A RATHER SHADY CHARACTER.
The lower middle classes are a never-failing stalking-horse; we can all afford to laugh at them as ridiculous, vulgar, improvident and wicked. Even the mock hero, the good young man who tries to raise himself, has something comic in him. But we haven't seen anything of the lower orders in this history as yet, and it is only incidentally that we quit King's Warren for the grimy neighbourhood of St. Luke's. Just behind the great hospital for lunatics is Matilda Street. They are all private houses in Matilda Street, and from the number of brass plates it seems at first a professional sort of neighbourhood. Most of the houses are evidently occupied by at least three families, for the right-hand doorpost nearly always contains three bells, one for each floor. But the brass plates are not those of lawyers and doctors; many of them indicate the places of business of working jewellers and watchmakers, and the latter predominate; dial painters, engine turners, escapement makers, swivel manufacturers and so on, ad infinitum. Then there are pianoforte tuners, and dealers of many sorts. Those of the plates which have only a surname upon them, indicate that the place is a lodging house. Though we are in the black heart of London, in one of the darkest, poorest and most melancholy quarters, there is a great deal of window gardening going on; plants of every kind and sort may be seen on the window ledges, from ground floor to attic; the humble Creeping Jenny is a great favourite, and it seems to thrive wonderfully in the damp thick atmosphere. Some of the ground floor windows are discreetly screened by wonderful specimens of lank spindly geraniums—hapless plants which have never been known to bloom, but whose sickly-looking leaves of abnormal pallor struggle towards the light, what little there is of it. Matilda Street, being in the heart of St. Luke's, naturally contains many fanciers. Numerous bow-windowed, brass-bound cages, each with its little bit of turf, are hung outside the windows in all directions, and the imprisoned skylarks they contain warble away merrily, giving quite a rural air to Matilda Street, E.C. Seedy-looking men and boys, carrying tiny square cages carefully tied up in handkerchiefs, are continually popping in and out; these are the chaffinch fanciers, and each cage contains a sightless songster, who at his master's command is prepared to pour forth his simple rural melody at any hour of the day or night in a long unbroken series of cheeps and chirrups. In Matilda Street lives a trainer of piping bullfinches, a man who has passed his whole life turning a melodeon and teaching his pupils the tune of "Rule, Britannia." Dog-breeding and dog-dealing are favourite occupations in Matilda Street; mysterious men emerge at dusk, leading dogs and carrying them in their arms, their pockets, or their bosoms, to exhibit them at numerous local shows held in neighbouring pot-houses. The little back yards—they call them gardens in Matilda Street—are filled with sheds and wondrous home-made constructions, in which fancy poultry and rabbits are kept. Even the roofs of the houses bristle with pigeon-lofts and artful-looking structures for the capture of wandering birds. Should a stray pigeon alight on one of these contrivances, attracted by the hemp seed which is profusely scattered thereon, or by the presence of a decoy securely fastened by the leg, a sudden click may be heard, and the bird finds himself in an instant imprisoned in an artful arrangement of wire walls, which has closed on him with the rapidity of a conjuring trick. Matilda Street is a decidedly poor neighbourhood; but, strange to say, it is a favourite "pitch" for the bogus starving British workman and his interesting family, when he is upon what he terms the "kinchin lay." The man generally goes barefoot, his face is half covered by a stubbly crop of bristles, which pathetically indicate that he cannot even afford the cheap luxury of the British workman—a ha'penny shave. He doesn't let his beard grow—that would look far too comfortable; artful gashes in his trousers exhibit his knees, which appeal in a startling manner to the feelings of the benevolent; either elbow is clasped to show how he suffers from the inclemency of the weather; by his side walks his pattern wife, who always wears a large white apron; she invariably carries an infant of tender years; at either side of the pair march the rest of the family. They keep to the centre of the road; the woman watches the windows of one side of the street, the man those of the other; and from morning till night they howl a single verse of some hymn with monotonous obstinacy, varying it with a plaintive lament that "They've got no work to do." They are quite right in choosing places like Matilda Street, for there is little or no traffic to interrupt the effect of the procession; besides, in such a place as this no policeman would interrupt them; and, strange to say, it is in shy and poor neighbourhoods that the "kinchin lay" reaps its richest harvest.
