The complainant’s attorney argued that the case against the defendant was conclusive. It did not, he said, admit of a shadow of doubt. He heaped vituperative aspersions upon the head of the defendant, for adding insult to injury by his disreputable defence. The defendant’s counsel, on the other hand, contended that the evidence of the complainant was incomplete; that it was in several respects highly improbable; and that it should not counterbalance the testimony of the most respectable defendant in his own behalf. The learned gentleman called upon the magistrates to dismiss the case, and intimated that, if the decision were against his client, he should appeal. The magistrates agreed with the complainant’s attorney; expressed an opinion that she was a much ill-used young woman; and said a few things uncomplimentary of the defendant, upon whom they expressed their willingness to do what, by the way, they could not help doing, I believe—that is, give him an opportunity of appealing against their decision.
It will occur to the reader that there were several means of rebutting some of the special facts upon which the complainant’s case must have rested, as it did rest, although I omit them for the sake of brevity, as theyare not necessary to the explanation I have to give of one leading fact.
The reader will wonder how that card of the defendant’s fell into the hands of the complainant. I will say at once, in order to clear away some mystery, that the young woman herself was no doubt honestly mistaken, although somewhat rash in the evidence she gave as to the identity of her undoer.
But, unless some confederate had given her that card, how could she have obtained it? It must have been palmed off upon her by some unmitigated villain, who was content to divert inquiry from his own track into that of an innocent and right-minded man’s household, to the peril of the destruction of his own and his family’s happiness.
To track this miscreant was my special mission. I had not much time to effect a discovery before the appeal must be heard and decided.
Mr. Delmar could not help me. He had given his card, at various times, to various people; and within a few years a few hundred persons might have been the conscious or unconscious media, direct or remote, of conveying the fatal pasteboard from his hand to that of the complainant.
After I had been a week engaged in the effort to track the double culprit—having, let me frankly say, no clue by which I hoped to discover him—I was getting weary of the task, when a ray of light dawned through the imperfect memory of Mr. Delmar. He recollected that,about ten months before the complaint was laid against him at ——, he had been obliged to visit Norwich on urgent business. A man who owed him a considerable sum of money was then in embarrassment, and had called a meeting of his creditors, at which Mr. Delmar was invited to attend. After this business had been completed, he intended returning to town by a late train, but allowed himself to be detained in conversation with his fellow-sufferers until it became necessary to abandon that intention. He accordingly put up for the night at the Saracen’s Head Hotel, and sought to while away the hours which intervened before bed-time by a social pipe and glass in the commercial room. Here he met, as a stranger of unpretentious manner always does, with a cordial greeting and good-fellowship. One man, however, Mr. Delmar became very chatty and familiar with. This man, who told him his business—that is to say, what “line” he was in—in the course of conversation took out his card-case and was about to hand Mr. Delmar his card, when unfortunately, as he said, he found that he was out of cards, but he told him his address. Mr. Delmar also took out his card-case, and, very unfortunately indeed, as the sequel shows, he gave the commercial his printed name and address.
I was not long in drawing the inference—nor would any person, I apprehend, be—that this commercial was the villain of my story.
With a photograph of Mr. Delmar in my pocket, I speedily took my ticket for Norwich, and had not much doubt about overtaking the rascal.
Would the reader like to know how I got hold of the fellow? It will appear a very simple and easyprocess when explained, and I don’t take much credit for it. Give a shrewd man a clue, and I warrant you, if he have time and opportunity, he will follow it to the end.
Well, then, the way I pursued the clue to its extremity was this. I concluded at once in my own mind that this man’s “proclivities” had been manifested wherever he went, and that at more than one of the hotels and commercial inns on his road he would have left a clear recollection of his name and line on the retina of a pretty chambermaid.
I was right. After making myself agreeable by innocent devices with the chambermaids at the Saracen’s Head Hotel, at Norwich, I ventured to let one of them see the picture of the man I wanted. I saw at a glance that no tender regard for him was felt by this female observer. I noticed something like pique, or it might be disgust for him. This was enough for me. I frankly told the young woman that I wanted to track and punish him for a mean and vile crime. I saw that, although chambermaid at an inn, she had a woman’s sense of propriety. However, to make doubly sure of her aid, I appealed to her by another argument, which might be supposed to have some influence with a young woman who had to live upon small fees and perquisites. I offered her 5l.reward if she enabled me to discover him, and in earnest of my sincerity and means of so rewarding her I handed her a sovereign at once. She told me she thought my photograph was a copy of the features of Mr. John Brown, who travelled in the cigar line, who had been at that inn some time ago,and who might be expected again in a week or a fortnight at most, as the time for his visit to Norwich must have almost come round. She said she would show the photograph to the other servants, if I would lend it to her, and as I could easily get another, I did so. The rest of the servants agreed that that portrait was not exactly like Mr. John Brown, but it was something like him too. “Very like him,” one said. Next morning’s delivery brought to the hotel, among other letters for expected people (which letters where placed in a rack in the commercial room), two for Mr. John Brown of London. The next day Mr. John Brown of London arrived, and I was struck by the resemblance of the man as he opened the door of the commercial room, in which I was then sitting, a little anxiously watching for his arrival. It is needless to take the reader through the subsequent steps of my investigation. He will see that I had almost bagged my game. It is enough to say that a few inquiries upon the subject elicited the fact that a regular traveller (on the road in which the town of —— and the Griffin’s Head Hotel were situated) being suddenly taken ill, and many accounts being due to the house he travelled for on that line, Mr. John Brown was ordered to do the midland journey for him a few times. It was on one of these journeys that he found his evil opportunity for seducing the domestic of the inn, and playing off upon her the mean trick which led to the summons against Mr. Delmar, the reckless testimony the complainant bore as to his identity, and his condemnation by the justices. It is only necessary to add, thatthe decision against Mr. Delmar was quashed at the Quarter Sessions; and that his character as a man of unblemished honour and domestic virtue was, if possible, strengthened by the ordeal he had to pass through.
SOMEyears ago I was retained to penetrate the mystery of a case in many respects not very unlike the celebrated Road murder; and I was to bring the criminal to justice if possible. It was a case of child murder. The house in which the horrid deed was perpetrated was a cottage, standing in the midst of ample grounds—perhaps ten acres in extent—communicating with a turnpike-road, not much used or frequented, and along which no vehicles passed, except those going to or from the cottage or an adjacent farm-house.
I feel that I am at liberty to indicate the locality of this deed no further than to say, it was in a south of England county.
In order to explain the nature of the case I should, however, remark, that the occupiers of the cottage were, a gentleman who had retired from a business in London, his wife, children, and servants.
The man was cynical, misanthropical, and morbidly disposed to seclusion. He was an eccentric man, and he every where excited prejudices against himself. Even the retirement of this cottage was not so complete as to exclude him wholly from contact with the world, or to shut him in from these prejudices.
He had married—much later in life than is usual with prosperous men—about a year before he took up his abode in the place I have described. His wife had been a poor young woman, although rather beautiful, and, in my opinion, her amiability and goodness compensated to such a man for her lack of intellectual qualifications.
