The Edinburgh Detective E-Book

James M'Govan

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

1: The Chinese Chessmen
2: The Broken Cairngorm
3: Billy's Bite
4:  The Captain's Chronometer
5: The Changed Diamond Brooch
6: Betty's Bracelet
7: The White Waistcoat
8: The Berwick Burr
9: The Torn Tartan Shawl
10:  A White Savage
11: A Dream of Murder
12: The Wrong Umbrella
13: The Family Bible

Leseprobe

THE EDINBURGH DETECTIVE

or

His Last Confessions

James M'Govan

( 1845–1919)

© 2021 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782383832065

Contents

1: The Chinese Chessmen

2: The Broken Cairngorm

3: Billy's Bite

4: The Captain's Chronometer

5: The Changed Diamond Brooch

6: Betty's Bracelet

7: The White Waistcoat

8: The Berwick Burr

9: The Torn Tartan Shawl

10: A White Savage

11: A Dream of Murder

12: The Wrong Umbrella

13: The Family Bible

___________________

1: The Chinese Chessmen.

THE PLACE where the murder took place is a manufacturing town more than twenty miles from Edinburgh, which I may name Grangely, and in this town the man murdered, Josiah Fletcher by name, had enjoyed the reputation of being the best-hated and worst-tempered man in the community. He was a bachelor, and so I suppose had never got the corners rubbed off him; but apart from that, he appears to have been grasping and stingy in the extreme, especially when the sufferer happened to be poor and not able to retaliate.

I was called out to investigate the affair because there were several very peculiar circumstances which the local police could not unravel. These can be readily summed up. Fletcher was an old man, and had at one time been a hedger and ditcher, but by a life of rigid economy had saved enough to purchase a rickety tenement atone end of the town, which was just falling to pieces. A small factory happened to be built near the building, and Fletcher let this ruin of his in single rooms to the workers as dwelling-houses. As a landlord he was known to exact the uttermost farthing, and never to part with a penny till forced. He was hated by his tenants, and continually quarreling with them and others, so I guessed that the task of ferreting out the person among all these who had taken upon him the crime of ending Fletcher's existence would be no easy one. There was surprise, excitement, and busy speculation on the event in the town, but, so far as I could find, no pity or regret.

Fletcher had lived alone in a two-roomed cottage at the outskirts of the town, and occupied himself chiefly in tilling a large garden, the produce of which he sold. A woman came once or twice a week to clean the house or help him ill the garden, but she did not sleep in the place, and was always gone by eight or nine o'clock at night.

It was this woman, Sib Chapman by name, who discovered the murder, at least twenty-four hours after it had been committed. It was her day for coming to work for Fletcher, and she was there by six o'clock in the morning. She found the door shut, but after knocking for some time, and getting no answer, she tried the latch and found the door unlocked. Thinking that Fletcher had gone out to the garden at the back, she fearlessly entered, intending to begin her work; but she got no further than the kitchen, which was also Fletcher's sleeping place. She saw the form of the old man stretched on the earthen floor in an awkward heap, face downwards, with a crimson pool beneath his face, and big splatches of the same color at different parts of the floor, as if the unfortunate man had staggered or walked about after receiving his death wound. Some of these splatches had dried, thus indicating that the crime had been some time done. Horrified almost into fainting, the woman bent over the prostrate figure, and at once guessed, from the waxen pallor of the features, that life was extinct, and wisely refrained from raising the body, or moving it in any way. Indeed, there was a gap in the throat partially visible from the side, which gave her a wholesome aversion to any closer inspection.

''The auld meeser's deid— murdered very likely for his siller, or maybe jist cut his ain throat in ane o' his mad fits," was her first reflection. "I hope naebody will think it's me that has dune it?"

Away she ran to the nearest house with the startling news, and in a very short time she had no lack of company or assistance in the house of the deceased. These were all promptly turned out as soon as the police appeared, accompanied by a medical man. Fletcher's form was raised, and pronounced to have been lifeless for twenty-four hours.

The cause of death was a long and deep wound in the throat. There were no decided traces of a struggle having taken place, but two very striking facts were speedily discovered. The first was that no knife or other lethal weapon could be discovered near the body, or in the house, stained with blood, or in any way indicating that it had been used in the commission of the crime; and the second was a crimson foot-print on the cam'staned floor, near the spot where the body had been found, which showed clearly the marks of about a dozen round tackets or hob nails in the sole, and nearly the whole outline of an iron heel.

