”
“But what would you do if they did get in?” asked Miss Lillycrop, in some anxiety, for she had a very strong personal fear of burglars.
“Oh! I have several little plans for their reception,” replied the lady, with a quiet smile. There’s a bell in the corner there, which was meant for the parish church, but was thought to be a little too small. I bought it, had a handle affixed to it, as you see, and should ring it at an open window if the house were attempted.
“But they might rush in at the door and stop you—kill you even!” suggested the other, with a shudder.
“Have you not observed,” said Miss Stivergill, “that I lock my door on the inside? Besides, I have other little appliances which I shall explain to you in the morning, for I scorn to be dependent on a man-servant for protection. There’s a revolver in that drawer beside you”—Miss Lillycrop shrank from the drawer in question—“but I would only use it in the last extremity, for I am not fond of taking human life. Indeed, I would decline to do so even to save my own, but I should have no objection to maim. Injuries about the legs or feet might do burglars spiritual as well as physical good in the long-run, besides being beneficial to society.—Now, my dear, good-night.”
Miss Stivergill extinguished the candle as violently as she would have maimed a burglar, and poor Miss Lillycrop’s heart leapt as she was suddenly plunged into total darkness—for she was naturally timid, and could not help it.
For some time both ladies lay perfectly still; the hostess enjoying that placid period which precedes slumber; the guest quaking with fear caused by the thoughts that the recent conversation had raised.
Presently Miss Lillycrop raised herself on one elbow, and glared in the direction of her friend’s bed so awfully that her eyes all but shone in the dark.
“Did you hearthat, dear?” she asked, in a low whisper.
“Of course I did,” replied Miss Stivergill aloud. “Hush! listen.”
They listened and heard “that” again. There could be no doubt about it—a curious scratching sound at the dining-room window immediately below theirs.
“Rats,” said Miss Stivergill in a low voice.
“Oh! Idohope so,” whispered Miss Lillycrop. She entertained an inexpressible loathing of rats, but compared with burglars they were as bosom friends whom she would have welcomed with a glad shudder.
In a few minutes the scratching ceased and a bolt or spring snapped. The wildest of rats never made a sound like that! Miss Lillycrop sat bolt up in her bed, transfixed with horror, and could dimly see her friend spring from her couch and dart across the room like a ghostly phantom.
“Lilly, if you scream,” said Miss Stivergill, in a voice so low and stern that it caused her blood to curdle, “I’ll do something awful to you.—Get up!”
The command was peremptory. Miss Lillycrop obeyed.
“Here, catch hold of the bell-handle—so. Your other hand—there—keep the tongue fast in it, and don’t ring till I give the word.”
Miss Lillycrop was perfect in her docility.
A large tin tea-tray hung at the side of Miss Stivergill’s bed. Beside it was a round ball with a handle to it. Miss Lillycrop had wondered what these were there for. She soon found out.
Miss Stivergill put the dressing-table a little to one side, and placed a ewer of water on it.
At that moment the dining-room window was heard to open slowly but distinctly.
Miss Stivergill threw up the bedroom window.
The marrow in Miss Lillycrop’s spine froze.
Mr Bones started and looked up in surprise. He received a deluge of water on his face, and at the same moment a ewer burst in atoms on the gravel at his feet—for Miss Stivergill did nothing by halves. But Bones was surprise-proof by that time; besides, the coveted treasure was on the sideboard—almost within his grasp. He was too bold a villain to be frightened by women, and he knew that sleeping country-folk are not quickly roused to succour the inmates of a lonely cottage. Darting into the room, he tumbled over chairs, tables, work-boxes, fire-irons, and coal-scuttle.
“Ring!” said Miss Stivergill sharply. At the same moment she seized the tea-tray in her left hand and belaboured it furiously with the drumstick.
“Ring out at the window!” shouted Miss Stivergill.
Miss Lillycrop did so until her spinal marrow thawed.
The noise was worse than appalling. Little Pax, unable to express his conflicting emotions in any other way, yelled with agonising delight. Even the hardened spirit of Bones trembled with mingled feelings of alarm and surprise. He found and grasped the coveted box, and leaped out of the window with a bound. It is highly probable that he would have got clear off but for the involuntary action of Miss Lillycrop. As that lady’s marrow waxed warm she dashed the great bell against the window-sill with such fervour that it flew from her grasp and descended full on the burglar’s cranium, just as he leaped into the arms of the policeman, and both fell heavily to the ground. The guardian of the night immediately jumped up uninjured, but Bones lay prone on the green sward—stunned by the bell.
“That’s well done, anyhow, an’ saved me a world o’ trouble,” said the constable, looking up at the window as he held the burglar down, though there was little necessity for that. “You couldn’t shy me over a bit of rope, could you, ma’am?”
Miss Stivergill, to whom nothing seemed difficult, and who had by that time stopped her share in the noise, went into a cupboard and fetched thence a coil of rope.
“I meant it to be used in the event of fire,” she said quietly to her friend, who had thrown herself flat on her bed, “but it will serve other purposes as well.—There, policeman.”
She threw it down, and when Bones recovered consciousness he found himself securely tied and seated in a chair in the Rosebud kitchen—the policeman looking at him with interest, and the domestics with alarm. Miss Stivergill regarded him with calm severity.
“Now he’s quite safe, ma’am, but I can’t venture to take ’im to the station alone. If you’ll kindly consent to keep an eye on him, ma’am, till I run down for a comrade, I’ll be greatly obleeged. There’s no fear of his wrigglin’ out o’ that, ma’am; you may make your mind easy.”
“My mind is quite easy, policeman; you may go. I shall watch him.”
When the man had left, Miss Stivergill ordered the servants to leave the kitchen. Little Pax, who had discreetly kept out of range of the burglar’s eye, went with them, a good deal depressed in spirit, for his mission had failed. The burglary had not indeed, been accomplished, but—“father” was “took.”
When Miss Stivergill was left alone with the burglar she gazed at him for some time in silence.
“Man,” she said at length, “you are little Bones’s father.”
“If you means Tottie, ma’am, I is,” replied Bones, with a look and tone which were not amiable.
“I have a strong feeling of regard for your child, though not a scrap of pity for yourself,” said Miss Stivergill, with a frown.
Mr Bones muttered something to the effect that he returned the compliment with interest.
“For Tottie’s sake I should be sorry to see you transported,” continued the lady, “therefore I mean to let you off. Moreover, bad as you are, I believe you are not so bad as many people would think you. Therefore I’m going to trust you.”
Bones looked inquiringly and with some suspicion at his captor. He evidently thought there was a touch of insanity about her. This was confirmed when Miss Stivergill, seizing a carving-knife from the dresser, advanced with masculine strides towards him. He made a desperate effort to burst his bonds, but they were too scientifically arranged for that. “Don’t fear,” said the lady, severing the cord that bound the burglar’s wrists, and putting the knife in his hands. “Now,” she added, “you know how to cut yourself free, no doubt.”
“Well, youarea trump!” exclaimed Bones, rapidly touching his bonds at salient points with the keen edge.
In a few seconds he was free.
“Now, go away,” said Miss Stivergill, “and don’t let me see you here again.”
Bones looked with admiration at his deliverer, but could only find words to repeat that shewasa trump, and vanished through the back-door, just as a band of men, with pitchforks, rakes, spades, and lanterns, came clamouring in at the front garden gate from the neighbouring farm.
“What is it?” exclaimed the farmer.
“Only a burglar,” answered Miss Stivergill.
“Where is he?” chorussed everybody.
“That’s best known to himself,” replied the lady, who, in order to give the fugitive time, went into a minute and slow account of the whole affair—excepting, of course, her connivance at the escape—to the great edification of her audience, among whom the one who seemed to derive the chief enjoyment was a black boy. He endeavoured to screen himself behind the labourers, and was obviously unable to restrain his glee.
“But what’s come of ’im, ma’am?” asked the farmer impatiently.
“Escaped!” answered Miss Stivergill.
“Escaped!” echoed everybody, looking furtively round, as though they supposed he had only escaped under the dresser or into the keyhole.
“Escaped!” repeated the policeman, who entered at the moment with two comrades; “impossible! I tied ’im so that no efforts of his own could avail ’im. Somebodymust’ave ’elped ’im.”
“The carving-knife helped him,” said Miss Stivergill, with a look of dignity.—“Perhaps, instead of speculating how he escaped, policeman, it would be better to pursue him. He can’t be very far off, as it is not twenty minutes since he cut himself free.”
In a state of utter bewilderment the policeman rushed out of the cottage, followed by his comrades and the agriculturists. Peter Pax essayed to go with them, but was restrained by an iron grip on his collar. Pulling him back, Miss Stivergill dragged her captive into a parlour and shut the door.
“Come now, little Pax,” she said, setting the boy in a chair in front of her, “you needn’t try to deceiveme. I’d know you among a thousand in any disguise. If you were to blacken your face with coal-tar an inch thick your impertinence would shine through. You know that the burglar is little Bones’s father; you’ve a pretty good guess that I let him off. You have come here for some purpose in connection with him. Come—out with it, and make a clean breast.”
Little Pax did make a clean breast then and there, was washed white, supped and slept at The Rosebud, returned to town next day by the first train, and had soon the pleasure of informing Tottie that the intended burglary had been frustrated, and that her father wasn’t “took” after all.
