Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume XXI Part 24

In mute surprise, the police, every one holding his lantern aloft, and thus surrounding the bed with a halo of light, gazed for a second or two on the sleeping Esculapius. They had never, in the course of all their experience, seen a burglar take things so coolly and comfortably. That he should enter a house with the intention of robbing it, and should deliberately strip, go to bed, and take a snooze in that house, was a piece of such daring impudence as they had never heard of before.

It was no time, however, for making reflections on the subject. The business in hand was to secure the villain; and this was promptly done.

Finding his sleep so profound as not to be easily disturbed, half a dozen men, lanterns and sticks in hand, flung themselves on the doctor, and, seizing him by the legs and arms, had him in a twinkling on the floor on the breadth of his back. Confounded and bewildered as he was by the extraordinary and appalling circ.u.mstances in which he now found himself--surrounded with what appeared to him to be a mob--lanterns flitting about as thick as the sparks on a piece of burned paper--cudgels bristling around him like a paling--and, to complete all, a clamour and hubbub of tongues that might have been heard three streets off;--we say, confounded and bewildered as he was by these sights and sounds, the doctor's pluck did not desert him. Starting to his feet, and not doubting that he was in the midst of a mob of housebreakers, he seized one of the policemen by the throat, when a deadly struggle ensued, in which the doctor's shirt was, in a twinkling, torn up into ribbons; in another twinkling he was floored by a blow from a baton, and rendered incapable of further resistance.

The combat had been a most unequal one, and no other consequence could possibly have arisen from it.

Having knocked down the doctor, the next business, as is usual in such and similar cases, was to get him up again. Accordingly, three or four men got hold of him by the arms and shoulders, and having raised him to his feet, planted him, still senseless, in a chair.

A clamorous consultation, spoken in half a dozen different dialects, now ensued, as to how the housebreaker was to be disposed of.

"We'll teuk him to the office, to pe surely," said a hard-faced, red-whiskered Celt. "What else you'll do wi' ta roke that'll proke into shentleman's hoose, and go to ped as comfortable as a lort. Dam's impitence."

"Soul, and it's to the office we'll have him, by all manner o' means, and that in the twinkling of a bedpost," chimed in a tall raw-boned Irishman, with a spotted cotton handkerchief tied so high around the lower part of his face as to bury his mouth. "The thaif o' the world.

It's a free pa.s.sage across the wather he'll now get, anyhow, bad luck to him."

"Fat, tiel, would you tak the man stark naked through the street?" said a little thick-set Aberdonian. "It would be verra undecent. There's a bit cloaky there; throw that aboot his shouthers, and then we'll link him awa like a water-stoup."

"Od, ye'll no fin that so easy, I'm thinkin!" exclaimed a lumpish, broad-shouldered young fellow. "He's as fat's a Lochrin distillery pig.

He's a hantle mair like his meat than his wark, that ane."

Hitherto the unfortunate subject of these remarks had been able to take no part in what was pa.s.sing; but, stupefied by the blow he had received, which had covered his face with blood, and further confounded by the various circ.u.mstances of the case--his previous debauch, the violence and suddenness of his awakening, and the extraordinary clamour and uproar that surrounded him--he sat, with drooping head and confused senses, without uttering a word.

His physical energies, however, gradually recovering a little, he began to stare about him with a look of bewilderment; and at length, fixing his eye on the Irishman, who happened to be standing directly opposite him, he addressed him with a--

"Pray, friend, what is the meaning of all this?"

"Faiks, my purty fellow, and it's yourself that might be after guessing that with your own 'cute genius," replied Paddy. "Haven't you half a notion, now, of what you have been about the same blessed night?"

"I have a pretty good notion that my house has been broken into by a parcel of ruffians," said the doctor, "and that I have been half, perhaps wholly, murdered by you."

"Capital, ould fellow; capital," said the Irishman. "Tell truth, and shame the devil. Your house! Stick to that, my jewel, and you'll astonish the spalpeens. But come, come, my tight little mannikin, get up wid ye. You'll go and have a peep of _our_ house now. Time about's fair play."

And he seized the doctor, who was now wrapped in his cloak, and was forcing him from his seat, when the latter, resisting this movement, called out--

"Does no one here know me? Will no one here protect me? What am I a.s.sailed in my own house in this manner for? My name's Dobbie--Doctor Dobbie!"

"Your name's no nosin to n.o.body, you roke," said Duncan M'Kay, seconding the efforts of his colleague to lug the doctor out of his seat. "You'll be one names to-day and anodder names to-morrow. So shust come along to ta office, toctor--since you calls yourselfs a toctor--and teuket a nicht's quarters wi' some o' your frients that's there afore you."

"Let's get a grup o' him," exclaimed the broad-shouldered young fellow already spoken of, edging himself in to have a share in the honour of laying a capturing hand on the doctor. "Od, he's as round as a pokmanky.

There's nae getting hand o' him. Come awa, doctor; come awa, my man.