At the time I speak of there were living in this cottage Mr. Robinson, his wife, their two infant children, and two general domestic servants—one of whom, a young woman about twenty-three years of age, they had brought with them from London to this retreat in the south of England.
One morning in June, Mrs. Robinson arose from her bed about half-past six o’clock, and before dressing herself, as was her custom, she crossed the straggling passage and drawing and dining room to a chamber beyond, in which her children and the servant, who performed the duties of nursemaid, were supposed to be sleeping. Two of them were sleeping. She was, however, astonished to observe that one appeared cold to the touch. In amazement and horror the poor woman discovered that the third—her youngest child—was sleeping in the embrace of death!
The bereaved mother rushed frantically to her husband, who was just awakening from his slumbers, and she roused him to perfect consciousness by her shrieks and wild ejaculations. The husband was soon astir, and every body seemed, as every body ought to have been, affected by intense grief.
The loudest interest and most demonstrativeagony was that poured out in sobs, tears, interjections, and apostrophes—all vague, incoherent, indefinite—by the nursemaid.
I will not dwell upon the frightful incident, nor attempt to sketch in detail the lamentations and misery of that household. It may suffice to observe, that wicked rumour said all sorts of uncharitable things. The local gossips were immensely dissatisfied with the proceedings at the inquest;—the acumen of the coroner, or the want thereof; and the sagacity of his jurymen, or its deficiency. Among the dreadful facts asserted by rumour (which, let me observe, is, in nineteen out of twenty cases, altogether wrong in her suspicions and asseverations) in this case, were charges of improper intimacy between the nursemaid and the master, and jealousy on the part of this girl towards her mistress, which had, it was suggested, led up to the perpetration of the crime, through a desire to wreak vengeance out of a mother’s agony. One ingenious theorist—a sort of local oracle in the estimation of many, and the possessor of all wisdom in his own—hinted that the mean, selfish, egotistical tradesman, Mr. Robinson, afraid lest his children should encroach too rapidly on his accumulated profits, had hit upon the Turkish expedient for thinning families; using, in this case, the hand of his dishonoured servant to carry out his infamous design.
The surgeon who made a post-mortem examination—a man by no means unskilful in his profession—who declined to say whether the inclination of his belief favoured the theory of an accidental death or of wilfulmurder, did, however, upon oath, admit that it was possible the child might have been smothered by its nurse in the course of a night quite accidentally.
The coroner’s jury were for two hours very much divided in opinion about what verdict they should return. Some were for a verdict of wilful murder against Mr. Robinson. One man would have liked to have brought in a verdict that would have handed over his wife to the tender mercies of Jack Ketch. In justification of the eleven others I may add, that a strong disposition was felt, amid the solemnity of that investigation, to inflict corporal punishment upon the stupidest fellow. A very strong desire was felt in the breast of more than the majority to return a verdict of wilful murder against the nurse, either with or without yoking her master in that condemnation. The coroner was consulted, and, with an immense amount of circumlocution, which mightily puzzled and confused his sapient aids, that functionary gave it as his opinion that no evidence before the jury was sufficient to justify a verdict of wilful murder against any one. He also ventured to tell the jury that they had better, perhaps, find what he called “an open verdict;” that is to say, one of “wilful murder,” without divining the culprit, or one of “found dead,” and leave the cause of death an obviously more open question still.
About this time I was consulted by a gentleman, without the intervention of any lawyer, and I was requested to look up the facts in an impartial manner; my directions being to nothing extenuate, nor set downaught in malice.
Who was this gentleman? What his motive? What the latent desire he really had? Who did he wish to clear, and upon whom may he have desired to fix the doom of punishment attaching to the supposed crime, I must be excused from stating.
Just before my visitor called upon me to undertake this matter, I had received instructions to investigate a case of forgery upon a bank, to a large extent. I was to receive, as a reward for my services in this case of forgery, a very liberal fee; and I had also, as I have always had, a distaste for investigations into the mystery of deeds of blood. I have never been the agent through whom a culprit’s neck has been encircled by a halter. That is an awful responsibility (for fear of mistake) that I have always shrunk from. Frankly, let me say, I would rather have avoided this engagement altogether, and I did, I think, very gracefully escape from personal action in the matter, by showing my visitor a letter enclosing an instalment of one hundred pounds on account of my fee over the forgery case. He was a man of business, and saw at once that I could not be expected to give up a lucrative and comparatively easy job of that kind for the less remunerative, and in any event less agreeable, inquiry he desired me to prosecute. I, however, took his retainer, upon the understanding and condition that I should act in this case by a deputy, and simply overlook and generally superintend or advise and direct my assistant’s labours.
The reader may as well be informed, that through the intervention of a friend of my visitor’s, my assistant was provided with lodging in the cottage, and was toldto use that sequestered retreat of commercial ease as the central point of his investigations.
I accordingly employed the best man I could get or spare from the other case I had in hand, in which I needed some assistance, and sent that person down to the south of England.
I don’t think this man was quite up to his work. Of course I had not formed that opinion when I set him about the job; but a review of what transpired now inclines me to think he made a too palpable show of his suspicions. He made no secret of his quality, or the work he had in hand; but for this hemayhave had adequate reasons.
Mr. and Mrs. Robinson were both convinced that the murder (if murder it was) had not been committed by any one in their household. They were both prepared to spend any amount of money in defence of their suspected servant, if she had been arrested on suspicion. They had come to the conclusion that the sad affair was the result of an accident,—which was not an over-strained hypothesis.
If, however, it was a case of murder, for which there seemed no apparent motive, it must have been committed by somebody obtaining access from the outside to the room in which the child was sleeping; and a cursory examination of the place showed my man it was by no means a difficult thing to obtain both access and egress through a window opening upon a side of the cottage. My man would have arrived at the conclusion very soon that the death of the poor child had been caused by accident, and would have returned toLondon, but for the not over recondite suspicions generated under his own eye in the cottage itself.
Very curious to know his opinion, very eager in the suggestion of contrary and improbable theories, and very profuse in expressions of regard for Mrs. Robinson and “dear little Willie,” was the nursemaid. She followed my man about with a closeness which seemed to indicate a kind of fascination or terror. At least this is what he told me he thought of her conduct. This alone marked out that girl as the murderess to his mind, and he resolved to linger as long as he could, with a decent show of appearances, in the cottage, thoroughly confident that something would turn up to fix the crime on her, and perhaps somebody else in connexion with her.
The room assigned to him was a rather capacious and tolerably comfortable one, adjoining that through which the little child passed to heaven, and some distance from the chamber in which its nurse had slept since the “accident.” Of course my man was not superstitious, and had no unnatural fears—to which circumstance, perhaps, may be ascribed the fact that he left his dressing-case open and his razors loose during his stay at the cottage.
My man was moreover not afraid of ghosts, which perhaps was fortunate. The window-catch was broken, and the lock of the door was so dilapidated that it would have kept no impudent dog or cat from entering, and it afforded the room no protection against intruding spirits.
One night, about a week after his arrival at thecottage, he had fallen into a sleep,—such a sleep as a man of his profession might be allowed, a sort of permanent half-wakefulness, in which the footfall of an elf would have aroused consciousness without stirring a muscle or raising an eyelid, and from which a salute of artillery could not have disturbed him abruptly enough to produce a quiver or a twitch of skin or muscle,—when that insecure door did open, and the form of a woman, in her night-dress, appeared at his bedside.