Chapter Twenty Two.Shows How One Thing Leads to Another, and so on.It is a mere truism to state that many a chain of grave and far-reaching events is set in motion by some insignificant trifle. The touching of a trigger by a child explodes a gun which extinguishes a valuable life, and perhaps throws a whole neighbourhood into difficulties. The lighting of a match may cause a conflagration which shall “bring down” an extensive firm, some of whose dependants, in the retail trade, will go down along with it, and cause widespreading distress, if not ruin, among a whole army of greengrocers, buttermen, and other small fry.The howling of a bad baby was the comparatively insignificant event which set going a certain number of wheels, whose teeth worked into the cogs which revolved in connection with our tale.The howling referred to awoke a certain contractor near Pimlico with a start, and caused him to rise off what is popularly known as the “wrong side.” Being an angry man, the contractor called the baby bad names, and would have whipped it had it been his own. Going to his office before breakfast with the effects of the howl strong upon him, he met a humble labourer there with a surly “Well, what do you want?”The labourer wanted work. The contractor had no work to give him. The labourer pleaded that his wife and children were starving. The contractor didn’t care a pinch of snuff for his wife or children, and bade him be off. The labourer urged that the times were very hard, and he would be thankful for any sort of job, no matter how small. He endeavoured to work on the contractor’s feelings by referring to the premature death, by starvation, of his pet parrot, which had been for years in the family, and a marvellous speaker, having been taught by his mate Bill. The said Bill was also out of work, and waiting for him outside. He too would be thankful for a job—anything would do, and they would be willing to work for next to nothing. The contractor still professed utter indifference to the labourer’s woes, but the incident of the parrot had evidently touched a cord which could not be affected by human suffering. After a few minutes’ consideration he said therewasa small job—a pump at the corner of a certain street not far off had to be taken down, to make way for contemplated alterations. It was not necessary to take it down just then, but as the labourers were so hard up for a job they were at liberty to undertake that one.Thus two wheels were set in motion, and the result was that the old pump at the corner of Purr Street was uprooted and laid low by these labourers, one of whom looked into the lower end of the pump and said “Hallo!”His companion Bill echoed the “Hallo!” and added “What’s up?”“W’y, if there ain’t somethink queer inside of the old pump,” said the labourer, going down on both knees in order to look more earnestly into it. “I do b’lieve it’s letters. Some double-extra stoopids ’ave bin an’ posted ’em in the pump.”He pulled out handfuls of letters as he spoke, some of which, from their appearance, must have lain there for years, while others were quite fresh!A passing letter-carrier took charge of these letters, and conveyed them to the Post-Office, where the machinery of the department was set in motion on them. They were examined, faced, sorted, and distributed. Among them was the letter which George Aspel had committed to the care of Tottie Bones at the time of his first arrival in London, and thus it came to pass that the energies of Sir James Clubley, Baronet, were roused into action.“Dear me! how strange!” said Sir James to himself, on reading the letter. “This unaccountable silence is explained at last. Poor fellow, I have judged him hastily. Come! I’ll go find him out.”But this resolve was more easily made than carried into effect. At the hotel from which the letter had been dated nothing was known of the missing youth except that he had departed long long ago, leaving as his future address the name of a bird-stuffer, which name had unfortunately been mislaid—not lost. Oh no—only mislaid! On further inquiry, however, there was a certain undersized, plain-looking, and rather despised chamber-maid who retained a lively and grateful recollection of Mr Aspel, in consequence of his having given her an unexpectedly large tip at parting, coupled with a few slight but kindly made inquiries as to her welfare, which seemed to imply that he regarded her as a human being. She remembered distinctly his telling her one evening that if any one should call for him in his absence he was to be found at the residence of a lady in Cat Street, Pimlico, but for the life of her she couldn’t remember the number, though she thought it must have been number nine, for she remembered having connected it in her mind with the well-known lives of a cat.“Cat Street! Strange name—very!” said Sir James. “Are you sure it was Cat Street?”“Well, I ain’t quite sure, sir,” replied the little plain one, with an inquiring frown at the chandelier, “but I know it ’ad somethink to do with cats. P’r’aps it was Mew Street; but I’mquitesure it was Pimlico.”“And the lady’s name?”“Well, sir, I ain’t sure of that neither. It was somethink queer, I know, but then there’s a-many queer names in London—ain’t, there, sir?”Sir James admitted that there were, and advised her to reflect on a few of them.The little plain one did reflect—with the aid of the chandelier—and came to the sudden conviction that the lady’s name had to do with flowers. “Not roses—no, nor yet violets,” she said, with an air of intense mental application, for the maiden’s memory was largely dependent on association of ideas; “it might ’ave been marigolds, though it don’t seem likely. Stay, was it water—?—Oh! it was lilies! Yes, I ’ave it now: Miss Lilies-somethink.”“Think again, now,” said the Baronet, “everything depends on the ‘something,’ for Miss Lilies is not so extravagantly queer as you seem to think her name was.”“That’s true, sir,” said the perplexed maid, with a last appealing gaze at the chandelier, and beginning with the first letter of the alphabet—Miss Lilies A— Lilies B— Lilies C—, etcetera, until she came to K. “That’s it now. I ’ave italmost. It ’ad to do with lots of lilies, I’m quite sure—quantities, it must ’ave been.”On Sir James suggesting that quantities did not begin with a K the little plain one’s feelings were slightly hurt, and she declined to go any further into the question. Sir James was therefore obliged to rest content with what he had learned, and continued his search in Pimlico. There he spent several hours in playing, with small shopkeepers and policemen, a game somewhat analogous to that which is usually commenced with the words “Is it animal, vegetable, or mineral?” The result was that eventually he reached Number 9 Purr Street, and found himself in the presence of Miss Lillycrop.That lady, however, damped his rising hopes by saying that she did not know where George Aspel was to be found, and that he had suddenly disappeared—to her intense regret—from the bird-warehouse in which he had held a situation. It belonged to the brothers Blurt, whose address she gave to her visitor.Little Tottie Bones, who had heard the conversation through the open parlour door, could have told where Aspel was to be found, but the promise made to her father sealed her lips; besides, particular inquiries after any one were so suggestive to her of policemen, and being “took,” that she had a double motive to silence.Mr Enoch Blurt could throw no light on the subject, but he could, and did, add to Sir James’s increasing knowledge of the youth’s reported dissipation, and sympathised with him strongly in his desire to find out Aspel’s whereabouts. Moreover, he directed him to the General Post-Office, where a youth named Maylands, a letter-sorter—who had formerly been a telegraph message-boy,—and an intimate friend of Aspel, was to be found, and might be able to give some information about him, though he (Mr Blurt) feared not.Phil Maylands could only say that he had never ceased to make inquiries after his friend, but hitherto without success, and that he meant to continue his inquiries until he should find him.Sir James Clubley therefore returned in a state of dejection to the sympathetic Miss Lillycrop, who gave him a note of introduction to a detective—the grave man in grey,—a particular friend and ally of her own, with whom she had scraped acquaintance during one of her many pilgrimages of love and mercy among the poor.To the man in grey Sir James committed his case, and left him to work it out.Now, the way of a detective is a mysterious way. Far be it from us to presume to point it out, or elucidate or expound it in any degree. We can only give a vague, incomplete, it may be even incorrect, view of what the man in grey did and achieved, nevertheless we are bound to record what we know as to this officer’s proceedings, inasmuch as they have to do with the thread of our narrative.It may be that other motives, besides those connected with George Aspel, induced the man in grey to visit the General Post-Office, but we do not certainly know. It is quite possible that a whole host of subsidiary and incidental cases on hand might have induced him to take up the Post-Office like a huge stone, wherewith to knock down innumerable birds at one and the same throw; we cannot tell. The brain of a detective must be essentially different from the brains of ordinary men. His powers of perception—we might add, of conception, reception, deception, and particularly of interception—are marvellous. They are altogether too high for us. How then can we be expected to explain why it was that, on arriving at the Post-Office, the man in grey, instead of asking eagerly for George Aspel at the Inquiry Office, or the Returned Letter Office, or theposte restante, as any sane man would have done, began to put careless and apparently unmeaning questions about little dogs, and to manifest a desire to be shown the chief points of interest in the basement of St. Martin’s-le-Grand?In the gratifying of his desires the man in grey experienced no difficulty. The staff of the Post-Office is unvaryingly polite and obliging to the public. An order was procured, and he soon found himself with a guide traversing the mysterious regions underneath the splendid new building where the great work of postal telegraphy is carried on.While his conductor led him through the labyrinthine passages in which a stranger would infallibly have lost his way, he explained the various objects of interest—especially pointing out the racks where thousands on thousands of old telegrams are kept, for a short time, for reference in case of dispute, and then destroyed. He found the man in grey so intelligent and sympathetic that he quite took a fancy to him.“Do you happen to remember,” asked the detective, in a quiet way, during a pause in his companion’s remarks, “anything about a mad dog taking refuge in this basement some time ago—a small poodle I think it was—which disappeared in some mysterious way?”The conductor had heard a rumour of such an event, but had been ill and off duty at the time, and could give him no details.“This,” said he, opening a door, “is the Battery Room, where the electricity is generated for the instruments above.—Allow me to introduce you to the Battery Inspector.”The man in grey bowed to the Inspector, who was a tall, powerful man, quite fit, apparently, to take charge of a battery of horse artillery if need were.