The body of Fletcher had no boots, but slippers on the feet; and the boots he usually wore, which were found by the fire, were so caked with earth about the sole and heel, that it would have been impossible to get a print of the hob-nails or heel without first having them cleaned. Besides, in size and shape, the footprints of blood on the floor did not match the foot of the deceased, even if the nails had not been caked over with his garden delving.

The foot which had made the imprint appeared to have stepped inadvertently into the crimson pool and thence on to the unstained portion beyond. It had stepped in the direction of the back room, and the window of that room, which looked into the garden, was found open. To follow the footprint, was now the object of the investigators.

No trace of it was to be found in the back room, but there were confused and rough footmarks on the earth outside of the window. A bunch of pansies had been trodden on and crushed, and further across the grounds there were indications of a pause having been made and the earth disturbed. A little scraping up of the soil with a hoe which happened to be lying near soon laid bare a long clasp knife, open, stained with blood, and ground to a keen and razor-like sharpness of edge and point. This knife was readily identified by Sib Chapman as having belonged to Fletcher, but she said nothing at the time of an incident which had impressed the fact upon her memory. There was now no doubt in the minds of the police that a murder had been committed, but how it happened that Fletcher had been slain with his own weapon they were unable even to guess. What the object had been was not so mysterious. By the direction of Sib Chapman an inspection of an old meal crock hidden at the bottom of a wooden chest by the fire was made, and a bundle of banknotes, which Sib declared she had seen there a few days before, had vanished. The only other thing missing was a valuable set of ivory chessmen, which I found had quite a history of its own.

The police of Grangely traced no one, arrested no one, and finally sent for me to help them out of the difficulty; and the first thing which staggered me in the case was this missing set of chessmen. It seemed strange and incomprehensible to me how such a man as Fletcher should have had such a set as they were described to be, for he knew no more about the royal game than the man in the moon. He did not even play draughts, and though said to be cracked on many points, he was in regard to money, or valuables likely to produce money, one of the wisest of the wise. When first Sib alluded to these Chinese chessmen in my hearing she said—

"Oh, it was them that Fletcher and his freend Bailie Broon was aye quarreling aboot. A cuisin o' Fletcher's dee'd in Edinburgh and he got the chessmen, but Bailie Broon, who's a relation, said that he should have got them, and so they were aye feucht, feuchtin' aboot them."

"Do you mean that they actually came to blows about the chessmen?" I asked, wondering why Bailie Brown had not been looked after sooner.

"No, but they were aye cauglin' and quarreling, and at last Fletcher tellt me no to let the Bailie in if he cam' near the hoose when I was there. He said the Bailie wanted to buy the chessmen, but they couldna agree aboot the price; and ae day I saw him busy sherpin' his knife on a razor-hone, and he tellt me it was to cut Bailie Broon's throat if he bothered him ony mair."

I questioned the woman closely upon this point in case she might have inverted the facts; but no— she described Fletcher sharpening the knife and grinding it to a point, and all the while malignantly gloating over the fact that it was for Bailie Brown's throat that the keen edge was being prepared.

That being the case, how did it come that the knife had been used with such terrible power against his own?

Bailie Brown, I found, was a man of position and worth, very much beloved, and of a gentle, kindly disposition, and it did seem improbable that such a man should have suddenly changed into a ferocious murderer and robber. The general opinion of those who had heard the circumstances detailed was that the Bailie had right and justice on his side in his claim to the chessmen, but being a man averse to going to law he had submitted to his grasping relation. Now I did not think it likely that anyone so circumstanced would have taken a man's life and then carried off the very thing likely to direct suspicion to himself, even had he been goaded to the act in a moment of frenzy; but I thought that there could be no harm in seeing the Bailie and getting a little information from him on the subject.

Another point was that though the meal crock had been emptied of money nothing in the box had been disturbed or unduly tossed about in laying the treasure bare, thus clearly indicating that the robber had some knowledge of the hiding place and of Fletcher's habits.

I found the Bailie's house to be quite a contrast to that of the deceased. It was a large, fine building at the other end of the town, and not far from a factory which owned Mr Brown as the chief proprietor, I went to the house, though it was midday, and asked for the Bailie.

I was invited to enter, but shortly the servant reappeared with the statement that the gentleman I sought was at the factory, but would be sent for. While I waited a curious idea came into my head, and I rang a bell at my elbow, and asked the servant to oblige me with a look at a pair of the Bailie's boots. Quite a change came over the girl's face at the request. I had given no name, and she appeared to think me not nearly such a great man when I asked for the boots.