Her step excited the wakefulness of my man as he lay with his face to the door. He gently opened his eyes wide enough to enable him to examine and measure the form of the nocturnal visitor, without permitting her to notice the effect of her presence. He saw her glance round the room, which the beams of the moon lighted up sufficiently to exhibit the several articles on the toilet-table and elsewhere. My man thought his interrupter’s eyes fell upon the loose razors, and he availed himself of the opportunity afforded by the turning of her face aslant from his bed to disengage his arms somewhat from the bedclothes. He was now prepared to meet an attack upon him by her with his own material weapons.
He had misunderstood the woman’s object in visiting his bedchamber that night.
She turned again in the direction of the bed. He now thought it prudent to let her see that she was noticed. He coolly raised himself up on his haunches, and fixed his eyes upon her.
“What do you want here?” he rather sternly inquired; and the words seemed to alarm her.
She replied, in faltering accents and spasmodic sentences, “What? I want to see you. Why do you look at me all day? What do you mean by looking at me as you do? Do you mean to say that I killed Willie? Say any thing against me, and I will ruin you. Promise me you won’t say any thing against me, or I will scream out.”
Then steadily glancing at him, she uttered what no doubt were about the only words she had intended to say, “If you don’t promise me here, as you are sitting in that bed, that you don’t suspect me, that you won’t say any thing against me, that you won’t look at me as you do and try to make people suspect me, I will cry out. I will say that you have taken improper liberties with me; that you have seduced me; that I have been awakened in my sleep by conscience, and am afraid of your other evil designs.”
“Oh, you will, will you? And what then?”
“What then? Why, won’t people say that, after getting me to come here and sleep with you, you denounced me in order to cover your own improper conduct?”
My man admits that he thought this “devilish clever.” If he had not been the intended victim, I believe he was so enamoured of the skill of this young woman that he might have offered to take her into a detective partnership, and set up in business with her in opposition to me. But he saw his danger, and did not like being made the object of an experiment with such very fatal incidents surrounding it.
He seized her wrists with one hand, and with theother thrust her from the bedside, placed his hands in so doing over her lips, seized one of the razors lying on the table, and held it before her eyes to terrify her, saying nothing, however, which had reference to that instrument; then he suddenly dropped it near the spot where they were standing, seized her again, and shouted with all his might.
My man was not to be outwitted.
He charged this young woman with having stolen into his bedroom, knowing it to be unfastened, when she calculated that he would be asleep, and knowing also that he had been imprudent enough during his stay in the house to leave his razors on the toilet-table. He declared that he awoke just as she was in the act of putting the razor to her own throat, intending to commit suicide in his room, with the intention, it was suggested, of fastening upon him the crime of her murder.
It will only be necessary to further inform the reader, that although no evidence could be procured sufficient to maintain an indictment for wilful murder against this nurse, and although it was generally believed that she had committed the murder (a fact about which I had my doubts, for I believe the child was accidentally smothered in its sleep, as children often are), no evidence was offered to the jury in support of an indictment for the capital offence; but she was accused and punished for the attempted suicide.
INthe year 1833 I was engaged to investigate the circumstances attending a fire—one of a series—which had ended in claims upon several of the great London offices, and which fires were believed to have arisen out of wilful fraud.
The present fire broke out on a Monday afternoon between one and two o’clock, in a warehouse belonging to an extensive bonnet manufactory near Dunstable, in Bedfordshire.
Among the peculiar circumstances of this case was the somewhat remarkable fact, that the business of the manufactory had just been transferred from one proprietor to another, and that the policy of insurance was in the hands of the company’s officers, at its headquarters in London, for the purpose of having a transfer of the contract endorsed thereon.
The new proprietor informed the fire-office that he had resolved upon enlarging his premises, in order to extend his business.
In a letter to the company he indeed stated, in precise terms, that he then had on hand several large export orders to complete. The policy, which had covered an insurance of 3000l.hitherto, was now increased to 4500l.
Shortly after this another letter was received bythe office, in which the writer stated that 4500l.would, he found, not cover the value of all his improvements, machinery, and stock-in-trade, so that he proposed to still further increase the insurance to 6000l.
As this was an unusually heavy risk on a country policy, and as the premises were only about thirty miles from town, the board determined that the surveyor for the office should go down and report upon the case before the last proposal was accepted.
Mr. Phillimore, the surveyor, accordingly went down. He arrived about eleven o’clock in the forenoon, and was very politely received by the firm—Newton Brothers—who showed him over the premises, which he examined with his usual critical minuteness, and was subsequently invited up-stairs into the manager’s residence on the works, where he consented to partake of a glass of sherry and a sandwich while he awaited a return train to Town.
It was now a few minutes after one o’clock, and the people employed in the manufactory had all quitted the premises for dinner.
The younger member of the firm, Mr. Albert Newton, left the room for the sherry, returned in a few minutes, and had been chatting with the surveyor about half or three-quarters of an hour, when the workpeople began to return.
Before many of the hands had arrived, a cry of “Fire!” was raised. It was discovered that a portion of the old building, which adjoined the new, was in a blaze, and that a large quantity of straw hats and bonnets had been ignited. With immense rapiditythe flames extended up the sides of the warehouse, in which there was, it appeared, stored a large quantity of manufactured goods. Appearances were, however, a little deceptive in this respect. The stock had been so distributed in racks (it might have been for convenience of classification) that the bulk appeared greater than it really was. Perhaps this circumstance, however, rather aided than retarded the progress of devastation; for the flames diffused themselves with more ease through the interstices or spaces in which the parcels were stored, than might have been possible had they been more densely packed.
A confusion and panic seized the few persons in the lower part of the building, and terror paralysed their efforts for a while. Moreover, they did not know that any persons were in the rooms above; and, if they paused in their alarm to consider at all about this matter, they probably thought that they alone, and the new arrivals from dinner, were the only persons within scope of the fire. They accordingly rushed out into the town, and, with commendable prudence—that is, as soon as calmness and reason were restored—sought to procure assistance in quenching the flames. The rest of the work-people, as they arrived, either went off on similar errands, or clustered round the outside of the building.
Meanwhile the devouring element pursued its unchecked course, and spreading with the rapidity already indicated, it soon enveloped the whole of the ground-floor. The flames had, indeed, begun to consume the staircase, and had singed the rafters, beforenotice of their peril reached the few occupants of the upper story.
Mr. Newton and the surveyor of the office were first alarmed by a subdued murmur or buzz produced by the conversation of the mass of people who were below looking on at the spectacle.
The attitude and conduct of the crowd was afterwards the subject of much inquiry and no little suspicion, but there really was no ground for either doubt or astonishment. If the fire had broken out at night, there is every reason to believe that the natural tones of alarm would have taken a louder form of demonstration. If such a fire had broken out in London, where persons are customarily to be found at all times on every floor of a large warehouse, and where the comparative familiarity of people with such incidents leads them to take wiser steps than provincials, the shout of “Fire! fire!” would probably have been at once raised even in broad daylight. But that people unaccustomed to such things, paralysed by terror to a large extent, and in a still greater degree stupefied by wonderment, made no shouts loud enough to arrest the conversation of the endangered little party above, is not, it appears to me, very remarkable.