“A singular place,” remarked the detective, looking sharply round the large room, whose dimensions were partially concealed, however, by the rows of shelving which completely filled it from floor to ceiling.“Somewhat curious,” assented the Inspector; “you see our batteries require a good deal of shelving. All put together, there is in this room about three miles of shelving, completely filled, as you see, with about 22,000 cells or jars. The electricity is generated in these jars. They contain carbon and zinc plates in a solution of bichromate of potash and sulphuric acid and water. We fill them up once every two weeks, and renew the plates occasionally. There is a deal of sulphate of copper used up here, sir, in creating electricity—about six tons in the year. Pure copper accumulates on the plates in the operation, but the zinc wears away.”The detective expressed real astonishment and interest in all this, and much more that the Inspector told him.“Poisonous stuff in your jars, I should fancy?” he inquired.“Rather,” replied the Inspector.“Does your door ever stand open?” asked the detective.“Sometimes,” said the other, with a look of slight surprise.“You never received a visit down here from a mad dog, did you?” asked the man in grey.“Never!”“I only ask the question,” continued the other, in a careless tone, “because I once read in the newspapers of a poodle being chased into the Post-Office and never heard of again. It occurred to me that poison might account for it.—A curious-looking thing here; what is it?”He had come to a part of the Battery Room where there was a large frame or case of dark wood, the surface of which was covered with innumerable brass knobs or buttons, which were coupled together by wires.“That is our Battery Test-Box,” explained the Inspector. “There are four thousand wires connected with it—two thousand going to the instruments up-stairs, and two thousand connected with the battery-jars. When I complete the circuit by connecting any couple of these buttons, the influence of the current is at once perceived.”He took a piece of charcoal, as he spoke, and brought it into contact with two of the knobs. The result was to convert the coal instantly into an intense electric light of dazzling beauty. The point of an ordinary lead pencil applied in the same way became equally brilliant.“That must be a powerful battery,” remarked the detective.The Inspector smilingly took two handles from a neighbouring shelf and held them out to his visitor.“Lay hold of these,” he said, “and you will feel its powers.”The detective did as directed, and received a shock which caused him to fling down the handles with great promptitude and violence. He was too self-possessed a man, however, to seem put out.“Strong!” he said, with a short laugh; “remarkably strong and effective.”“Yes,” assented the Inspector, “itispretty powerful, and it requires to be so, for it does heavy work and travels a considerable distance. The greater the distance, you know, the greater the power required to do the work and transmit the messages. This is the battery that fires two signal-guns every day at one o’clock—one at Newcastle, the other at South Shields, and supplies Greenwich time to all our principal stations over a radius of three hundred miles.—I sent the contents of one hundred and twenty jars through you just now!”“That’s curious and interesting; I may even say it is suggestive,” returned the detective, in a meditative tone. “Double that number of jars, now, applied to the locks of street doors at night and the fastenings of windows would give a powerful surprise to burglars.”“Ah, no doubt, and also to belated friends,” said the Inspector, “not to mention the effect on servant-maids in the morning when people forgot to disconnect the wires.”The man in grey admitted the truth of the observation, and, thanking the Battery Inspector for his kind attentions, bade him a cordial adieu. Continuing his investigation of the basement, he came to the three huge fifty-horse-power engines, whose duty it is to suck the air from the pneumatic telegraph tubes in the great hall above. Here the detective became quite an engineer, asked with much interest and intelligence about governors, pistons, escape-valves, actions, etcetera, and wound up with a proposition.“Suppose, now,” he said, “that a little dog were to come suddenly into this room and dash about in a miscellaneous sort of way, could it by any means manage to become entangled in your machinery and get so demolished as never more to be seen or heard of?”The engineer looked at his questioner with a somewhat amused expression. “No, sir, I don’t think it could. No doubt it might kill itself with much facility in various ways, for fifty horsepower, properly applied, would do for an elephant, much more a dog. But I don’t believe that power to be sufficient to produce annihilation. There would have been remains of some sort.”From the engine-room our detective proceeded to the boiler-room and the various kitchens, and thence to the basement of the old building on the opposite side of the street, where he found a similarly perplexing labyrinth. He was taken in hand here by Mr Bright, who chanced to be on duty, and led him first to the Stamp Department. There was much to draw him off his “canine” mania here. First he was introduced to the chief of the department, who gave him much interesting information about stamps in general.Then he was conducted to another room, and shown the tables at which men were busy counting sheets of postage-stamps and putting them up in envelopes for all parts of the United Kingdom. The officer in charge told him that the weight of stamps sent out from that room averaged a little over three tons daily, and that the average value of the weekly issue was 150,000 pounds. Then he was led into a fireproof safe—a solid stone apartment—which was piled from floor to ceiling with sheets of postage-stamps of different values. Those for letters ranged from one halfpenny to one pound, but those used for telegrams ran up to as much as five pounds sterling for a single stamp. Taking down from a shelf a packet of these high-priced stamps, which was about the size of a thick octavo book, the official stated that it was worth 35,000 pounds.“Yes, sir,” he added, “this strong box of ours holds a deal of money. You are at this moment in the presence of nearly two millions sterling!”“A tidy little sum to retire upon. Would build two thousand Board Schools at a thousand pounds each,” said the detective, who was an adept at figures,—as at everything else.Feeling that it would be ridiculous to inquire about mad dogs in the presence of two millions sterling, the man in grey suffered himself to be led through long passages and vaulted chambers, some of which latter were kitchens, where the men on duty had splendid fires, oceans of hot water, benches and tables, and liberty to cook the food either brought by themselves for the day or procured from a caterer on the premises—for Post-Office officials when on duty may not leave the premises for any purpose whatever,exceptduty, and must sign books specifying to the minute when, where, and why, they come and go. In this basement also, as in the other, were long rows of numbered cupboards or large pigeon-holes with lockable doors, one of which was appropriated to each man for the safe depositing of his victuals and other private property.Here, too, were whitewashed lavatories conveniently and plentifully distributed, with every appliance for cleanliness and comfort, including a large supply of fresh and good water. Of this, 49,000 gallons a day is supplied by an artesian well, and 39,000 gallons a day by the New River Company, in the new building. In the old building the 27,000 gallons consumed daily is supplied by the New River Company. It is, however, due to the 5900 human beings who labour in both buildings to state that at least 55,000 of these gallons are swallowed by steam-engines on the premises.To all these things Mr Bright directed attention with professional zeal, and the man in grey observed with much interest all that he saw and heard, until he came to the letter-carriers’ kitchen, where several of the men were cooking food at the fire, while others were eating or chatting at the tables.Happening to mention the dog here, he found that Mr Bright was partially acquainted with the incident.“It was down these stairs it ran,” he said, “and was knocked on the head in this very room by the policeman. No one knows where he took the body to, but he went out at that door, in the direction, it is supposed, of the boiler-house.”The detective had at last got hold of a clew. He was what is styled, in a well-known game, “getting warm.”“Let us visit the boiler-house,” he said.Again, for the nonce, he became an engineer. Like Paul, he was all things to all men. He was very affable to the genial stoker, who was quite communicative about the boilers. After a time the detective referred to the dog, and the peculiar glance of the stoker at once showed him that his object was gained.“A policeman brought it?” he asked quietly.“Yes, a policeman brought it,” said the stoker suspiciously.The man in grey soon, however, removed his suspicions and induced him to become confidential. When he had obtained all the information that the stoker could give—in addition to poor Floppart’s collar, which had no name on it, but was stamped with three stars on its inside—the detective ceased to make any further inquiries after mad dogs, and, with a disengaged mind, accompanied Mr Bright through the remainder of the basement, where he commented on the wise arrangement of having the mail-bags made by convicts, and on the free library, which he pronounced a magnificent institution, and which contained about 2000 volumes, that were said by the courteous librarian to be largely used by the officials, as well as the various newspapers and magazines, furnished gratuitously by their proprietors. He was also shown the “lifts,” which raised people—to say nothing of mails, etcetera—from the bottom to the top of the building, orvice versa; the small steam-engine which worked the same, and the engineer of which—an old servant—was particularly impressive on the peculiar “governor” by which his engine was regulated; the array of letter stampers, which were kept by their special guardian in immaculate order and readiness; the fire-hose, which was also ready for instant service, and the firemen, who were in constant attendance with a telegraphic instrument at their special disposal, connecting them with other parts of the building. All this, and a great deal more which we have not space to mention, the man in grey saw, admired, and commented on, as well as on the general evidence of order, method, regularity, neatness, and system which pervaded the whole place.“You manage things well here,” he said to his conductor at parting.“We do,” responded Mr Bright, with an approving nod; “and we had need to, for the daily despatch of Her Majesty’s mails to all parts of the world is no child’s play. Our motto is—or ought to be—‘Security, Celerity, Punctuality, and Regularity.’ We couldn’t carry that out, sir, without good management.—Good-bye.”“Good-bye, and thank you,” said the detective, leaving St. Martin’s-le-Grand with his busy brain ruminating on a variety of subjects in a manner that no one but a detective could by any possibility understand.