"Oh, you are the shoemaker?" she said, and forthwith she brought me a pair of boots of the kind known as half Wellingtons.

They were very light and neat, and much smaller than I had hoped for, and there was not a trace of a nail or iron heel about them. From the style of the boot I took the Bailie to be a neat little man, and not the burly, rough customer whom I had pictured as the murderer.

"Ah, you've brought me his best boots," I remarked, anxious for information; "it's the coarse ones I wanted— the heavy ones, with tackets in the soles."

"Tackets?" cried the girl, in evident amazement. "I never saw them, and I clean all the boots he has."

"What! never saw the nails in his boots?"

"Never; he wouldn't put on a boot if it had so much as a sprig in it," she said, with great firmness. "I'm sure of that, for I once had to take a pair back on that account."

"Then you may take these away," I remarked with a smile, "for I am not the shoemaker, after all."

She seemed to believe me, and also that I was an escaped lunatic, for she snatched at the boots and vanished with great alacrity. I could hear her and her mistress in the lobby, spying me through the keyhole, and speculating in whispers as to whether I was likely to be dangerous or outrageous.

Presently the Bailie arrived and walked into the room— a slight, little man, as I had pictured him. I gave him my name at once, and that seemed to upset him a little. I cannot say that it was a look of guilt which instantly flashed across his face, but it certainly was one of excitement and uneasiness. He seemed to tremble and fear me— what had he to dread if he was innocent?

"I suppose you have come to talk about Fletcher's death?" he remarked, at length, when he had bustled about the room a little and so recovered countenance to some extent. Isn't it very singular that that set of chessmen which he and. I often wrangled over should have been taken away?"

"It is singular, and I wish you to give me some description of those chessmen, for they will be much more easily traced than money."

"I heard of the money being taken, too," he hurriedly continued; but, in spite of that, I have an opinion quite opposed to that of the police here. I don't suppose you would care to hear it?"

I quietly negatived the supposition, studying his face closely the while, and not making much of the attempt,

"Well, my opinion is that Fletcher committed suicide," rejoined the Bailie, with great firmness.

"And afterwards ran away with his own money and the set of chessmen— eh?" I answered, with an incredulous smile. "Ho, no; that won't do. The medical man declares that he could not live five minutes with a wound like that in his throat; so how can you account for the knife being buried in the garden?"

"Was it actually?" he said, with a scared look; for we had kept many of the details quiet.

"It was, I assure you, and we have pretty good evidence that the deceased did not put it there."

"I believe that! I believe that!" cried the Bailie, fervently. " It is impossible that he could have put it there," he added with extraordinary decision. " I know that— at least, I think that," he stammered more nervously.

I sat watching the man, and analyzing and weighing his words, but utterly failing to sum them up. He seemed to be innocent, yet to know something of the crime; to be eager to have the mystery cleared up, and frankly communicative, yet to be keeping something back which might assist me materially. I questioned him regarding the chessmen, and learned that they were a valuable set, elaborately carved, as only the Chinese can carve ivory, and worth at least £1 a piece.

"I've had my eye on them for years," he added, "and it was always understood that I was to get them when my friend died; but Fletcher was first on the ground after the death, and he stuck to them out of- sheer spitefulness. He had no use for them, and was miserly enough to be eager for the money they would bring, yet he would not gratify me by selling them, either to me or to any one else who might have resold them to me. Death alone could relax his grasp. A singular fact is that I meant to have gone over and reasoned with him on the subject; indeed, I resolved to do so only a night or two before his death; but— but," and here he wavered a little and seemed confused; "but I never had the chance."

"You mean that you had not time or opportunity to go over?" I said, simply. He crimsoned to the ears, and hurriedly answered—

"No. I mean that I never saw him again in life. Oh, he was mad, undoubtedly. It is not good for man to be alone. I still hold most positively that he had committed suicide."

"Do you not think it more than likely that some needy tramp had taken his life, and afterwards robbed the house?"

"No; for how could a tramp know that a set of chessmen were worth carrying off? There are circumstances which I cannot account for, but I am sure it was a suicide."

Of course; it was to his interest to get us to believe that when he was under suspicion himself. He was right about the chessmen, though; the same thought had occurred to me very early in my investigations; and I now began to wonder if the Bailie could have employed someone to steal the chessmen, and if that robber, being resisted, had unexpectedly found himself a murderer. I left the Bailie and made some inquiry for any disreputable character about the place likely to be so employed, but I was told that the number of such characters was legion, and made little progress in that direction.