The sounds which first greeted the ears of Mr. Albert Newton and his guest caused them to listen, and simultaneously one man in the mob (for a mob had by this time formed) did shout “Fire!” A smell of singed material also greeted the nostrils of the little party.
It is needless to say, that these persons immediately rushed to the window with the view of ascertainingwhat was the matter, and determining the course to be pursued if, as they had already almost ascertained, their own lives were in jeopardy.
The appearance of Mr. Albert Newton at the window elicited a shriek from the women and girls, and a corresponding cry of alarm from the men below.
“My God!” exclaimed Mr. Albert Newton, “our place is on fire.”
As he spoke, the flames burst through the lower windows in a dense mass; and although the part of the building in which the manufacturer and his guest were standing was considerably to the east of that part on which the fire had taken its principal hold, there was sufficient palpable cause of danger to whiten the cheeks of both men, and to cause the proprietor—who had, of course, far less experience in such matters than the surveyor, Mr. Phillimore—to betray a degree of confusion which gave that worthy gentleman perhaps more anxiety than the fire alone could have done.
With a degree of calmness and self-possession worthy of the crisis, Mr. Phillimore asked Mr. Newton what means of escape they had, and implored him to be calm, as it might need all their self-possession as well as their courage to extricate themselves.
“Shall we leap out of the window?” exclaimed the embarrassed man.
“No,” was the firm reply.
“Do you think we can safely descend the staircase?”
“Let us try.”
The party then descended one flight of stairs, butfound a dense vapour issuing up the staircase,—an impassable difficulty.
“We are lost!” exclaimed Mr. Newton.
The surveyor’s countenance betrayed intense anxiety as he apprehended that the terrified man’s ejaculation involved an awful truth.
“Let us seek the roof. Have you any rope at hand?”
“Yes,” returned Mr. Newton.
Silently and rapidly they flew rather than ran up the stairs, Newton leading the way to where a quantity of stout hempen rope, of a quarter of an inch diameter, was lying in a corner of a room devoted to empty packages and waste.
The surveyor’s experienced eye measured the extent and capacity of this medium of escape with considerable accuracy, and saw that it would suffice for the purpose of liberating them, if they had the discretion to wisely use the means at their disposal.
Scarcely a word was exchanged between the two men. In almost total silence Mr. Phillimore drew out the first piece of rope and fastened it adroitly round the waist and under the arms of the proprietor of the establishment, and then fastened another length of the cord to the one which encircled his terrified companion. The third end was joined in the same manner.
“That will, I think, serve our purpose,” were the first words uttered, and these were spoken by the surveyor.
Mr. Newton may be excused for the selfishness which allowed him to avail himself of this means ofescape, without much thought about his saviour. Few men under the like circumstances would have acted otherwise than he did. It is only in such cases as a ship on fire at sea that heroism, which is ordinarily slow in its manifestations, rises to the height of that generosity which seeks the preservation of another rather than oneself. Trade does not, perhaps, tend to bring out the finest qualities of our nature. Domestic affections are the most rapid in generating a spirit of self-denial or self-sacrifice. Brother may yield the boon or privilege of life to his brother, the husband to his wife, or the mother to her child; but strangers, or casual acquaintances, are not given to the manifestation of those sublime virtues, self-abnegation and self-sacrifice.
Perhaps, however, Mr. Phillimore might not have parted with the first chance of extrication from the now rapidly consuming flames, if he had not been enabled, by professional sagacity and long training, to ascertain that his own best means of self-preservation really lie through the preservation, in the first instance, of his companion. He had a better chance of extrication when Mr. Newton had reached the cool earth below, than while he remained in the upper story dreading every moment that most horrible of all fates—death by fire. When the one man most liable to panic had been removed from peril, the other would have entire command, as he saw, of such agencies as were then within the equal control of both.
Mr. Phillimore converted one of the sashes into a sort of windlass, or made it at least serve the purposeof a pulley, and by a process that requires no description he lowered the frightened man to within a yard or two of the ground, the rope being not quite long enough to permit of his feet touching.
While dangling in this position, the crowd below shrieked and shouted, and were palsied and confused. One or two, however, had sufficient presence of mind to understand the crisis, and they instantly flew to a neighbouring builder’s yard, from which a ladder was procured tall enough to reach the height at which Mr. Albert Newton was suspended.
The flames at this moment were just beginning to shed their vivid light through an adjacent window on the ground-floor at this angle of the building when the last means of escape arrived. It was the work of a moment to plant the ladder against the wall. One cool-headed fellow ascended the steps, placed his arm round the waist of his suspended and now almost lifeless master, disengaged him from the rope, and brought him down in safety amid the shouts of the crowd beneath.
Meanwhile second thoughts had entered the head of Mr. Phillimore, whose danger had been of course greatly increased during the space of time covered by the incidents I have just narrated. He ran about the floor in search of further rope, perceiving for the first time, perhaps, that he would require a greater length to effect his own deliverance. Happily, in a packing-case he discovered some other pieces of cord, not so reliable in quality as that which had completed a work of mercy in his hands; but of course he had to use suchmaterial as he could, and to trust the contingencies of its strength and tension. He had spliced the pieces of rope he last discovered, which were of short lengths and unequal thickness the one to the other, when his attention was again aroused by the voice of the crowd below, shouting to warn him that the flames were beginning to burst from every opening at the end of the building beneath his feet; while, it may be observed, the fire had also just begun to reach the third story at the end where it commenced.
Newton had before this been released, and the further extremity of the rope which had encircled his body had itself began to catch fire.
The coolness and discrimination of Mr. Phillimore began to desert him.
He told me that he became sensible of giddiness or approaching vertigo. By a strong effort of will he conquered the present most serious danger, and his judgment and prudence rose again with the extremity of his peril.
He joined all the rope together—that which he had last found to that which had been used in the deliverance of Newton—and fastening one end of the cord round his body, he slowly and cautiously lowered himself until he began to feel the scorching flames about his extremities.
The cord was not quite long enough!
Another awful sensation of approximate death overtook him; and he afterwards informed me that he knows not how he contrived to complete the work of his own deliverance.
In truth, however, as I afterwards learned from two of the bystanders, with, it seemed to them, wonderful regularity, although with extraordinary speed, he continued to lower himself right through a mass of belching flame. When he landed on the ground, it was seen that his coat-tails were ignited, and that his face was terribly scorched. He must have closed his eyes, or he would inevitably have been blinded.
Happily the fire had not consumed the wall nor the floor, and it was possible for three or four of the most daring spectators to rush forward, seize the now swooning and senseless man, and carry him off to a surgeon’s hard by. Here he received immediate attention, and he was afterwards removed to an hotel, where he lay delirious for several days; but at length his reason was restored, his wounds dressed, and he was enabled to proceed to his residence in London. Under the skilful treatment of an eminent surgeon, he thoroughly recovered. Although a trace or two of the flames were indelibly marked upon his countenance, they were but faint or slight traces.