It is a mere truism to state that many a chain of grave and far-reaching events is set in motion by some insignificant trifle. The touching of a trigger by a child explodes a gun which extinguishes a valuable life, and perhaps throws a whole neighbourhood into difficulties. The lighting of a match may cause a conflagration which shall “bring down” an extensive firm, some of whose dependants, in the retail trade, will go down along with it, and cause widespreading distress, if not ruin, among a whole army of greengrocers, buttermen, and other small fry.
The howling of a bad baby was the comparatively insignificant event which set going a certain number of wheels, whose teeth worked into the cogs which revolved in connection with our tale.
The howling referred to awoke a certain contractor near Pimlico with a start, and caused him to rise off what is popularly known as the “wrong side.” Being an angry man, the contractor called the baby bad names, and would have whipped it had it been his own. Going to his office before breakfast with the effects of the howl strong upon him, he met a humble labourer there with a surly “Well, what do you want?”
The labourer wanted work. The contractor had no work to give him. The labourer pleaded that his wife and children were starving. The contractor didn’t care a pinch of snuff for his wife or children, and bade him be off. The labourer urged that the times were very hard, and he would be thankful for any sort of job, no matter how small. He endeavoured to work on the contractor’s feelings by referring to the premature death, by starvation, of his pet parrot, which had been for years in the family, and a marvellous speaker, having been taught by his mate Bill. The said Bill was also out of work, and waiting for him outside. He too would be thankful for a job—anything would do, and they would be willing to work for next to nothing. The contractor still professed utter indifference to the labourer’s woes, but the incident of the parrot had evidently touched a cord which could not be affected by human suffering. After a few minutes’ consideration he said therewasa small job—a pump at the corner of a certain street not far off had to be taken down, to make way for contemplated alterations. It was not necessary to take it down just then, but as the labourers were so hard up for a job they were at liberty to undertake that one.
Thus two wheels were set in motion, and the result was that the old pump at the corner of Purr Street was uprooted and laid low by these labourers, one of whom looked into the lower end of the pump and said “Hallo!”
His companion Bill echoed the “Hallo!” and added “What’s up?”
“W’y, if there ain’t somethink queer inside of the old pump,” said the labourer, going down on both knees in order to look more earnestly into it. “I do b’lieve it’s letters. Some double-extra stoopids ’ave bin an’ posted ’em in the pump.”
He pulled out handfuls of letters as he spoke, some of which, from their appearance, must have lain there for years, while others were quite fresh!
A passing letter-carrier took charge of these letters, and conveyed them to the Post-Office, where the machinery of the department was set in motion on them. They were examined, faced, sorted, and distributed. Among them was the letter which George Aspel had committed to the care of Tottie Bones at the time of his first arrival in London, and thus it came to pass that the energies of Sir James Clubley, Baronet, were roused into action.
“Dear me! how strange!” said Sir James to himself, on reading the letter. “This unaccountable silence is explained at last. Poor fellow, I have judged him hastily. Come! I’ll go find him out.”
But this resolve was more easily made than carried into effect. At the hotel from which the letter had been dated nothing was known of the missing youth except that he had departed long long ago, leaving as his future address the name of a bird-stuffer, which name had unfortunately been mislaid—not lost. Oh no—only mislaid! On further inquiry, however, there was a certain undersized, plain-looking, and rather despised chamber-maid who retained a lively and grateful recollection of Mr Aspel, in consequence of his having given her an unexpectedly large tip at parting, coupled with a few slight but kindly made inquiries as to her welfare, which seemed to imply that he regarded her as a human being. She remembered distinctly his telling her one evening that if any one should call for him in his absence he was to be found at the residence of a lady in Cat Street, Pimlico, but for the life of her she couldn’t remember the number, though she thought it must have been number nine, for she remembered having connected it in her mind with the well-known lives of a cat.
“Cat Street! Strange name—very!” said Sir James. “Are you sure it was Cat Street?”
“Well, I ain’t quite sure, sir,” replied the little plain one, with an inquiring frown at the chandelier, “but I know it ’ad somethink to do with cats. P’r’aps it was Mew Street; but I’mquitesure it was Pimlico.”
“And the lady’s name?”
“Well, sir, I ain’t sure of that neither. It was somethink queer, I know, but then there’s a-many queer names in London—ain’t, there, sir?”
Sir James admitted that there were, and advised her to reflect on a few of them.
The little plain one did reflect—with the aid of the chandelier—and came to the sudden conviction that the lady’s name had to do with flowers. “Not roses—no, nor yet violets,” she said, with an air of intense mental application, for the maiden’s memory was largely dependent on association of ideas; “it might ’ave been marigolds, though it don’t seem likely. Stay, was it water—?—Oh! it was lilies! Yes, I ’ave it now: Miss Lilies-somethink.”
“Think again, now,” said the Baronet, “everything depends on the ‘something,’ for Miss Lilies is not so extravagantly queer as you seem to think her name was.”
“That’s true, sir,” said the perplexed maid, with a last appealing gaze at the chandelier, and beginning with the first letter of the alphabet—Miss Lilies A— Lilies B— Lilies C—, etcetera, until she came to K. “That’s it now. I ’ave italmost. It ’ad to do with lots of lilies, I’m quite sure—quantities, it must ’ave been.”
On Sir James suggesting that quantities did not begin with a K the little plain one’s feelings were slightly hurt, and she declined to go any further into the question. Sir James was therefore obliged to rest content with what he had learned, and continued his search in Pimlico. There he spent several hours in playing, with small shopkeepers and policemen, a game somewhat analogous to that which is usually commenced with the words “Is it animal, vegetable, or mineral?” The result was that eventually he reached Number 9 Purr Street, and found himself in the presence of Miss Lillycrop.
That lady, however, damped his rising hopes by saying that she did not know where George Aspel was to be found, and that he had suddenly disappeared—to her intense regret—from the bird-warehouse in which he had held a situation. It belonged to the brothers Blurt, whose address she gave to her visitor.
Little Tottie Bones, who had heard the conversation through the open parlour door, could have told where Aspel was to be found, but the promise made to her father sealed her lips; besides, particular inquiries after any one were so suggestive to her of policemen, and being “took,” that she had a double motive to silence.
Mr Enoch Blurt could throw no light on the subject, but he could, and did, add to Sir James’s increasing knowledge of the youth’s reported dissipation, and sympathised with him strongly in his desire to find out Aspel’s whereabouts. Moreover, he directed him to the General Post-Office, where a youth named Maylands, a letter-sorter—who had formerly been a telegraph message-boy,—and an intimate friend of Aspel, was to be found, and might be able to give some information about him, though he (Mr Blurt) feared not.
Phil Maylands could only say that he had never ceased to make inquiries after his friend, but hitherto without success, and that he meant to continue his inquiries until he should find him.
Sir James Clubley therefore returned in a state of dejection to the sympathetic Miss Lillycrop, who gave him a note of introduction to a detective—the grave man in grey,—a particular friend and ally of her own, with whom she had scraped acquaintance during one of her many pilgrimages of love and mercy among the poor.
To the man in grey Sir James committed his case, and left him to work it out.
Now, the way of a detective is a mysterious way. Far be it from us to presume to point it out, or elucidate or expound it in any degree. We can only give a vague, incomplete, it may be even incorrect, view of what the man in grey did and achieved, nevertheless we are bound to record what we know as to this officer’s proceedings, inasmuch as they have to do with the thread of our narrative.
It may be that other motives, besides those connected with George Aspel, induced the man in grey to visit the General Post-Office, but we do not certainly know. It is quite possible that a whole host of subsidiary and incidental cases on hand might have induced him to take up the Post-Office like a huge stone, wherewith to knock down innumerable birds at one and the same throw; we cannot tell. The brain of a detective must be essentially different from the brains of ordinary men. His powers of perception—we might add, of conception, reception, deception, and particularly of interception—are marvellous. They are altogether too high for us. How then can we be expected to explain why it was that, on arriving at the Post-Office, the man in grey, instead of asking eagerly for George Aspel at the Inquiry Office, or the Returned Letter Office, or theposte restante, as any sane man would have done, began to put careless and apparently unmeaning questions about little dogs, and to manifest a desire to be shown the chief points of interest in the basement of St. Martin’s-le-Grand?
In the gratifying of his desires the man in grey experienced no difficulty. The staff of the Post-Office is unvaryingly polite and obliging to the public. An order was procured, and he soon found himself with a guide traversing the mysterious regions underneath the splendid new building where the great work of postal telegraphy is carried on.
While his conductor led him through the labyrinthine passages in which a stranger would infallibly have lost his way, he explained the various objects of interest—especially pointing out the racks where thousands on thousands of old telegrams are kept, for a short time, for reference in case of dispute, and then destroyed. He found the man in grey so intelligent and sympathetic that he quite took a fancy to him.
“Do you happen to remember,” asked the detective, in a quiet way, during a pause in his companion’s remarks, “anything about a mad dog taking refuge in this basement some time ago—a small poodle I think it was—which disappeared in some mysterious way?”
The conductor had heard a rumour of such an event, but had been ill and off duty at the time, and could give him no details.
“This,” said he, opening a door, “is the Battery Room, where the electricity is generated for the instruments above.—Allow me to introduce you to the Battery Inspector.”