Matilda Street is essentially a shy neighbourhood—perhaps that is why the tenant of number 13 has chosen it as his residence. On the door-plate of number 13 is the simple inscription, "Parsons, agent." It's rather a puzzle to make out what Mr. Parsons is agent for; no clients ever come to see him, and he seems to pass the greater part of his day in smoking a pipe and reading a newspaper. But Mr. Parsons has his profession—he was born in it, so to speak, and his father was a professor before him; but his father failed, and his father's unfortunate failure has been a lesson to him. The real fact is that Mr. Parson's father was a burglar of the fine old school. His was a life of vicissitude; and though an ambitious and fairly successful man, the law, against which he had waged war for many years, got the better of him at last; and after having passed nearly forty years of his life in Her Majesty's jails, death at length prevented his obtaining the ticket-of-leave he had almost earned, and his consequent return to business.
It is all very well for the majority of us to wonder why Mr. Parsons didn't attempt to earn an honest livelihood, but we must remember that he had been brought up to a profession of which most people disapprove from his earliest infancy. As quite a little fellow he had accompanied his father on many a successful nocturnal expedition; it had been his duty to keep watch for the guardians of public order, and to signal their approach. He had been taught to rapidly dispose of precious plunder in a neat little crucible, plunged in a fierce fire of coke; as he got bigger, he it was who sat ready at the corner of the street in a tax-cart, prepared to rapidly drive off with the "swag" when of a bulky nature.
But though Mr. Parsons, Senior, had been a clever professor of the predatory art, though his triumphs had been numerous and his operations exceedingly brilliant and extensive, he could not be called a success. To pass forty years of one's life in jail, to be perpetually blackmailed by one's accomplices, to obtain only a small proportion of one's legitimate earnings from those rascals the "fences" or dealers in stolen property, and at last after all to die in prison, is not a brilliant prospect. Now Mr. Parsons the son was a philosopher. On his father's death he found himself the possessor of a complete and almost perfect set of what may be termed his father's trade utensils. There was also a little secret hoard of valuable gems. Mr. Parsons put his burglarious implements in a place of safety; he lived abroad upon the proceeds of his little fortune for some years; and when he came back to England his own mother, if she had been alive, would not have known him. Then he settled down at number 13, Matilda Street, and commenced the practice of his profession upon principles of his own: not as a mere mercenary occupation, but as a fine art. Mr. Parsons kept well away from his father's old haunts and from the perfidious acquaintances who had degraded him and been the cause of his ultimate ruin. Mr. Parsons had no low tastes; he disliked drink and bad company; he had but one ambition, and that was to obtain a comfortable competence from the skilful exercise of his profession. He wisely concluded that it is not sufficient to commit a successful burglary, if you are afterwards found out. He was a careful student of the police reports and the trials at the Central Criminal Court, and the more he studied those interesting records, the more he became convinced of the wickedness of human nature, the inefficiency of the police, and the tendency of accomplices to "split." Mr. Parsons, then, being a thoroughly practical man was also a theorist; he made several determinations, which he strictly kept to. In the first place, he came to the conclusion that a suspect is always watched, and that accomplices, however useful, are extremely dangerous. So he determined to carry on his profession upon strictly business principles. Wise man that he was, he appreciated the fable of the hare and the tortoise. It was better, he thought, to earn a safe and comfortable living; and he determined, should he ever be so fortunate as to make a great coup, to immediately retire from business. He trusted to his own clear head, his own clever fingers, and himself. So he habitually worked alone. He passed his afternoons in "looking round." His operations were very carefully planned, and generally successfully carried out.
It will be seen from all this that Mr. Parsons was no common criminal, but he was a dangerous man for all that; for on his nocturnal expeditions he was in the habit of carrying an ugly sheath knife, not as a weapon of offence, be it remembered, but purely as a last resource for the protection of his own personal liberty.