Nothing effectual could be done for the preservation of the building. The fire for some time pursued its devastating course altogether without let or hindrance. At length an engine from the town-hall arrived, and began to throw a feeble jet of water among the flames. It seemed, however, to produce not the slightest possible effect, and its operation looked very like a satire or mockery. The entire of the building was gutted; the whole of the stock, materials, &c., of the factory wereconsumed; the machinery was rendered useless, and not much less than 20,000l.damage was altogether perpetrated; but this included the injury to the old premises, which were insured by the landlord.
I cannot tell how it happened that very imperfect reports of this fire reached London, or were circulated in the newspapers of the district. Perhaps it was, as I have been told, because the local reporter was a man of inferior descriptive power, and unable to give didactic interest or picturesqueness to the narrative he wrote, without which, it is needless to inform the reader, no account of any thing is palatable to the reading public, and with which comparatively small matters can be made interesting, or even sensational. Perhaps it was because Mr. Newton’s brother and co-partner did not want to invest the case with more importance than he could possibly help, and was indeed rather anxious that no more noise should be made about it than was inevitable. I have heard it stated that he knew the only representative of the local press in the town, and sought him out, or was sought out by him, and that he dictated or inspired the feeble and uninteresting narrative that was published of the event.
These circumstances or rumours are just of sufficient importance to the developments of the case I am about to describe to justify my stating them.
I should mention that Mr. Henry Newton, the other proprietor of the manufactory, was absent at Birmingham. He was indeed travelling on behalf of the firm of which he was a member, and knew nothingof the catastrophe until informed of it by a telegram, when he of course repaired homewards with all possible speed.
The cause of this fire was never certainly ascertained; but a likely hypothesis, which a jury might believe, was that it arose out of the negligence of the gas-fitters. These men went to dinner at the same time as the ordinary work-people of the factory; and on doing so, stopped by a wooden plug one end of a gas-pipe that was connected to the metre, and enveloped an unfinished joint, also near to the metre, in white lead and tow. The gas at this time was not turned on at the metre, or so it was thought; and the most mysterious feature of the case is, how it was afterwards turned on. This point, however, could not be cleared up, and theonusof so doing did not, of course, rest upon the insured.
In due course a claim was made upon the company. It was investigated; and although suspicions were entertained in the neighbourhood of the Mansion House, where their office was situate, that the calamity was the work of an incendiary, the fact could not be proved, and the amount of the insurance was ultimately paid.
Messrs. Newton contended that the sum they obtained from the fire-office was insufficient to cover the value of their machinery, stock, fixtures, &c. They further alleged that they had sustained considerable loss by the suspension of their trade, and they accordingly brought an action against the gas company who supplied the town, and who had undertaken to lay the pipes in the premises.
This action was defended up to the day of trial, and stood high on the special-jury list at Guildhall one morning. The cause immediately preceding it had nearly terminated. The judge was summing up in that cause. A rather numerous body of spectators (among whom I might have been seen) were awaiting, with various degrees of interest, the case of “Newtonv.the H—— Gas Company.”
At this stage of the case, a consultation across the bar took place between Sergeant Bustle and Mr. Quicke, Q.C., the principal learned counsel or “leaders” for the plaintiff and for the defendant, which ended in their suggesting to his Lordship (Mr. Baron Snapwell) that an arrangement might probably be effected between the parties, if his Lordship would kindly permit the case to stand over until to-morrow. His Lordship, with a show of reluctance, but I believe with perfect willingness to get rid of a long and intricate case, consented to the request, and all I have further to tell the reader about it is, that the anticipations of these learned gentlemen were realised.
A compromise was effected. Messrs. Newton Brothers obtained a rather liberal sum by way of further compensation for their injuries and loss through the conflagration.
Another extraordinary and suspicious circumstance was the death shortly afterwards of Mr. Paterson, the late proprietor of this establishment, to whom Newton Brothers were indebted in a considerable sum. This happened about four months after the fire, and under these circumstances. He was living in the town, nothaving yet determined into what fresh business he would embark, and not, it is believed, having received all the consideration he had bargained for from the firm to whom he had transferred his business.
The Newtons and Mr. Paterson had been passing an evening at the Dove Hotel, and had taken rather more brandy-and-water than any rational idea of temperance would sanction. Mr. Paterson left the Dove before the Newtons.
His way lay across a canal, and in the morning he was found drowned. He had tumbled, as it appeared, somehow over the low parapet into the water. The Newtons left the house after him, and found their way home to their beds in safety. A coroner’s inquest sat upon the body of the deceased, and returned an open verdict of “Found drowned.” Some people in the town and neighbourhood, among whom were the Newtons, professed much grief at the calamity. The new firm said, indeed, it appeared as if the place and all connected with it were under a spell or a brand. They declared that it seemed as if Providence had resolved nothing should prosper in connexion with this particular manufactory. How, or for what reason, they could not tell; but here was the death, it might be by accident, or it might be by suicide, in a state of drunkenness, of their predecessor, not long after they had lost every thing (as they in the freedom of their language said they had) through a fire on the premises.
The insurance company heard of the death of Mr. Paterson, and the secretary got it into his head that the Newtons were incendiaries and murderers—thatthey had killed this man for some evil reason best known to themselves. He consulted the solicitors of the company, and they employed me to sift the mystery, and, if it turned out that the secretary’s suspicions were justifiable, to spare no trouble or expense in obtaining evidence upon which to prosecute the alleged miscreants.
I went down secretly, and investigated all the circumstances as far as I could. I collected a variety of little scraps of fact, which left no doubt in my mind that the secretary was right. I came, indeed, to the conclusion that these Newtons were the vilest wretches who had for a long time been permitted to escape the hangman. Yet, frankly let me say, I could not gather enough information on which to rest an indictment with the likelihood of securing a conviction.
I need hardly point out to the reader how very complete my evidence must have been before I could have recommended the company to incur the risk of a prosecution. If, for instance, they failed in conclusively establishing the guilt of the insurers, the institution would be irreparably damaged in public estimation. Popular opinion, and newspaper commentators, would say the company set up this odious defence in order to escape payment of a just claim. The accused would be elevated into the ranks of martyrdom. The company would have to pay all that was demanded from them, with costs, and they might almost as well afterwards give up business, or set the lawyers to work to liquidate the affairs of their institution in Chancery. So that after laying my statement in detail before thesolicitors of the company (who paid me handsomely for my services), they drew up a report with their comments and opinions upon my facts; the matter was considered by the board of directors, and there for the time it dropped.
It was not exactly dropped either. I was employed to keep my eye upon the Newtons without intermission for a couple of years, if I felt it necessary to prolong the scrutiny so far—which instructions I had no unwillingness to obey.
Through the medium of several of my assistants, who were changed from time to time, the subsequent career of these persons was noted down with a degree of accuracy which afterwards proved very useful to the interests of metropolitan insurance companies in particular, and to the interests of society and the cause of justice in general.
Among the persons in the town where the dismantled factory was situate whose acquaintance I made, and whose confidence I thought I had gained, was the widow of the drowned late proprietor. She grieved over the premature loss of her husband, but had no apparent suspicion, or at least disclosed to me no suspicion, that he had met his death by foul play. I, among other expedients, condoled with her, discoursed about the lamentable effects of intoxication, eulogised the memory of her husband, lightly and softly touching the subject of that peculiar weakness for the bottle which had led to his untimely death. But none of these conversations elicited from her any suggestion that he had been murdered by the Newtons.