The man in grey bowed to the Inspector, who was a tall, powerful man, quite fit, apparently, to take charge of a battery of horse artillery if need were.
“A singular place,” remarked the detective, looking sharply round the large room, whose dimensions were partially concealed, however, by the rows of shelving which completely filled it from floor to ceiling.
“Somewhat curious,” assented the Inspector; “you see our batteries require a good deal of shelving. All put together, there is in this room about three miles of shelving, completely filled, as you see, with about 22,000 cells or jars. The electricity is generated in these jars. They contain carbon and zinc plates in a solution of bichromate of potash and sulphuric acid and water. We fill them up once every two weeks, and renew the plates occasionally. There is a deal of sulphate of copper used up here, sir, in creating electricity—about six tons in the year. Pure copper accumulates on the plates in the operation, but the zinc wears away.”
The detective expressed real astonishment and interest in all this, and much more that the Inspector told him.
“Poisonous stuff in your jars, I should fancy?” he inquired.
“Rather,” replied the Inspector.
“Does your door ever stand open?” asked the detective.
“Sometimes,” said the other, with a look of slight surprise.
“You never received a visit down here from a mad dog, did you?” asked the man in grey.
“Never!”
“I only ask the question,” continued the other, in a careless tone, “because I once read in the newspapers of a poodle being chased into the Post-Office and never heard of again. It occurred to me that poison might account for it.—A curious-looking thing here; what is it?”
He had come to a part of the Battery Room where there was a large frame or case of dark wood, the surface of which was covered with innumerable brass knobs or buttons, which were coupled together by wires.
“That is our Battery Test-Box,” explained the Inspector. “There are four thousand wires connected with it—two thousand going to the instruments up-stairs, and two thousand connected with the battery-jars. When I complete the circuit by connecting any couple of these buttons, the influence of the current is at once perceived.”
He took a piece of charcoal, as he spoke, and brought it into contact with two of the knobs. The result was to convert the coal instantly into an intense electric light of dazzling beauty. The point of an ordinary lead pencil applied in the same way became equally brilliant.
“That must be a powerful battery,” remarked the detective.
The Inspector smilingly took two handles from a neighbouring shelf and held them out to his visitor.
“Lay hold of these,” he said, “and you will feel its powers.”
The detective did as directed, and received a shock which caused him to fling down the handles with great promptitude and violence. He was too self-possessed a man, however, to seem put out.
“Strong!” he said, with a short laugh; “remarkably strong and effective.”
“Yes,” assented the Inspector, “itispretty powerful, and it requires to be so, for it does heavy work and travels a considerable distance. The greater the distance, you know, the greater the power required to do the work and transmit the messages. This is the battery that fires two signal-guns every day at one o’clock—one at Newcastle, the other at South Shields, and supplies Greenwich time to all our principal stations over a radius of three hundred miles.—I sent the contents of one hundred and twenty jars through you just now!”
“That’s curious and interesting; I may even say it is suggestive,” returned the detective, in a meditative tone. “Double that number of jars, now, applied to the locks of street doors at night and the fastenings of windows would give a powerful surprise to burglars.”
“Ah, no doubt, and also to belated friends,” said the Inspector, “not to mention the effect on servant-maids in the morning when people forgot to disconnect the wires.”
The man in grey admitted the truth of the observation, and, thanking the Battery Inspector for his kind attentions, bade him a cordial adieu. Continuing his investigation of the basement, he came to the three huge fifty-horse-power engines, whose duty it is to suck the air from the pneumatic telegraph tubes in the great hall above. Here the detective became quite an engineer, asked with much interest and intelligence about governors, pistons, escape-valves, actions, etcetera, and wound up with a proposition.
“Suppose, now,” he said, “that a little dog were to come suddenly into this room and dash about in a miscellaneous sort of way, could it by any means manage to become entangled in your machinery and get so demolished as never more to be seen or heard of?”
The engineer looked at his questioner with a somewhat amused expression. “No, sir, I don’t think it could. No doubt it might kill itself with much facility in various ways, for fifty horsepower, properly applied, would do for an elephant, much more a dog. But I don’t believe that power to be sufficient to produce annihilation. There would have been remains of some sort.”
From the engine-room our detective proceeded to the boiler-room and the various kitchens, and thence to the basement of the old building on the opposite side of the street, where he found a similarly perplexing labyrinth. He was taken in hand here by Mr Bright, who chanced to be on duty, and led him first to the Stamp Department. There was much to draw him off his “canine” mania here. First he was introduced to the chief of the department, who gave him much interesting information about stamps in general.
Then he was conducted to another room, and shown the tables at which men were busy counting sheets of postage-stamps and putting them up in envelopes for all parts of the United Kingdom. The officer in charge told him that the weight of stamps sent out from that room averaged a little over three tons daily, and that the average value of the weekly issue was 150,000 pounds. Then he was led into a fireproof safe—a solid stone apartment—which was piled from floor to ceiling with sheets of postage-stamps of different values. Those for letters ranged from one halfpenny to one pound, but those used for telegrams ran up to as much as five pounds sterling for a single stamp. Taking down from a shelf a packet of these high-priced stamps, which was about the size of a thick octavo book, the official stated that it was worth 35,000 pounds.
“Yes, sir,” he added, “this strong box of ours holds a deal of money. You are at this moment in the presence of nearly two millions sterling!”
“A tidy little sum to retire upon. Would build two thousand Board Schools at a thousand pounds each,” said the detective, who was an adept at figures,—as at everything else.
Feeling that it would be ridiculous to inquire about mad dogs in the presence of two millions sterling, the man in grey suffered himself to be led through long passages and vaulted chambers, some of which latter were kitchens, where the men on duty had splendid fires, oceans of hot water, benches and tables, and liberty to cook the food either brought by themselves for the day or procured from a caterer on the premises—for Post-Office officials when on duty may not leave the premises for any purpose whatever,exceptduty, and must sign books specifying to the minute when, where, and why, they come and go. In this basement also, as in the other, were long rows of numbered cupboards or large pigeon-holes with lockable doors, one of which was appropriated to each man for the safe depositing of his victuals and other private property.
Here, too, were whitewashed lavatories conveniently and plentifully distributed, with every appliance for cleanliness and comfort, including a large supply of fresh and good water. Of this, 49,000 gallons a day is supplied by an artesian well, and 39,000 gallons a day by the New River Company, in the new building. In the old building the 27,000 gallons consumed daily is supplied by the New River Company. It is, however, due to the 5900 human beings who labour in both buildings to state that at least 55,000 of these gallons are swallowed by steam-engines on the premises.
To all these things Mr Bright directed attention with professional zeal, and the man in grey observed with much interest all that he saw and heard, until he came to the letter-carriers’ kitchen, where several of the men were cooking food at the fire, while others were eating or chatting at the tables.
Happening to mention the dog here, he found that Mr Bright was partially acquainted with the incident.
“It was down these stairs it ran,” he said, “and was knocked on the head in this very room by the policeman. No one knows where he took the body to, but he went out at that door, in the direction, it is supposed, of the boiler-house.”
The detective had at last got hold of a clew. He was what is styled, in a well-known game, “getting warm.”
“Let us visit the boiler-house,” he said.
Again, for the nonce, he became an engineer. Like Paul, he was all things to all men. He was very affable to the genial stoker, who was quite communicative about the boilers. After a time the detective referred to the dog, and the peculiar glance of the stoker at once showed him that his object was gained.
“A policeman brought it?” he asked quietly.
“Yes, a policeman brought it,” said the stoker suspiciously.
The man in grey soon, however, removed his suspicions and induced him to become confidential. When he had obtained all the information that the stoker could give—in addition to poor Floppart’s collar, which had no name on it, but was stamped with three stars on its inside—the detective ceased to make any further inquiries after mad dogs, and, with a disengaged mind, accompanied Mr Bright through the remainder of the basement, where he commented on the wise arrangement of having the mail-bags made by convicts, and on the free library, which he pronounced a magnificent institution, and which contained about 2000 volumes, that were said by the courteous librarian to be largely used by the officials, as well as the various newspapers and magazines, furnished gratuitously by their proprietors. He was also shown the “lifts,” which raised people—to say nothing of mails, etcetera—from the bottom to the top of the building, orvice versa; the small steam-engine which worked the same, and the engineer of which—an old servant—was particularly impressive on the peculiar “governor” by which his engine was regulated; the array of letter stampers, which were kept by their special guardian in immaculate order and readiness; the fire-hose, which was also ready for instant service, and the firemen, who were in constant attendance with a telegraphic instrument at their special disposal, connecting them with other parts of the building. All this, and a great deal more which we have not space to mention, the man in grey saw, admired, and commented on, as well as on the general evidence of order, method, regularity, neatness, and system which pervaded the whole place.
“You manage things well here,” he said to his conductor at parting.
“We do,” responded Mr Bright, with an approving nod; “and we had need to, for the daily despatch of Her Majesty’s mails to all parts of the world is no child’s play. Our motto is—or ought to be—‘Security, Celerity, Punctuality, and Regularity.’ We couldn’t carry that out, sir, without good management.—Good-bye.”
“Good-bye, and thank you,” said the detective, leaving St. Martin’s-le-Grand with his busy brain ruminating on a variety of subjects in a manner that no one but a detective could by any possibility understand.