It was a fine summer afternoon, and Mr. Parsons was lounging through one of the better streets of St. John's Wood; that neighbourhood, sarcastically designated "the shady grove of the Evangelist," had peculiar attractions for Mr. Parsons; it is wealthy, the large houses stand mostly in their own grounds, and the big well-kept gardens offer favourable hiding-places to the midnight thief. Mr. Parsons lounged along, peacefully smoking a briar-root pipe; the houses where the paint was shabby or the gardens were ill-kept did not attract his attention; these signs were quite sufficient for him, and in his mind he put their owners down as "electro." Other houses which were guarded by dogs also failed to interest him, but Mr. Parsons took more than a passing glance at Azalea Lodge.
Azalea Lodge stood back some twenty feet from the road way; the entire outside of the house was painted or grained; there was a great deal of gilding on the railings, a large gas lamp of the latest construction was fixed over each of the polished oak gates that formed the entrances to the little carriage-drive; the carriage-drive itself was asphalted, and clean as a new pin; the shrubs in the small front garden were expensive ones, and well pruned and trimmed; beyond the porch projected a rather elaborate glass structure set in ornamental iron work, and the centre of the well-whitened stone steps was covered with striped horsehair matting. Flowering shrubs in pots were ranged up these steps, while the sides of the porch proper were crammed with them. Elaborate floral decorations were on every window-ledge; not mere plants in pots, but great blocks of colour artfully arranged: scarlet geraniums and calceolarias with glossy-leaved fuchsias of many hues blazed in frames of blue lobelia, while dwarf ivies, nasturtiums and the pretty variegated periwinkle hung down in thick festoons, hiding the window sills. The beds in the front garden were made to show up in startling contrast to the closely-shaven turf by means of cocoanut fibre, into which potted flowering plants were plunged in reckless profusion. In one window of the drawing-room was a quasi-oriental jardinière in which stood a large orchid covered with delicate blooms of mauve and yellow; in the next appeared the top of a parrot's cage of plated metal, on which sat a tame white cockatoo, who seemed to enjoy the splendour by which he was surrounded. The very linings of the curtains were of rich corded silk, and a half open window showed in the dim vista a distant vision of the heavy frames of numerous oil paintings. From top to bottom the bedroom windows were discreetly screened by lace curtains tied up with coloured ribbon.
All these pretty things have taken somewhat long to describe, but the eagle eye of Mr. Parsons took them all in at a glance. A fishmonger's cart stopped at the side door, and Mr. Parsons noticed with satisfaction that a fine piece of salmon and a lobster were taken into the house by the purveyor's assistant. Mr. Parsons continued his walk as far as the next house, which proved to be an empty one and in the hands of the painters; their ladders and paint pots stood about in every direction, but the workmen themselves had evidently gone to dinner. Mr. Parsons shook out the contents of his pipe, pocketed it, and walking up to the hall door, which stood invitingly open, confidently entered the empty house; he walked into the drawing-room and on to the open Italian balcony beyond it, which commanded a view of the grounds of Azalea Lodge, and then Mr. Parsons stood wrapped in meditation. Something that he saw at a heavily-barred window on the ground floor of Azalea Lodge evidently gave him food for reflection. On a table covered with green baize lay a quantity of elaborate specimens of the silversmith's art, racing cups and trophies, vases and statuettes of burnished silver were there in profusion, and a heap of leathers and brushes showed that they were undergoing the process of cleaning. The eyes of Mr. Parsons sparkled with satisfaction; he looked round to see if he was observed. There wasn't a soul in sight. And then Mr. Parsons did a very curious thing; he gave a low growl, then a little yelp, and then an aggressive bark like an irritated dog. Then he began to bark again in a louder and still more defiant manner. But there was no answer to the strange challenge. Mr. Parsons gave a satisfied smile, walked quietly out of the empty house, re-lighted his pipe and resumed his walk.
It's hardly likely that Mr. Parsons thought of renting the empty house next door to Azalea Lodge, but he walked past at least four times that afternoon. He went home to Matilda Street on the top of an omnibus, and then, like a respectable man as he was, he sat down to a good substantial tea.
Before commencing a campaign a great general sits down to think it out. This is exactly what Mr. Parsons did. The tenant of number 13, Matilda Street had declared war against Azalea Lodge. From what he had seen, Mr. Parsons had no doubt whatever in his own mind that, should his campaign prove successful, he would secure the competence he had yearned for, for so many years and be able to retire from business altogether.