Not long after the money had been paid I discovered that, clever as I thought I had been, I had been outwitted; but not by the Newtons, about whom let there be no further mystery with the reader. They were what the secretary had thought, and what I had become convinced—they were vile wretches, fit for the hangman, and rotten-ripe for the gallows. I had been outwitted by a woman’s ingenuity. No one suspected me or my mission in the town (as it afterwards turned out) except the widow Paterson. She had somehow got to know my name and real character, and had been fencing with me or humbugging me, and was prepared, when occasion or opportunity arose, to use me. At the risk of losing some of myprestigewith the reader, I am frank enough to fairly admit this.
Shortly after Messrs. Newton Brothers had received the reward of their villany from the fears of the insurance company, and, so to speak, through the broken links in the evidence of their rascality and scoundrelism, an anonymous letter was received by me, the substance of which I may communicate to the reader. It was a statement in effect that the insurance company had been robbed by the Newtons, who had set fire to their own factory in order to achieve their ends; and that the writer was, under proper guarantees, disposed to put me on the track of a successful investigation into the mystery of the crime. The writer required that I should answer the letter, in the first place, by an advertisement in the second column of theTimes, on the morning of the third day after receipt of the letter. The form of that advertisement was given me, which Iwas only to insert if I consented to the terms, could give the required guarantees, and was prepared to follow up the clue to be communicated to me.
I saw the solicitors of the company, and with them saw the secretary, when it was arranged that I should accept the terms, see the writer, give the guarantee, and follow up the investigation as it might seem to me expedient, drawing from the company such expenses and remuneration as I might think necessary to incur. After the advertisement, and one or two preliminary letters, I met the writer of the first letter at an appointed place. The writer of that letter was the widow Paterson. She was a remarkable woman, that Mrs. Paterson; by no means handsome or beautiful, yet by no means decidedly the reverse of either. She was not masculine, and she had certainly none of the delicacies of her sex. She was an unscrupulous, designing, wicked woman, cherishing and respecting her own comfort and material welfare more than any thing else. I believe she was sorry to lose her husband, but anxious to make the best use of her misfortune, and chiefly disappointed when she ascertained that his loss also involved the loss of money due to him which she expected to have had the enjoyment of in connexion with him.
When we met we were a little embarrassed. She was startled by the success of her formerruseand concealment. I was disconcerted, if not somewhat humbled, by the then evident truth that I had been all along known to her while I had been, as I thought, pumping her. This embarrassment, however, soon yielded tobusiness. She gave me an insight into a plot of which I had hitherto not had a complete idea.
She could not positively assert that her husband had been murdered. On that head she had her suspicions, as others had. All she could say distinctly was, that the Newtons had burned down their house. The fact was, that her husband had been embarrassed. The Newtons had seen this, and proposed to him an elaborate scheme for defrauding the insurance company. The same means would also enable him to get time from his creditors, who might afterwards be arranged with, or “satisfied” by a bankruptcy, as thereafter should seem desirable. Meanwhile the Newtons and he were to take parts in the great scheme of fraud. They settled between them the extension of the premises and the burning of the manufactory, the claim upon the company, and the division of the spoil. All these arrangements had been carried out, as the reader is aware, except the last part of the programme, which was the subject of another fraud, illustrating a truth I have so frequently insisted upon—that there is no honour among thieves.
Newtons might or might not have overtaken Paterson after he left the Dove, who, being drunk, could not walk towards his home very quickly. They might or might not have pitched him over the canal-bridge into the water; but it was clear that they conceived his death gave an opportunity for cheating him, or rather his widow, out of his share of the proceeds of their joint crime. Mrs. Paterson was in her husband’s confidence about the destruction of his premises. This wasa little circumstance the Newtons were unacquainted with. On the other hand, Paterson had often told them that he did not let his wife know every thing, and had so frequently spoken in disrespectful terms of the gentle sex (especially on the score of speech or intrigue), that he led them to believe his wife knew nothing about the conspiracy; but in point of fact she had been informed all about it. She had held her peace, since Paterson’s death, to see how Messrs. Newton would behave when they got the insurance money, secretly having resolved all the while that if they played her false, or did not hand over to her what she considered her fair share, or what it was arranged her husband should have, she would “let the cat out of the bag,” and assist the officers of justice in raising that firm to the level of a platform outside the county gaol, where Mr. Jack Ketch had previously been known to perform in a few dismal tragedies. When the Newtons got the money she boldly made her demand upon them. They affected to be indignant, and they menaced her with a criminal information for slander, which raised her fears a little, for she did not clearly see how she was to establish her case against them. She was lawyer enough to know that in any criminal proceedings against her, her mouth would be shut, by the forms of that branch of English jurisprudence. It required not much self-possession on her part to hold her tongue a while longer, to simulate, if not satisfaction, at least resignation, at the loss of her share of the plunder. She however determined to place herself in communication with me, in the full reliance that I could with her aid, overtake thevillains, who had not been true to their compact of rascality, and get them punished, as they deserved to be, if not for their original crimes, for their want of honour to the confederate.
I listened to her story, and noted all the circumstances she could relate. I made another report, that went through the same ordeal or ceremonial which my former report was submitted to, and with about the like result. This woman’s evidence was tainted. She did not indeed want to be brought forward. She trembled under the fear of being murdered by some other confederates of the Newtons, if she were the ostensible and avowed agent of their punishment. She wanted “the thing done without using her.” It appeared to me, and to the other adviser of the insurance company, that with her evidence a prosecution of the Newtons was not a perfectly safe experiment; and that without such support an indictment was an exceedingly dangerous expedient for the company.
It is needless to observe that the disclosures of this woman rendered the fact of the Newtons’ crime doubly certain tous; but all that could still be done was to watch and wait another opportunity for bringing these wretches to justice.
The explanations which I had from Mrs. Paterson were to the effect that, although her husband was pecuniarily embarrassed at the time when he sold the business, a large portion of the money owing was money that he held as trustee, and which, being in the funds, railway stocks &c., he had the exclusive management of, having taken all the securities several years ago out of the hands of the lawyers concerned in the trust. There was no one to check his malversation, and by the simple expedient of keeping the interest paid, he escaped detection. At length, finding that the affair was getting beyond his control, the means of his permanently concealing it being rendered more and more difficult by its magnitude, and the fact that losses in trade, perhaps the interest upon the lost capital, swelled up an awful total, he took the Newtons into his confidence, and the set devised a scheme for colourably selling his stock-in-trade, fixtures, good-will, &c., &c., for extending the premises, and so forth, and burning the place down, so as to realise a large sum in ready money—considerably more than the value of the things insured. By these means he hoped to retrieve his position as trustee, and put a tidy sum of money in his own pocket—his confederates, the Newtons, of course also profiting somewhat largely.