Chapter Twenty Three.The Turning-Point.As time advanced Philip Maylands’ circumstances improved, for Phil belonged to that class of which it is sometimes said “they are sure to get on.” He was thorough-going and trustworthy—two qualities these which the world cannot do without, and which, being always in demand, are never found begging.Phil did not “set up” for anything. He assumed no airs of superior sanctity. He did not even aim at being better than others, though he did aim, daily, at being better than he was. In short, the lad, having been trained in ways of righteousness, and having the Word of God as his guide, advanced steadily and naturally along the narrow way that leads to life. Hence it came to pass in the course of time that he passed from the ranks of Out-door Boy Telegraph Messenger to that of Boy-Sorter, with a wage of twelve shillings a week, which was raised to eighteen shillings. His hours of attendance at the Circulation Department were from 4:30 in the morning till 9; and from 4:30 in the evening till 8. These suited him well, for he had ever been fond of rising with the lark while at home, and had no objection to rise before the lark in London. The evening being free he devoted to study—for Phil was one of that by no means small class of youths who, in default of a College education, do their best to train themselves, by the aid of books and the occasional help of clergymen, philanthropists, and evening classes.In all this Phil was greatly assisted by his sister May, who, although not much more highly educated than himself, was quick of perception, of an inquiring mind, and a sympathetic soul. He was also somewhat assisted, and, at times, not a little retarded, by his ardent admirer Peter Pax, who joined him enthusiastically in his studies, but, being of a discursive and enterprising spirit, was prone to tempt him off the beaten paths of learning into the thickets of speculative philosophy.One evening Pax was poring over a problem in Euclid with his friend in Pegaway Hall.“Phil,” he said uneasily, “drop your triangles a bit and listen. Would you think it dishonest to keep a thing secret that ought to be known?”“That depends a good deal on what the secret is, and what I have got to do with it,” replied Phil. “But why do you ask?”“Because I’ve been keeping a secret a long time—much against my will—an’ I can stand it no longer. If I don’t let it out, it’ll bu’st me—besides, I’ve got leave to tell it.”“Out with it, then, Pax; for it’s of no use trying to keep down things that don’t agree with you.”“Well, then,” said Pax. “I know where George Aspel is!”Phil, who had somewhat unwillingly withdrawn his mind from Euclid, turned instantly with an eager look towards his little friend.“Ah, I thought that would rouse you,” said the latter, with a look of unwonted earnestness on his face. “You must know, Phil, that a long while ago—just about the time of the burglary at Miss Stivergill’s cottage—I made the amazin’ discovery that little Tottie Bones is Mariar—alias Merry,—the little baby-cousin I was nuss to in the country long ago, whom I’ve often spoke to you about, and from whom I was torn when she had reached the tender age of two or thereby. It follows, of course, that Tottie’s father—old Bones—is my uncle,aliasBlackadder,aliasthe Brute, of whom I have also made mention, and who, it seems, came to London to try his fortune in knavery after havin’ failed in the country. I saw him once, I believe, at old Blurt’s bird-shop, but did not recognise ’im at the time, owin’ to his hat bein’ pulled well over his eyes, though I rather think he must have recognised me. The second time I saw him was when Tottie came to me for help and set me on his tracks, when he was goin’ to commit the burglary on Rosebud Cottage. I’ve told you all about that, but did not tell you that the burglar was Tottie’s father, as Tottie had made me promise not to mention it to any one. I knew the rascal at once on seeing him in the railway carriage, and could hardly help explodin’ in his face at the fun of the affair. Of course he didn’t know me on account of my bein’ as black in the face as the King of Dahomey.—Well,” continued Pax, warming with his subject, “it also follows, as a matter of course, that Mrs Bones is my blessed old aunt Georgie—now changed into Molly, on account, no doubt, of the Brute’s desire to avoid the attentions of the police. Now, as I’ve a great regard for aunt Georgie, and have lost a good deal of my hatred of the Brute, and find myself fonder than ever of Tottie—I beg her pardon, of Merry—I’ve been rather intimate—indeed, I may say, pretty thick—with the Boneses ever since; and as I am no longer a burden to the Brute—can even help ’im a little—he don’t abominate me as much as he used to. They’re wery poor—awful poor—are the Boneses. The Brute still keeps up a fiction of a market-garden and a dairy—the latter bein’ supplied by a cow and a pump—but it don’t pay, and the business in the city, whatever it may be, seems equally unprofitable, for their town house is not a desirable residence.”“This is all very interesting and strange, Pax, but what has it to do with George Aspel?” asked Phil. “You know I’m very anxious about him, and have long been hunting after him. Indeed, I wonder that you did not tell me about him before.”“How could I,” said Pax, “when Tot—I mean Merry—no, I’ll stick to Tottie it comes more natural than the old name—told me not for worlds to mention it. Only now, after pressin’ her and aunt Georgie wery hard, have I bin allowed to let it out, for poor Aspel himself don’t want his whereabouts to be known.”“Surely!” exclaimed Phil, with a troubled, anxious air, “he has not become a criminal.”“No. Auntie assures me he has not, but he is sunk very low, drinks hard to drown his sorrow, and is ashamed to be seen. No wonder. You’d scarce know ’im, Phil, workin’ like a coal-heaver, in a suit of dirty fustian, about the wharves—tryin’ to keep out of sight. I’ve come across ’im once or twice, but pretended not to recognise ’im. Now, Phil,” added little Pax, with deep earnestness in his face, as he laid his hand impressively on his friend’s arm, “we must save these two men somehow—you and I.”“Yes, God helping us, we must,” said Phil.From that moment Philip Maylands and Peter Pax passed, as it were, into a more earnest sphere of life, a higher stage of manhood. The influence of a powerful motive, a settled purpose, and a great end, told on their characters to such an extent that they both seemed to have passed over the period of hobbledehoyhood at a bound, and become young men.With the ardour of youth, they set out on their mission at once. That very night they went together to the wretched abode of Abel Bones, having previously, however, opened their hearts and minds to May Maylands, from whom, as they had expected, they received warm encouragement.Little did these unsophisticated youths know what a torrent of anxiety, grief, fear, and hope their communication sent through the heart of poor May. The eager interest she manifested in their plans they regarded as the natural outcome of a kind heart towards an old friend and playfellow. So it was, but it was more than that!The same evening George Aspel and Abel Bones were seated alone in their dismal abode in Archangel Court. There were tumblers and a pot of beer before them, but no food. Aspel sat with his elbows on the table, grasping the hair on his temples with both hands. The other sat with arms crossed, and his chin sunk on his chest, gazing gloomily but intently at his companion.Remorse—that most awful of the ministers of vengeance—had begun to torment Abel Bones. When he saved Tottie from the fire, Aspel had himself unwittingly unlocked the door in the burglar’s soul which let the vengeful minister in. Thereafter Miss Stivergill’s illustration of mercy,for the sake of another, had set the unlocked door ajar, and the discovery that his ill-treated little nephew had nearly lost his life in the same cause, had pulled the door well back on its rusty hinges.Having thus obtained free entrance, Remorse sat down and did its work with terrible power. Bones was a man of tremendous passions and powerful will. His soul revolted violently from the mean part he had been playing. Although he had not succeeded in drawing Aspel into the vortex of crime as regards human law, he had dragged him very low, and, especially, had fanned the flame of thirst for strong drink, which was the youth’s chief—at least his most dangerous—enemy. His thirst was an inheritance from his forefathers, but the sin of giving way to it—of encouraging it at first when it had no power, and then of gratifying it as it gained strength, until it became a tyrant—was all his own. Aspel knew this, and the thought filled him with despair as he sat there with his now scarred and roughened fingers almost tearing out his hair, while his bloodshot eyes stared stonily at the blank wall opposite.Bones continued to gaze at his companion, and to wish with all his heart that he had never met him. He had, some time before that, made up his mind to put no more temptation in the youth’s way. He now went a step further—he resolved to attempt the task of getting him out of the scrapes into which he had dragged him. But he soon found that the will which had always been so powerful in the carrying out of evil was woefully weak in the unfamiliar effort to do good!Still, Bones had made up his mind to try. With this end in view he proposed a walk in the street, the night being fine. Aspel sullenly consented. The better to talk the matter over, Bones proposed to retire to a quiet though not savoury nook by the river-side. Aspel objected, and proposed a public-house instead, as being more cheerful.Just opposite that public-house there stood one of those grand institutions which are still in their infancy, but which, we are persuaded, will yet take a prominent part in the rescue of thousands of mankind from the curse of strong drink. It was a “public-house without drink”—a coffee-tavern, where working men could find a cheap and wholesome meal, a cheerful, warm, and well-lit room wherein to chat and smoke, and the daily papers, without being obliged to swallow fire-water for the good of the house.Bones looked at the coffee-house, and thought of suggesting it to his companion. He even willed to do so, but, alas! his will in this matter was as weak as the water which he mingled so sparingly with his grog. Shame, which never troubled him much when about to take a vicious course, suddenly became a giant, and the strong man became weak like a little child. He followed Aspel into the public-house, and the result of this first effort at reformation was that both men returned home drunk.It seemed a bad beginning, but itwasa beginning, and as such was not to be despised.When Phil and Pax reached Archangel Court, a-glow with hope and good resolves, they found the subjects of their desires helplessly asleep in a corner of the miserable room, with Mrs Bones preparing some warm and wholesome food against the period of their recovery.It was a crushing blow to their new-born hopes. Poor little Pax had entertained sanguine expectations of the effect of an appeal from Phil, and lost heart completely. Phil was too much cast down by the sight of his friend to be able to say much, but he had a more robust spirit than his little friend, and besides, had strong faith in the power and willingness of God to use even weak and sinful instruments for the accomplishment of His purposes of mercy.Afterwards, in talking over the subject with his friend Sterling, the city missionary, he spoke hopefully about Aspel, but said that he did not expect any good could be done until they got him out of his miserable position, and away from the society of Bones.To his great surprise the missionary did not agree with him in this.