I had to return to Edinburgh unsuccessful, and a day or two later received a note from Bailie Brown, enclosing a cutting-from the advertising columns of one of the Edinburgh papers. The advertisement ran something like this—

"To Curio Collectors. —Rare set of Chinese chessmen for sale."

The address given was that of a well-known Edinburgh dealer in such articles; and the note of the Bailie was to the effect that if I thought it worth while I might; being fn the city, go and see the chessmen, and ascertain if they were honestly come by, and whether they resembled the set stolen from Fletcher's house, some peculiarities 'of which he described. My surprise and bewilderment at the curious discoveries which followed may be faintly imagined. I went to the address of the dealer, whom I had spoken with frequently before, and, after some idle talk, asked to see the Chinese chessmen which he had advertised.

"I knew there was something coming, Mr. M'Govan," he laughingly responded. "I look upon you as a kind of stormy petrel— when I see you walk into my shop, I know there's mischief not far behind. But for once you're off the scent. There's nothing wrong with that set of chessmen, for I bought them from a Bailie, no less."

He brought out a curious casket as he spoke, which I examined with the most intense interest. It answered the description given by Bailie Brown in the most minute particulars, and on opening it and looking over some of the pieces I found other points confirmed.

"Well, what was the name of the precious Bailie who sold you these?" I asked at length.

"Bailie Brown," was the prompt reply. "He belongs to Grangely."

"Impossible!" I got out the word in a shout, for the answer was the very last I should have expected. I must have looked strangely horrified, for the dealer looked alarmed at once and said—

"There is something wrong then, after all?" and yet he gave me all the particulars; told me he was a relative of Leighton Brown, who, I had heard, had just such a set of men, and got them at his death, which happened not long ago."

"What was the man like— little, slight figure, dark hair, gentlemanly manner?"

"No, not the least like it. He was a very common man for a Bailie; big, strong fellow, with sandy-colored hair, sun-browned face, and heavy, tacketed boots."

"Tacketed boots? you're sure of that?" I cried, with great eagerness.

"Quite, for they made noise enough. He was clownish in everything but the price he screwed out of me for the chessmen. He knew their value, I tell you."

"Would you know him again?"

"Ay, in the dark. I wondered why he kept his right hand so much in his trousers' pocket, but when he did take it out I saw the reason— he had by some accident lost the middle finger. A blind man could tell him by that."

I took possession of the chessmen, and while doing so chanced to notice that some of the carving on the outside of the casket had got filled with earth, thus silently indicating that it had been buried in the ground, and then but imperfectly cleaned.

The earliest train took me to Grangely, where my first visit was to Bailie Brown. I had now no idea that he was guilty, and told him all I had discovered, and showed him the chessmen, which he identified almost at a glance. Yet it was apparent to me that the news agitated him powerfully; even before I had described the man who had so boldly taken his name and title. When I did describe the man, and came to the right hand wanting the middle finger, his pallor and concern increased.

"It looks like there was a plot against me," he feebly remarked; "but my conscience is clear whatever may happen. I think I know who has done it— it's Willie Melvin."

"Willie Melvin? Who and what is he?"

"Anything or nothing; an idle scamp, who's been in jail nearly as often as there are hairs in his head. He's a great poacher, and I wonder I did not think of him before, as it was said that Fletcher used to help him to get rid of the game. It was sent into the city hidden among Fletcher's cabbages and curlies."

I had no time to lose. I got the Bailie to describe the position of Willie Melvin's home, and started for it alone, though he advised me strongly to take a man with me. The house was quite outside the town, a wretched hovel, with a garden in front, and a pig grunting in its stye noisily. A man stood by the stye, smoking lazily, with his right hand in his trousers' pocket— from force of habit, I suppose. I had no doubt of his identity though I had never clapped eyes on him before, and went up to him boldly, saying—

''Hullo! Willie Melvin, I want you"

I suppose he must have seen me, though I had not seen him, for he instantly changed countenance. He was but a big lump of cowardice after all, for he submitted to be handcuffed without a word.

"What is it for?" he at last sullenly inquired, while a slipshod woman whom I took to be his wife came out and stared at us without any great surprise.

"The murder of Josiah Fletcher," I quietly answered.

He laughed loudly and carelessly.

"Ye can tak' your oath I didna dae that," he said, with a look of relief, "though maybe I ken wha did."