Paterson was a peculiar and self-reliant man. Moreover, he could not rely upon getting any solicitor to enter into such a confederacy. It is absolutely certain that if he could induce any one in the legal profession to join in such a villanous compact, he would have been the very lowest among low attorneys. He would in all probability have known sufficiently well how to screen himself, and also how to swallow and retain the lion’s share of the plunder. All these things were evident to Mr. Paterson, so he kept the bills of exchange which the Newtons had given him in his own hands, and dreading burglary, or the fraudulentand surreptitious removal of them from the apartments he now occupied during his absence, if an opportunity of any kind were furnished, he usually carried these documents about with him in his pocket-book when he left home. This was, of course, a dangerous plan, and one that any honest man in an ordinary position would not adopt; but perhaps, after all, it was the safest for such a man as Paterson in the position he then stood.
The Newtons knew of Paterson’s fraudulent trusteeship. They were sufficiently in his confidence to have obtained nearly all the information which enabled them to keep him at arm’s length. And of course Paterson also knew of the exaggerated claim which had been presented to the insurance company, based upon inventories and papers supplied to them by him on the transfer of the business. It is hard to say that either was more deeply implicated in the villany than the other; although it is clear that Paterson, who stood behind the scenes and was screened from observation by the prominent defrauders, was, in reality at least, as deep, and perhaps more deeply, involved in the swindle and arson than either of the Newtons. The situation of the parties towards each other was not very unlike that thieves ordinarily stand in. One had reason to fear the other, and there was in consequence mutual jealousy, distrust, and apprehension.
After leaving the Dove, I had no doubt that the Newtons hastened in the direction that Paterson had, go homewards, and succeeded in overtaking him; that, being partially intoxicated he was easily grasped andheld by his whilom confederates, one of whom probably held his hand over the victim’s mouth while the other hastily seized his pocket-book, removed from it the acceptances which had been given him on the transfer of the business, &c., after which he was pitched into the water. When taken from the canal and searched, a pocket-book was found upon the person of the murdered incendiary, and in it all the papers that he was known to carry except the acceptances, which were, to the mind of Mrs. Paterson, painfully conspicuous by their absence.
I have explained that the Newtons did not know that Mrs. Paterson was in her husband’s confidence; that they imagined she was not; and that he, with a desire for counter-check which distinguishes the suspicious, taught them so to believe. He would frequently say, when Mrs. Paterson’s name transpired in their conversations prior and subsequently to the fire, that “he never trusted a woman with a secret of any importance, as she was sure to blab or peach,” &c. As I have said, however, he was all the while disclosing to her the conspiracy and plot. She was thoroughly informed of every circumstance, and knew all about their proceedings from first to last as well as either of the Newtons did.
After her husband’s death, in her emergency, before seeking me she consulted those well-known criminal lawyers, Messrs. Levy Levy, Brothers, and Sons, who (except when they attend a police-court, and think a demonstration requisite for the vindication of their skill to the newspaper-reading World, as an advertisement for business in the same line) conceive that the Carlylese or Chinese motto about silence embodies the prime wisdom or the highest sagacity. They recommended Mrs. Paterson to wait and hold her tongue—for the present. She did this until she knew that the money had been paid by the insurance company, of which circumstance she then informed her clever Mosaic attorneys. They, upon hearing this circumstance from their client, wisely and shrewdly, perhaps, told her the time had now arrived for action, that they were the people to act, and that she had better leave herself in their hands. To this she readily consented; for, as I have said, the Newtons inspired her with awe. If she had not been sensible that she had an advantage in her knowledge of them, and that they at the present moment had no conception she was aware of their villany, she would have trembled lest, as the greed of the brothers led them to the murder of her husband in order to prevent further disclosures, they would murder her.
The action of her attorneys was not a very remarkable or, I think, skilful performance. One thing to be said is, these gentlemen have an enormous amount of very lucrative business, and it does not, I believe, pay them to bestow much thought upon any thing. For instance, when some wholesale forger, some coiner in an extensive way of business, some pivot of pick-pocketing or burglary, or the member of any gang, is arrested, he sends immediately for Messrs. Levy Levy, Brothers, and Sons, and, to secure their best services, makes them a large payment. They hear what he has got tosay. They attend the police-court, bully the witnesses for the prosecution, make every conceivable statement about their client’s respectability within the limits that evidence will permit; and although, almost as a matter of course in these cases, the criminal gets sent for trial, he goes away to the House of Detention rejoicing in the confident belief that he has got, at all events, the best criminal lawyers in the country to defend him. When he comes up for trial, out of the hundred or two hundred pounds or more which Messrs. Levy Levy and family have extracted from the prisoner, his relatives, his connexions, or his gang, these attorneys give a brief or a couple of briefs to counsel, which contain little if any thing more than copies of the depositions taken before the magistrates, and on the back of those briefs are severally indorsed, “Mr. Noxious Sound, 10 guineas;” and “Mr. Modest Emptypurse, 2 guineas.” The leader of these two gentlemen perhaps tries to pick a hole in the indictment, which has for several years past been not very serviceable to prisoners, because if the hole is but a small one, and unless the bench can be satisfied that the indictment, as it stands, describes a different offence to that which a prisoner has been arrested upon, or has come prepared to meet, it is amended in court so as to cure the defect which Mr. Noxious Sound’s not miraculous penetration has discovered. Or Mr. Sound may raise what thieves call a “pint of law” for the Court of Criminal Appeal, about which it is needless to say any thing, except that the case then easily glides from the lower to higher tribunal and that in its course Messrs.Levy Levy and kindred get another considerable lump of money out of it. While they thus realise enormous incomes by a process so facile, and one which involves no responsibility and taxes no intellect—a thing, by the way, nearly impossible, for the Levys have not much of the latter article among the lot of them—they are not disposed, even under what would to the ordinary solicitor be a temptation of liberal costs, to take a vast deal of trouble, or, as one of them would observe, “put themselves far out of the way.”
Messrs. Levy Levy and family wrote to Messrs. Newton Brothers a letter, which stated that they had been called upon and consulted by a client on a matter in which they (Messrs. Newton Brothers) were concerned; and that they (Messrs. Levy Levy and kindred) would be glad to see them (Messrs. Newton Brothers).
Mr. Albert Newton received this letter and opened it. When he communicated it to his brother, that gentleman elegantly observed that he thought he “smelt a rat;” but I do not think he exactly comprehended who the rat was, or its location. However, the firm also thought it desirable to consult attorneys. Newtons would have gone to Messrs. Levy Levy and family; but as the professional services of these renowned pettifoggers were forestalled, Newton Brothers put themselves into communication with another Levy, who is an attorney, and may or may not be, for any thing I know, a kinsman of the members of the great Old Bailey house. He called upon Messrs. Levy Levy and family, and the result was, that Mrs.Paterson, when she next waited upon them, was told it was “an ugly affair,” and that they “did not see how to move in it without peril.” They talked to her in the language of professional wisdom—and slang. They said something about stinks that were stirred smelling all the more because of the operation, and used other unequally sage observations. The widow was not broken-hearted, but certainly crest-fallen, and eminently, although silently, indignant.
Mrs. Paterson vowed vengeance, although the inarticulate form of her protestations saved their being registered any where to her disadvantage. She now determined to take her own course in bringing down upon the heads of her husband’s confederates in the swindle and in the arson, and her husband’s murderers, the vengeance of the law. She was ultimately led by this amiable turn of reflection to communicate with me, and the reader has already been told the immediate result.