“Of course,” he said, “it is desirable that Mr Aspel should be restored to his right position in society, and be removed from the bad influence of Bones, and we must use all legitimate means for those ends; but we must not fall into the mistake of supposing that ‘no good can be done’ by the Almighty to His sinful creatures even in the worst of circumstances. No relatives or friends solicited the Prodigal Son to leave the swine-troughs, or dragged him away. It was God who put it into his heart to say ‘I will arise and go to my father.’ It was God who gave him ‘power to will and to do.’”“Would you then advise that we should do nothing for him, and leave him entirely in the hands of God?” asked Phil, with an uncomfortable feeling of surprise.“By no means,” replied the missionary. “I only combat your idea that no good can be done to him if he is left in his present circumstances. But we are bound to use every influence we can bring to bear in his behalf, and we must pray that success may be granted to our efforts to bring him to the Saviour. Means must be used as if means could accomplish all, but means must not be depended on, for ‘it is God who giveth us the victory.’ The most appropriate and powerful means applied in the wisest manner to your friend would be utterly ineffective unless the Holy Spirit gave him a receptive heart. This is one of the most difficult lessons that you and I and all men have to learn, Phil—that God must be all in all, and man nothing whatever but a willing instrument. Even that mysterious willingness is not of ourselves, for ‘it is God who maketh us both to will and to do of His good pleasure.’ ‘Without me,’ says Jesus, ‘ye can do nothing.’ A rejecter of Jesus, therefore, is helpless for good, yet responsible.”“That is hard to understand,” said Phil, with a perplexed look.“The reverse of it is harder to understand, as you will find if you choose to take the trouble to think it out,” replied the missionary.Phil Maylands did take the trouble to think it out. One prominent trait in his character was an intense reverence for truth—any truth, every truth—a strong tendency to distinguish between truth and error in all things that chanced to come under his observation, but especially in those things which his mother had taught him, from earliest infancy, to regard as the most important of all.Many a passer-by did Phil jostle on his way to the Post-Office that day, after his visit to the missionary, for it was the first time that his mind had been turned, earnestly at least, to the subject of God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility.“Too deep by far for boys,” we hear some reader mutter. And yet that same reader, perchance, teaches her little ones to consider the great fact that God is One in Three!No truth is too deep for boys and girls to consider, if they only approach it in a teachable, reverent spirit, and are brought to it by their teacher in a prayerful spirit. But fear not, reader. We do not mean to inflict on you a dissertation on the mysterious subject referred to. We merely state the fact that Phil Maylands met it at this period of his career, and, instead of shelving it—as perhaps too many do—as a too difficult subject, which might lie over to a more convenient season, tackled it with all the energy of his nature. He went first to his closet and his knees, and then to his Bible.“To the law and to the testimony” used to be Mrs Maylands’ watchword in all her battles with Doubt. “To whom shall we go,” she was wont to say, “if we go not to the Word of God?”Phil therefore searched the Scripture. Not being a Greek scholar, he sought help of those who were learned—both personally and through books. Thus he got at correct renderings, and by means of dictionaries ascertained the exact meanings of words. By study he got at what some have styled the general spirit of Scripture, and by readingbothsides of controverted points he ascertained the thoughts of various minds. In this way he at length became “fully persuaded in his own mind” that God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility are facts taught in Scripture, and affirmed by human experience, and that they form a great unsolvable mystery—unsolvable at least by man in his present condition of existence.This not only relieved his mind greatly, by convincing him that, the subject being bottomless, it was useless to try to get to the bottom of it, and wise to accept it “as a little child,” but it led him also to consider that in the Bible there are two kinds of mysteries, or deep things—the one kind being solvable, the other unsolvable. He set himself, therefore, diligently to discover and separate the one kind from the other, with keen interest.But this is by the way. Phil’s greatest anxiety and care at that time was the salvation of his old friend and former idol, George Aspel.
As time advanced Philip Maylands’ circumstances improved, for Phil belonged to that class of which it is sometimes said “they are sure to get on.” He was thorough-going and trustworthy—two qualities these which the world cannot do without, and which, being always in demand, are never found begging.
Phil did not “set up” for anything. He assumed no airs of superior sanctity. He did not even aim at being better than others, though he did aim, daily, at being better than he was. In short, the lad, having been trained in ways of righteousness, and having the Word of God as his guide, advanced steadily and naturally along the narrow way that leads to life. Hence it came to pass in the course of time that he passed from the ranks of Out-door Boy Telegraph Messenger to that of Boy-Sorter, with a wage of twelve shillings a week, which was raised to eighteen shillings. His hours of attendance at the Circulation Department were from 4:30 in the morning till 9; and from 4:30 in the evening till 8. These suited him well, for he had ever been fond of rising with the lark while at home, and had no objection to rise before the lark in London. The evening being free he devoted to study—for Phil was one of that by no means small class of youths who, in default of a College education, do their best to train themselves, by the aid of books and the occasional help of clergymen, philanthropists, and evening classes.
In all this Phil was greatly assisted by his sister May, who, although not much more highly educated than himself, was quick of perception, of an inquiring mind, and a sympathetic soul. He was also somewhat assisted, and, at times, not a little retarded, by his ardent admirer Peter Pax, who joined him enthusiastically in his studies, but, being of a discursive and enterprising spirit, was prone to tempt him off the beaten paths of learning into the thickets of speculative philosophy.
One evening Pax was poring over a problem in Euclid with his friend in Pegaway Hall.
“Phil,” he said uneasily, “drop your triangles a bit and listen. Would you think it dishonest to keep a thing secret that ought to be known?”
“That depends a good deal on what the secret is, and what I have got to do with it,” replied Phil. “But why do you ask?”
“Because I’ve been keeping a secret a long time—much against my will—an’ I can stand it no longer. If I don’t let it out, it’ll bu’st me—besides, I’ve got leave to tell it.”
“Out with it, then, Pax; for it’s of no use trying to keep down things that don’t agree with you.”
“Well, then,” said Pax. “I know where George Aspel is!”
Phil, who had somewhat unwillingly withdrawn his mind from Euclid, turned instantly with an eager look towards his little friend.
“Ah, I thought that would rouse you,” said the latter, with a look of unwonted earnestness on his face. “You must know, Phil, that a long while ago—just about the time of the burglary at Miss Stivergill’s cottage—I made the amazin’ discovery that little Tottie Bones is Mariar—alias Merry,—the little baby-cousin I was nuss to in the country long ago, whom I’ve often spoke to you about, and from whom I was torn when she had reached the tender age of two or thereby. It follows, of course, that Tottie’s father—old Bones—is my uncle,aliasBlackadder,aliasthe Brute, of whom I have also made mention, and who, it seems, came to London to try his fortune in knavery after havin’ failed in the country. I saw him once, I believe, at old Blurt’s bird-shop, but did not recognise ’im at the time, owin’ to his hat bein’ pulled well over his eyes, though I rather think he must have recognised me. The second time I saw him was when Tottie came to me for help and set me on his tracks, when he was goin’ to commit the burglary on Rosebud Cottage. I’ve told you all about that, but did not tell you that the burglar was Tottie’s father, as Tottie had made me promise not to mention it to any one. I knew the rascal at once on seeing him in the railway carriage, and could hardly help explodin’ in his face at the fun of the affair. Of course he didn’t know me on account of my bein’ as black in the face as the King of Dahomey.—Well,” continued Pax, warming with his subject, “it also follows, as a matter of course, that Mrs Bones is my blessed old aunt Georgie—now changed into Molly, on account, no doubt, of the Brute’s desire to avoid the attentions of the police. Now, as I’ve a great regard for aunt Georgie, and have lost a good deal of my hatred of the Brute, and find myself fonder than ever of Tottie—I beg her pardon, of Merry—I’ve been rather intimate—indeed, I may say, pretty thick—with the Boneses ever since; and as I am no longer a burden to the Brute—can even help ’im a little—he don’t abominate me as much as he used to. They’re wery poor—awful poor—are the Boneses. The Brute still keeps up a fiction of a market-garden and a dairy—the latter bein’ supplied by a cow and a pump—but it don’t pay, and the business in the city, whatever it may be, seems equally unprofitable, for their town house is not a desirable residence.”
“This is all very interesting and strange, Pax, but what has it to do with George Aspel?” asked Phil. “You know I’m very anxious about him, and have long been hunting after him. Indeed, I wonder that you did not tell me about him before.”