"I suppose you did not do the robbery either?" I returned as cheerfully. "The chessman, I suppose, went and buried themselves, and then dug themselves up, walked into Edinburgh, and sold themselves to a dealer on purpose to get you into trouble?"

His jaw fell, and with a painfully crestfallen look he relapsed into a silence which lasted till I had him in the station-house, before the Fiscal of the town. He had no very intelligent explanation to offer, and was locked up, while I took some men out to his home with spades, and turned up a part of his garden till we came on a bundle of bank notes enclosed in a tin soapbox, and pretty well sodden with the burial. At first Melvin had no explanation to offer regarding the treasure in his garden, but seemed to conclude that the Chinese chessmen were rather strong for him, for he asked to be heard by the Fiscal a second time, and then made an extraordinary statement and accusation.

He had been passing along near Fletcher's cottage at a late hour, when he was surprised to see Bailie Brown leave the cottage in great haste, and so excitedly that he omitted to close the door after him. After waiting for some time Melvin passed through the hedge, crossed the road, and entered the house. All was dark, and in crossing the kitchen floor he stumbled and fell over something on the floor.

Striking a light, he found that the "something" was Fletcher's body lying in a pool of blood. Close by lay an open clasp knife.

"Bailie Broon has murdered him and left the knife there, so that it might look like a suicide," was Melvin's exclamation; and he immediately began to consider how he himself might profit by the discovery. He thought of extorting blackmail from the Bailie, the price of his silence, but finally concluded to let that scheme stand over for a little till he saw how things worked, and meantime to take what loose money the crock happened to contain. He then remembered about the chessmen, and decided to take them too, so that the guilt might be the better fastened on the doer of the deed. Bailie Brown. Then, that it might not be mistaken for a suicide, he lifted the knife and plunged it point first into the garden behind, stamping it down with his feet and scraping some loose earth over the spot. The chessmen he first buried in a field at the back of Bailie Brown's house; then, hearing nothing about them, he lifted them and buried them in his own garden, and finally took them into Edinburgh and sold them in the manner already described.

This queer story was utterly ridiculed, but it chanced that one of the gentlemen present during Melvin's emission of the declaration, remembered distinctly meeting Bailie Brown on the night in question coming hurriedly from the direction of Fletcher's cottage. Other circumstances cropping up, there was no alternative but to arrest the Bailie. It was now that gentleman's turn to make a strange statement. Confronted with the declaration of Melvin, he admitted that he had been in the cottage of Fletcher at the hour stated, and had left in the manner described. He had gone to argue some point about the chessmen, and, receiving no answer to his knock, had lifted the latch and entered. All was dark, and so ominously still that he took a match from his pocket and struck a light. Fletcher was lying on his face quite dead, as described by Melvin, and with a clasp-knife lying open near his hand. He was greatly horrified, and so struck with the fact that he was there under suspicious circumstances that he decided to say nothing of the matter to any one, which resolve he acted upon till forced to declare the truth for his own protection.

This statement, I fear, was credited quite as little as that of Willie Melvin's had been before it; but two singular facts turned up a few days later to modify the scepticism. At the sale of Fletcher's effects a Bible was discovered, having pins stuck into certain leaves, along with a bit of the deadly nightshade, a toad's foot, and some other auxiliaries of witchcraft. In the same book was found a written paper in which Fletcher declared that he was being tormented by Bailie Brown, by means of evil spirits who haunted him night and day, and were always striving to get a hold of his knife that they might cut his throat. They might yet succeed, the paper went on to declare, but if they did his blood would be on the Bailie's head, and the murder lie at his door. He was nevertheless hopeful that some charms which he was working with the Bible would invert the whole, and make his enemy's plotting fall back upon his own head.

The second confirmation came from a relative the deceased, who had come from a distance to wind up his affairs, and who produced several letters of Fletcher's, couched in the same insane terms, and full of ravings of the same description. The conversation and manner of Fletcher for sometime before his death was also recalled in evidence, and at length Bailie Brown was set at liberty. Willie Melvin was put out of mischief's way by being about the same time sent to prison for five years, for his share in the work. As for the chessmen, they are now in the Bailie's possession, and he tells their story a great deal more proudly and better than I have done here.

_______________

2: The Broken Cairngorm.

