Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume XXI Part 12

"There is Abram's house," she said; "there's light in the window."

And the officer, standing a little to see where she went, now began to examine the outside of Abram's premises. A c.h.i.n.k in the shutters showed him a part of the person of some one inside, whom he conjectured to be Abram sitting at his work. He opened the door, and it was as he thought.

An old man was sitting at a bench, with a pair of nippers in his hand, peering into some small object.

"Can you mend that?" said the officer abruptly, and, without a word of prelocution, pressing into his hands a ring.

"Anything," was the prompt reply.

But no sooner had the ring come under the glance of his far-ben eye--

"Yes--ah! ye-es--well--no--no."

And the peering eye came, as it were, forward out of its recess, and scanned the face of the officer, who, on the other hand, was busy watching every turn of the Jew's features.

"No; I cannot mend that."

"Why? You said you could mend anything."

"Ye-es, anything; but not that."

"No matter--no harm in asking," replied the officer, as he looked round the apartment, and fixed his eye on the back wall, where, in utter opposition to all convenience, let alone taste, and even to the exclusion of required s.p.a.ce, there were battered two or three coa.r.s.e engravings.

"Good night!"

"Goo-ood night!"

"Now what, in the name of decoration, are these prints hung up on that wall for?" asked the officer of himself, without making any question of the import of the Jew's look, and his yes and no. He was now standing in the middle of the square, and, turning round, he saw the light put out.

Another thought struck him, but whatever it was, it was the cause of a laugh that took hold of him, even in the grasp of his anxiety; yea, he laughed, for a detective, greatly more heartily than could be authorized by anything I have recorded.

"Why, the lower print is absolutely the old Jewish subject of the cup in the sack," he muttered, and laughed again. "Was ever detective so favoured?--a representation of concealed treasure on the very wall where that treasure is! Were the brethren fools enough to put the representation of a cup on Benjamin's sack?"

"Robertson!" he called to one of his men, whom, by the light at the street-end of the entry, he saw pa.s.sing, "send two men here upon the instant."

"Yes, sir."

And then he began to examine more thoroughly the premises, to ascertain whether there were any exit-openings besides the door and window. There were none. He had a quarter of an hour or twenty minutes to wait, and five of these had not pa.s.sed before he observed some one go up and tap at Abram's door. A question, though he did not hear it, must have been put by the Jew, for an answer, in a low voice, responded,

"Slabberdash!"

"The crack name of that fellow Clinch, whom I've been after for a week,"

said the officer to himself, as he kept in the shadow of a cellar which jutted out from the other houses.

The Jew had again answered, for the visitor repeated to himself, as if in fear and surprise, "Red-light," and, looking cautiously about him, made off.

"It is not my cue to follow," muttered the detective; "but I will do next best."

And hurrying out of the mouth of the entry at the heels of the visitor, he caught the policeman on the Nicolson Street beat almost immediately.

"Track that fellow," he said; "there--there, you see him--'tis Slabberdash; do not leave him or the front of his den till sunrise. I'll get a man for your beat."

"Yes, sir," replied the policeman, adroitly blowing out his bull's-eye and making off at a canter.

The officer returned to his post, and within the time the two a.s.sistants arrived.

"Go you, Reid, to the office, and send a man to supply Nicolson Street beat till Ogilvy return; he's on commission; come back instantly."

The man obeyed with alacrity.

"And now, Jones, you and your neighbour take charge of that door--keep seeing it without it seeing; you understand? Keep watch; and if any one approach, scan him for Slabberdash, but take care he doesn't see you. I will relieve you at shutters-down in the morning; meanwhile, I'm at home for report or exigency."

"I comprehend," replied the man, "and will be careful."

The officer took for home, weary and drowsy, though a little awakened by the events of one half-hour. There was sight of game, as well as scent.

The Jew's look by itself was not much, yet greatly more to the eye of a detective than even an expert physiognomist could imagine. The picture-plastered wall was more; the cup in the sack was merely an enlivening joke; but Slabberdash was no joke, as many a douce burgher in Edinburgh knew to his cost. The fellow was a match for the father of cheats and lies himself; and therefore it could be no dishonour to our clever detective that hitherto he had had no chance with him, any more than if he had been James Maccoul, or the great Mahoun.

Meanwhile, the other watch having arrived, the two kept up their surveillance; nor would they be without something to report to their officer, were it nothing more than that little Abram--for he was very diminutive--about one in the morning rather surprised one of the guard, who was incautiously too near the house, by slowly opening the door, and looking out with an inquiring eye, in his shirt; and upon getting a glimpse of the dark figure of the policeman, saying, as if to himself, though intended for the said dark figure, whoever it might be,

"I vash wondering if it vash moonlight."