“How could I,” said Pax, “when Tot—I mean Merry—no, I’ll stick to Tottie it comes more natural than the old name—told me not for worlds to mention it. Only now, after pressin’ her and aunt Georgie wery hard, have I bin allowed to let it out, for poor Aspel himself don’t want his whereabouts to be known.”
“Surely!” exclaimed Phil, with a troubled, anxious air, “he has not become a criminal.”
“No. Auntie assures me he has not, but he is sunk very low, drinks hard to drown his sorrow, and is ashamed to be seen. No wonder. You’d scarce know ’im, Phil, workin’ like a coal-heaver, in a suit of dirty fustian, about the wharves—tryin’ to keep out of sight. I’ve come across ’im once or twice, but pretended not to recognise ’im. Now, Phil,” added little Pax, with deep earnestness in his face, as he laid his hand impressively on his friend’s arm, “we must save these two men somehow—you and I.”
“Yes, God helping us, we must,” said Phil.
From that moment Philip Maylands and Peter Pax passed, as it were, into a more earnest sphere of life, a higher stage of manhood. The influence of a powerful motive, a settled purpose, and a great end, told on their characters to such an extent that they both seemed to have passed over the period of hobbledehoyhood at a bound, and become young men.
With the ardour of youth, they set out on their mission at once. That very night they went together to the wretched abode of Abel Bones, having previously, however, opened their hearts and minds to May Maylands, from whom, as they had expected, they received warm encouragement.
Little did these unsophisticated youths know what a torrent of anxiety, grief, fear, and hope their communication sent through the heart of poor May. The eager interest she manifested in their plans they regarded as the natural outcome of a kind heart towards an old friend and playfellow. So it was, but it was more than that!
The same evening George Aspel and Abel Bones were seated alone in their dismal abode in Archangel Court. There were tumblers and a pot of beer before them, but no food. Aspel sat with his elbows on the table, grasping the hair on his temples with both hands. The other sat with arms crossed, and his chin sunk on his chest, gazing gloomily but intently at his companion.
Remorse—that most awful of the ministers of vengeance—had begun to torment Abel Bones. When he saved Tottie from the fire, Aspel had himself unwittingly unlocked the door in the burglar’s soul which let the vengeful minister in. Thereafter Miss Stivergill’s illustration of mercy,for the sake of another, had set the unlocked door ajar, and the discovery that his ill-treated little nephew had nearly lost his life in the same cause, had pulled the door well back on its rusty hinges.
Having thus obtained free entrance, Remorse sat down and did its work with terrible power. Bones was a man of tremendous passions and powerful will. His soul revolted violently from the mean part he had been playing. Although he had not succeeded in drawing Aspel into the vortex of crime as regards human law, he had dragged him very low, and, especially, had fanned the flame of thirst for strong drink, which was the youth’s chief—at least his most dangerous—enemy. His thirst was an inheritance from his forefathers, but the sin of giving way to it—of encouraging it at first when it had no power, and then of gratifying it as it gained strength, until it became a tyrant—was all his own. Aspel knew this, and the thought filled him with despair as he sat there with his now scarred and roughened fingers almost tearing out his hair, while his bloodshot eyes stared stonily at the blank wall opposite.
Bones continued to gaze at his companion, and to wish with all his heart that he had never met him. He had, some time before that, made up his mind to put no more temptation in the youth’s way. He now went a step further—he resolved to attempt the task of getting him out of the scrapes into which he had dragged him. But he soon found that the will which had always been so powerful in the carrying out of evil was woefully weak in the unfamiliar effort to do good!
Still, Bones had made up his mind to try. With this end in view he proposed a walk in the street, the night being fine. Aspel sullenly consented. The better to talk the matter over, Bones proposed to retire to a quiet though not savoury nook by the river-side. Aspel objected, and proposed a public-house instead, as being more cheerful.
Just opposite that public-house there stood one of those grand institutions which are still in their infancy, but which, we are persuaded, will yet take a prominent part in the rescue of thousands of mankind from the curse of strong drink. It was a “public-house without drink”—a coffee-tavern, where working men could find a cheap and wholesome meal, a cheerful, warm, and well-lit room wherein to chat and smoke, and the daily papers, without being obliged to swallow fire-water for the good of the house.
Bones looked at the coffee-house, and thought of suggesting it to his companion. He even willed to do so, but, alas! his will in this matter was as weak as the water which he mingled so sparingly with his grog. Shame, which never troubled him much when about to take a vicious course, suddenly became a giant, and the strong man became weak like a little child. He followed Aspel into the public-house, and the result of this first effort at reformation was that both men returned home drunk.
It seemed a bad beginning, but itwasa beginning, and as such was not to be despised.
When Phil and Pax reached Archangel Court, a-glow with hope and good resolves, they found the subjects of their desires helplessly asleep in a corner of the miserable room, with Mrs Bones preparing some warm and wholesome food against the period of their recovery.
It was a crushing blow to their new-born hopes. Poor little Pax had entertained sanguine expectations of the effect of an appeal from Phil, and lost heart completely. Phil was too much cast down by the sight of his friend to be able to say much, but he had a more robust spirit than his little friend, and besides, had strong faith in the power and willingness of God to use even weak and sinful instruments for the accomplishment of His purposes of mercy.
Afterwards, in talking over the subject with his friend Sterling, the city missionary, he spoke hopefully about Aspel, but said that he did not expect any good could be done until they got him out of his miserable position, and away from the society of Bones.
To his great surprise the missionary did not agree with him in this.
“Of course,” he said, “it is desirable that Mr Aspel should be restored to his right position in society, and be removed from the bad influence of Bones, and we must use all legitimate means for those ends; but we must not fall into the mistake of supposing that ‘no good can be done’ by the Almighty to His sinful creatures even in the worst of circumstances. No relatives or friends solicited the Prodigal Son to leave the swine-troughs, or dragged him away. It was God who put it into his heart to say ‘I will arise and go to my father.’ It was God who gave him ‘power to will and to do.’”
“Would you then advise that we should do nothing for him, and leave him entirely in the hands of God?” asked Phil, with an uncomfortable feeling of surprise.
“By no means,” replied the missionary. “I only combat your idea that no good can be done to him if he is left in his present circumstances. But we are bound to use every influence we can bring to bear in his behalf, and we must pray that success may be granted to our efforts to bring him to the Saviour. Means must be used as if means could accomplish all, but means must not be depended on, for ‘it is God who giveth us the victory.’ The most appropriate and powerful means applied in the wisest manner to your friend would be utterly ineffective unless the Holy Spirit gave him a receptive heart. This is one of the most difficult lessons that you and I and all men have to learn, Phil—that God must be all in all, and man nothing whatever but a willing instrument. Even that mysterious willingness is not of ourselves, for ‘it is God who maketh us both to will and to do of His good pleasure.’ ‘Without me,’ says Jesus, ‘ye can do nothing.’ A rejecter of Jesus, therefore, is helpless for good, yet responsible.”
“That is hard to understand,” said Phil, with a perplexed look.
“The reverse of it is harder to understand, as you will find if you choose to take the trouble to think it out,” replied the missionary.
Phil Maylands did take the trouble to think it out. One prominent trait in his character was an intense reverence for truth—any truth, every truth—a strong tendency to distinguish between truth and error in all things that chanced to come under his observation, but especially in those things which his mother had taught him, from earliest infancy, to regard as the most important of all.
Many a passer-by did Phil jostle on his way to the Post-Office that day, after his visit to the missionary, for it was the first time that his mind had been turned, earnestly at least, to the subject of God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility.
“Too deep by far for boys,” we hear some reader mutter. And yet that same reader, perchance, teaches her little ones to consider the great fact that God is One in Three!
No truth is too deep for boys and girls to consider, if they only approach it in a teachable, reverent spirit, and are brought to it by their teacher in a prayerful spirit. But fear not, reader. We do not mean to inflict on you a dissertation on the mysterious subject referred to. We merely state the fact that Phil Maylands met it at this period of his career, and, instead of shelving it—as perhaps too many do—as a too difficult subject, which might lie over to a more convenient season, tackled it with all the energy of his nature. He went first to his closet and his knees, and then to his Bible.
“To the law and to the testimony” used to be Mrs Maylands’ watchword in all her battles with Doubt. “To whom shall we go,” she was wont to say, “if we go not to the Word of God?”
Phil therefore searched the Scripture. Not being a Greek scholar, he sought help of those who were learned—both personally and through books. Thus he got at correct renderings, and by means of dictionaries ascertained the exact meanings of words. By study he got at what some have styled the general spirit of Scripture, and by readingbothsides of controverted points he ascertained the thoughts of various minds. In this way he at length became “fully persuaded in his own mind” that God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility are facts taught in Scripture, and affirmed by human experience, and that they form a great unsolvable mystery—unsolvable at least by man in his present condition of existence.
This not only relieved his mind greatly, by convincing him that, the subject being bottomless, it was useless to try to get to the bottom of it, and wise to accept it “as a little child,” but it led him also to consider that in the Bible there are two kinds of mysteries, or deep things—the one kind being solvable, the other unsolvable. He set himself, therefore, diligently to discover and separate the one kind from the other, with keen interest.
But this is by the way. Phil’s greatest anxiety and care at that time was the salvation of his old friend and former idol, George Aspel.