I HAD to take Jess Murray for her share in a very bold robbery, in which a commercial traveler, peaceably walking home to his hotel, had been waylaid and stripped of pocket-book, purse, and watch, the haul altogether amounting to upwards of £100 in value, the greater part of which was not his own. The gentleman could give no description of the men, but remembered that he had been assisted at a critical moment by a woman, who, so far as he could judge, was tall and handsome, and not very old. It was the style of the robbery as much as that brief and imperfect description which directed my attention to Jess Murray. She was a bold wench, strong as a lion, and so thoroughly bad that I took the trouble of hating her—an exceptional case indeed, as in general one gets to look upon her kind with as much indifference as a drover does upon a herd of horned knowte, under his care one day and gone the next.

I believed Jess to be one of the few who have not one redeeming quality or trait, and was eager for the chance which should put her out of harm's way for a long term of years.

I had really no evidence but an instinctive feeling connecting Jess with the robbery; but when on my way to her place I chanced to pass one of her acquaintances on the street. I let him pass, and then a thought struck me, and I turned back and stopped him. A scared look came into his face, so I asked him to come with me— back to the Office.

He came reluctantly, and the cause I speedily understood when he tried to throw away behind his back a £20 bank-note taken from the pocket-book of the commercial traveler. The number and description of this note was already in my possession, and I picked up the paper money with the most lively satisfaction, when the fellow immediately began to protest that he had only been sent to change the note, and was willing to tell all about the robbery if things were made right for himself.

The result of this chance capture was that we had abundant evidence against Jess and another, and I went for her with the greatest

of pleasure. She was in the "kitchen" of the place among a crowd of her kind when I entered, and it needed only a motion of my finger and a nod of my head to chase the merriment from her face and bring her slowly across the floor to my side. It is not usual for me to be communicative, but on the present occasion I was elated, and said, in reply to her sullen inquiry—

"It's that affair of the commercial traveler. It's all blown, and you are in for five years at least. Jim White is in the office already, and the £20 bank-note with him."

Jess seemed struck in a heap with the news. She flashed deadly pale and sank feebly into a chair, with her bold bright eyes becoming shiny with tears.

"Where's Dickie?" she faintly articulated to some of the silent onlookers, and, fearing treachery, I snatched out a double brass whistle which can be heard a whole street off, and swiftly raised it to my lips.

"Stop! you needn't," Jess quickly interposed, understanding the motion. '' Dickie's only my laddie. Oh, what will become of him when I'm away?"

Dickie was said to be playing down on the street, so I told him we might see him as we left. Jess began to cry bitterly— Jess! whom I had believed to have not one genuine tear in her! and thus we descended the stairs together. In the street a ragged and unkempt boy of seven or eight was brought to her side, and she clutched him to her breast, kissing his smudged face with a passionate fervor which gave me quite a fresh insight into her character. The boy resembled her in features, and would have passed for good-looking had he only been washed and dressed up a little.

"What's to 'come o' my bairn?— oh, what's to 'come o' my bairn?" wailed Jess, and the boy began to howl in concert, and I saw that it would be useless to try to separate them just then.

"Oh, he'll be looked after as he has often been before," I carelessly answered. "He'll go to the Poor-house. He'll be safer there than under your care— and cleaner."

This remark did not appear to console Jess in the least. Dickie was her only child, and the whole strength of her nature seemed concentrated in her love of that boy. I was astonished, and speculated on the matter all the way to the Office, quietly wondering what "line of business" that same gutter child was destined to torment me and others by adopting, when he should be a few years older.

I had made a pretty shrewd guess of Jess's sentence, for the list of previous convictions was so strong against her that she was awarded exactly the number of years I had named. I was convinced by that time that she did not grieve over the punishment at all, but over her separation from her child, and I remember thinking— "Well, we are poor judges of one another. What a strong hold could be taken of that woman through that child if one only knew how to use the power."

Dickie was allowed to see his mother once before she was sent to the Penitentiary, and then he went back to the Poorhouse. He was a good deal cleaner by that time, and had on different clothing, but there was one plaything, or fetish, with which he had resolutely refused to part, and that still hung from his neck. It was a broken cairngorm stone, with a hole drilled through the end, and through which a bit of twine had been drawn, that he might suspend the trinket from his neck. I had noticed the stone when I took him to the office, with his mother, but merely glanced at it, thinking that it was but an imitation moulded in yellow glass. I was mistaken, for it was part of a real stone, and had probably been set in some stolen brooch which had been broken up for the metal.

It was of no great value, but it pleased Dickie, and kept him from wearying during his long confinement in the Poorhouse, which to him was as irksome as being shut up in a prison. He was a lively, spirited boy, and had never been checked or curbed, so it may be imagined he managed to get into as many scrapes as the average boy of his age.