Popular belief, I am sorry to say, in the town where the bonnet-factory had stood, was largely tinged with prejudice or superstition, which materially assisted Newtons’ future plans. Paterson’s breach of trust became known; his losses in trade also became generally known. The fire having broken out so soon after the transfer of the business had been effected, and the suicide—as it was said—of the late proprietor, all confirmed the mass of the people there in the Newtonian belief that a spell, or witchery, or fatal influence of some kind, hung over the establishment. Newtons’ professions of faith of the same kind did not, therefore,appear remarkable. A few people wondered, but nobody except the insurance office suspected the reason why the firm determined not to resume business there. They were content to pay such debts as they had contracted in the neighbourhood, to display a little kindness to a few of the workpeople in the bitterest distress; and having thus obtained a very pleasant reputation, they quitted the neighbourhood for London, intending, as they said, to embark in some other line of enterprise.
I kept close watch upon the culprits, and knew all their movements; but still I could not, for a long time, bring any thing home to them with sufficient precision to warrant a prosecution by the insurance company. Among the things I did, however, discover, was an abundant series of links in a chain of evidence which, some day, I felt certain I could attach at its extremity to a great crime; and although my employers were, I think, getting a little impatient, as I also think I was myself, I never doubted that the result would be, if not the hanging of the Newtons, their certain condemnation to the bulks or a convict prison for the term of their natural lives.
I also ascertained that these villains were mixed up with, in divers ways, a gang who for many years past, and for some years after the date of this narrative, played a prominent part in, or were at the root of, all the great crimes of London, and many of those in the provinces. The Newtons appeared to have a special department of the criminal business allotted to or taken up by them. Although they had beenconcerned in a forgery or two, in a railway “plant,” and a burglary on a grand scale, yet their preference was to get up fires. They had been concerned as subordinates and screened performers in a large incendiary fire at Whitechapel, in another at Manchester, and, I also believe, one in Liverpool.
After about sixteen months’ waiting and watching—during which time the Newtons had made one or two pleasure-trips to the Continent, had resided at various parts of the metropolis in superior furnished apartments, and had patronised tailors extensively for various costumes—I ascertained that they had resolved to re-commence business.
One of them, Mr. Henry Newton, went into the west of England, to the town of B——, and took a large house and shop there, which he opened as a music-seller’s and a pianoforte warehouse. Next door to the goodly and capacious premises which Mr. Henry Newton had taken, was a small, dwarfed, and not by any means pretty building. This had been not long before to let, but had found a tenant about a month or six weeks before Mr. Newton took the adjacent more pretentious structure. The small house was opened, in a humble way of business, by an old man and woman. The old folk sold lollipops, fruit, children’s books, &c. Newton complained to the agent of the low character of this business, and went so far as to negotiate with the small shopkeeper for the surrender of his tenancy in the premises; but the negotiation broke off, in consequence of the small shopkeeper demanding what Mr. Newton thought any thing but a small pricefor his interest in the hovel. Mr. Newton declared that he had an unconquerable objection, on principle, to being swindled or robbed in that way. Rather than submit to the small shopkeeper’s gross extortion, he said he would put up with the nuisance, although it would interfere with the respectable business he intended to carry on.
I ought to explain, that Mr. Newton did not appear in the town under the name of Newton. He set up there as “Keeling and Co., wholesale pianoforte manufacturers, dealers, and merchants.” His establishment was called the “Temple of the Muses,” and a very pretty affair it was.
Mr. Albert Newton remained in London. He started, under the title of “Cross and Co.,” as “general commission-agent, importer, and merchants,” near Tower Hill, and soon found himself engaged in rather extensive operations at home and abroad. He also served as a reference for his brother, Mr. Keeling.
Mr. Keeling had not opened his premises long when he slightly intimated his intention to insure the “Temple of the Muses.” Several of the local agents of insurance companies left at his premises circulars and prospectuses, inviting him thereby to insure his life or his chattels, or both. He had interviews with two or three of the agents about terms, and was critical in comparing the different rates of their offices, the dates of their foundation, the respectability of their management, and all such other things as a prudent insurer would like to be well informed about. The upshot or result was, that he effected an insurance through thelocal agent of one of the oldest London offices (the title of which need not for the present be mentioned), although it cost him a trifle more than was asked by the agent of a modern office, because he had no belief, he said, in “mushroom concerns.” The agent, who profited by it, considered this decision a token of Mr. Keeling’s sound practical judgment.
Several pianos arrived, some large parcels of music, and other goods, which were duly taken from the railway station to the “Temple of the Muses,” by the railway servants, whose fatigue was usually lightened by a triflingdouceurfrom Messrs. Keeling and Co.
Messrs. Keeling’s men, an assistant and a porter, were brought by them from London. The principal had been heard to say that nobody but London men could understand his way of business; and that although he liked the people of B—— very well (especially the better classes), he could not put up with the trade assistants to be got in that town.
Shortly after the “Temple of the Muses” was opened, the proprietor was scandalised by a little stall having been put outside the next house or hovel, with ginger-beer and other trifling articles of refreshment upon it for sale, which, indeed, seemed to be displayed with a sort of vulgar ostentation by the proprietor, as Keeling said, as a sort of means to annoy him, until he gave a fancy price in order to get rid of the fellow. In this, however, the small shopkeeper was not successful. Although Mr. Keeling’s indignation and disgust were intense, he would not buy off the nuisance at the price demanded. He talked of going to law with theold man, and consulted the leading solicitor in the town about an action or an indictment; but was advised that the annoyance was insufficient to give him the remedy he sought.
No business seemed to be done by Keeling and Co. A few pieces of music were sold. A good many people called to see the pianos; but the prices asked for them somewhat alarmed the customers. Mr. Keeling occasionally got disgusted, and assured his visitors he could not sell such articles as he had to sell at the prices they were expected to be sold for, although he knew that common trashy things could be supplied at those figures.
One day there was a sale in London of the stock of a pianoforte manufacturer advertised in the daily papers. It announced an auction at some future day, unless the whole stock were previously disposed of by private contract, together with the lease and good-will of the manufacturer’s premises. Mr. Keeling received a telegram from Messrs. Cross, which ran thus: “See theTimes. Advertisement, sale of Mr.——. Stock, good-will, &c.”
Mr. Keeling, after receiving this telegram, was very anxious to see theTimes, which arrived in due course about mid-day. He sent to the railway station two or three times, and ultimately went up himself, to get an early copy of the paper. On his way there he met an acquaintance or two (one was my assistant, although he little dreamt it), whom he told there was a splendid opportunity, he thought, for buying a large stock, and perhaps getting a first-class Town business,to which his country trade of the “Temple of the Muses” might be added with advantage. He thought he might also be able to get a stock of pianos, of rather lower quality than he now had, which the people of B—— might appreciate at the price he could offer them. After he had procured theTimes, and taken care to explain to a few people the precise cause of his journey to London, he only awaited the arrival of the next up-train, and away he went to Town by it. He expected to be down the next day, but found this impossible, as he explained in a telegram to his assistant or shopman, but said that he would positively return on the day following.