And, shutting the door hurriedly, he disappeared. About an hour afterwards, a tall female figure, coming up the entry from North Richmond Street, made a full stop, at about three yards from Abram's door, and then darted off, but not before one of the guard had seen enough, as he thought, to enable him to swear that it was Slabberdash's companion, a woman known by the slang name of Four-toed Mary, once one of the most dashing and beautiful of the local street-sirens. About an hour after that the two guards forgathered to compare notes.

"The devil is surely in that little man," said the one who had heard the soliloquy about the moon; "for, whether or not he wanted light outside or in to drive away the shadows of his conscience, he served his purpose a few minutes since by lighting his lamp. I saw the light through the c.h.i.n.ks, and venturing to listen, heard noises as of working. He is labouring at something, if not sweating."

"Perhaps _melting_," said the other, with a laugh.

"But here comes our officer; there is never rest for that man when there's a bird on the moor or a fox in the covert."

The truth was, as the man said, the detective had gone home to sleep; but no sooner had he lain down than the little traces he had discovered began to excite his imagination, and that faculty, so suggestive in his cla.s.s, getting inflamed, developed so many images in the camera of his mind, that he soon found sleep an impossibility, and he was now there to know whether anything further had transpired. The men made their report, and he soon saw there was something more than ordinary in Abram's curiosity about the moon, and still more in the coincidence of the visits of Slabberdash and Four-toes. He had a theory, too, about the working, though it did not admit the melting. He knew better what to augur. But he had a fault to find, and he was not slow to find it.

"Why didn't one of you track Four-toes? One of you could have served here. She has been off the scene for three weeks, and is hiding. You ought to have known that a woman is a good subject for a detective. Her strength is her weakness, and her weakness our opportunity. But there's no help for it now. We must trace the links we have. If she come again, be more on the alert, and follow up the track. Keep your guard, and let not a circ.u.mstance escape you."

"The light is out again," remarked one of the men; "he has gone to bed."

"But not to sleep, I warrant," said his superior. "Look sharp and listen quick, and I will be with you when I promised."

He now proceeded to the office in the High Street, where he found the superintendent waiting for a report in another case. He recounted all he had seen and heard.

"You have a chance here," said the latter; "and, to confirm our hopes, I can tell you that Four-toes' mother gave yesterday to a shebeen-master in Toddrick's Close, one of the rings for a mutchkin of whisky; and, what is more, Clinch has been traced to the old woman's house in Blackfriars Wynd. I suspect that the picture's true after all. The cup is verily in Benjamin's sack."

Thus fortified, our detective sought his way again down the High Street; and as he had time to kill between that and the opening of the shutters in Simon Square, he paid a visit to Blackfriars Wynd, where he found his faithful myrmidon keeping watch over the old mother's house, like a Skye terrier at the mouth of a rat-hole. He here learned that Mary with the deficient toe had also been seen to go upstairs to her mother's garret, which circ.u.mstance accorded perfectly with the statement of the guard in the square, as no doubt she had returned home after being startled at the door of Abram. But then she was seen to go out again, about an hour before, though whither she went the watch could not say. The hour of appointment was now approaching. The day had broken amidst watery clouds, driven about by a fitful, gusty wind, and every now and then sending stiff showers of rain, sufficient to have cooled the enthusiasm of any one but a hunter after the doers of evil. He had been drenched two or three times, and now he felt that a gla.s.s of brandy was necessary as an auxiliary to internal resistance against external aggression. He was soon supplied, and, wending his way to the old rendezvous, he found his guard, but without any addition to their report of midnight. Abram was long of getting up, and it seemed that he was first roused by the clink of a milkwoman's tankard on the window-shutter. The door was slowly opened, but in place of the vendor of milk handing in to her solitary customer the small half-pint, she went in herself, pails, and tankard, and all. Our detective marked the circ.u.mstance as being unusual, and, more than unusual still, the door was partly closed upon her as she entered. Then he began to think that she had nothing about her of the appearance of that cla.s.s of young women.

"Has not that woman the appearance of Four-toes?" said the officer.

"I'm blowed if she's not the very woman I saw in the dark," said one of the men.

"Split," said the lieutenant; "but be within sign."

The precaution was wise. In a few minutes Abram's face was peering out at the door, not this time looking for the moon--more probably for the enemies of her minions; and what immediately succeeded showed that he had got a glimpse of the men, for by-and-by the milk-maid came forth and proceeded along the square.