Bailie Morton 'll be unco glad to see ye," he added, having succeeded in getting hold of one of the doctor's arms, which he seized with a grip like a vice.

Undeterred by the overpowering force with which he was a.s.sailed, the doctor still resisted, vainly announcing and re-announcing his name and calling. It had the effect only of increasing the clamour and hubbub amongst the police, who now all huddled round him in a mob; and without listening to a word he said, finally succeeded in carrying him bodily out of the house, in despite of some desperate struggling, and a great deal of noisy vociferation on the part of the doctor.

THE POLICE OFFICE, AND FINALE.

Leading off from and immediately behind the public office, there was a small carpeted room, provided with a sofa, some chairs, and a writing-desk.

This room was appropriated to some of the upper functionaries connected with the police establishment of ----, and was the scene of private examinations of culprits, and of other kinds of proceedings of a private nature.

At the time at which we introduce the reader to this apartment, there lay extended on the sofa above spoken of, a gentleman who appeared to have seen some recent service, if one might judge from the circ.u.mstance of his head being bound up in a blood-stained handkerchief, and his exhibiting some symptoms of languor and debility. This gentleman was Mr.

Thomson, who was awaiting the result of the expedition which had gone to examine his house, and whose return he was now momentarily expecting.

Awaiting the same issue then, and awaiting it in the same apartment, was another gentleman. This person was a sort of sub-superintendent of the police; and was, at the moment of which we speak, busily engaged writing at the desk formerly mentioned.

Both of those persons, then, were anxiously waiting the return of the detachment whose proceedings are already before the reader, beguiling the time, meanwhile, by discussing the probabilities of the case. They were thus engaged, when a tremendous noise in the outer office gave intimation of an arrival, and one of no ordinary kind; for the tramping of feet was immense, and the hubbub astounding.

"That's _them_," said Mr. Thomson.

"I think it is," said the sub.

Ere any other remark could be made, the door of the private apartment was opened, and in marched a short, stout, half-dressed, b.l.o.o.d.y-faced gentleman, in a blue cloth cloak, between two policemen, and followed by a mob of functionaries of the same description, who stood so thick as to completely block up the door. This stout, half-dressed gentleman in the blue cloth cloak was the doctor.

"Dear me, doctor," said Mr. Thomson, advancing towards the former, whom he at once recognised, "what's the matter? What terrible affair is this?"

"Terrible indeed--unheard of, monstrous!" exclaimed the doctor, in a towering pa.s.sion. "My house, sir, has been broken into by these ruffians. I have been torn from my bed, maltreated in the way you see, and dragged here like a felon by them, and for what I know not. But I _will_ know it; and if I don't--"

"This is odd, doctor," here interposed Mr. Thomson; "I have been the victim of a similar kind of violence to-night, as you may see by the state of my head, although the case is in other respects somewhat different. My house has been also broken into."

"Bless my soul, very strange!" said the doctor, taking a momentary interest in the misfortunes of his neighbour. "By these ruffians?" he added, pointing to the police.

"No, no, not them," replied Thomson; "housebreakers. Some villains had got into the house; and I had no sooner entered it, on returning home a little later than usual, than I was knocked down, dragged out to the stair, and thrown down, where I was found in a state of insensibility and brought here."

The doctor winced a little at this statement: a vague suspicion, we can hardly say of the fact, but of something akin thereto, began to glimmer dimly on his mental optics. He, however, said nothing; nor, even had he been inclined to say anything, was opportunity afforded him; for here the presiding official of the place, the sub-superintendent, to whom the doctor was well known, and who had impatiently awaited the conclusion of the conversation between the latter and Thomson, interfered with a--

"Good heaven, doctor, how came you to be in this situation? What is the meaning of all this?" he added, turning to his men.

"The maining's as plain as a pike-staff, your honour," replied the Irish watchman, to whom we have already introduced the reader. "We found this little gentleman, since he turns out to be a gentleman, where he shouldn't have been."

"And where was that, pray?" inquired the sub.

"Why, in Mr. Thomson's house, your honour. And not only that, but in bed too, as snug as a fox in a chimbley."

"In ta fery peds, ta roke!" here chimed in our friend M'Kay.

"What! you don't mean to say that you found the doctor here in _Mr.

Thomson's_ house?" said the astonished official, laying a marked emphasis on the name.

"To pe surely we do, sir," replied Duncan.

"I'll tak my Bible oath till't," added another personage, whom the reader will readily recognise.

"In my house! The doctor in _my_ house!" exclaimed Mr. Thomson, in the utmost amazement.

"Mr. Thomson's house! Me in Mr. Thomson's house!" said the doctor, with a look of blank dismay; for a tolerably distinct view of the truth had now begun to present itself to his mind's eye. It was, therefore, rather in the desperate hope of there being yet some chance in his favour, than from any conviction that the testimony against him was founded in error, that he added--

"My _own_ house, you scoundrels; you found me in my _own_ house!"

Here the whole mob of policemen simultaneously, and as if with one voice, shouted--"It's a lie, it's a lie. We found him in Mr. Thomson's."