That night Mr. Parsons visited a public house, paid for a glass of ale, and consulted the directory. He found that Azalea Lodge was occupied by Lord Hetton; the name seemed familiar to him; he turned to the landlord, who was a well-known sporting character, and sought for information.
"Lord Hetton's a political chap, ain't he, Mr. Mason?" said he, addressing the great man with much humility.
"Not as ever I heard of; why his lordship's a racing man. Every one knows Lord Hetton—him as owned Dark Despair, and lost the Derby once by a short head."
"Oh, that's him, is it?" replied Mr. Parsons, "and what's his address when he's at home?"
"How should I know his address?" said the landlord. "If you wants to call on him, you might try the Jockey Club, or I shouldn't be surprised if you was to find him at Tattersall's of a Sunday afternoon; that sort mostly shows up there. What might you want with him?"
"Oh, it's no great matter," replied Mr. Parsons; "it's only a little bit of business about a dog," and then he changed the conversation.
"Racing plate," he thought, "there is never any mistake about that; that's the real genuine article, thank goodness." And then Mr. Parsons, who was of a sentimental turn of mind and a humble patron of the drama, sauntered off to the Britannia Theatre, at Hoxton, and derived no small degree of mental comfort in four hours of the sorrows of "Ada, the Betrayed."
It has been said that Lord Hetton was an economical man; every farthing that he could scrape together invariably went to settle his accounts with his trainer. He had begun life as a pigeon, to all appearances he would end it as a hawk. Dark rumours of shady things which had been done in his name rendered men shy of backing his horses. Scandal had said that the boy who rode Dark Despair, when that animal was beaten on the post, had pulled the great raking chestnut by his lordship's orders. But though Lord Hetton had done many shabby things in his time, it was by no fault of his that Dark Despair failed to win the blue ribbon of the turf. It is quite possible that the boy who rode the animal had made a mess of the race at the critical moment, or he may even have been "got at," but that was not Lord Hetton's opinion or that of his astute trainer; and the same stunted youth still always rode in his lordship's colours in any big event in which Lord Hetton's animals might be engaged. Owner and trainer had neither of them been to blame in the matter; his lordship had honestly backed Dark Despair, and had had considerable difficulty in meeting his engagements at the time. There had even been an execution in Azalea Lodge. Azalea Lodge was the one luxury that his lordship permitted himself; he looked upon it as his home, and the titular mistress of Azalea Lodge had been the original cause of all his differences with his father. Hetton was quite a boy when he first fell into the toils of the syren; he was not quite fool enough to marry her, his fear of the old lord prevented that; for her sake Lord Hetton declined to marry; for her sake he was shut out from society; and he was a man to be pitied after all, for he hadn't a friend in the world, and it was with the greatest difficulty that he succeeded in satisfying her numerous extravagant demands for money. The lady was passée, vulgar, and her temper was almost diabolical; but she still retained her hold upon Lord Hetton's affections. She had succeeded in riveting the fetters which bound Lord Hetton to her in a rather original manner—by an act of generosity for which none of her acquaintances would have given her credit, least of all his lordship. When he made his great fiasco with Dark Despair, and the execution was already in Azalea Lodge, by an impulse of generosity the lady had driven over to Messrs. Israels, and had pledged with them her entire collection of valuable jewelry. She had handed the cheque to Lord Hetton, and he did settle at Tattersall's on the fatal Monday following the race. Lord Hetton was agreeably astonished; he found, much to his surprise, that he had one real friend in the world. Is it then to be wondered at that from that day Lord Hetton clung to his only friend, and that he looked upon Azalea Lodge as his home? Things went better with Lord Hetton, and he settled Azalea Lodge and its valuable contents upon the object of his gratitude.
When anything remained to him after paying his trainer whenever he made a coup, or landed a good stake, he invariably made a thank-offering at the shrine in St. John's Wood. It was all very wrong, and very wicked, no doubt, but after all it was perhaps very natural.
It was nine o'clock one Sunday night, and Mr. Parsons was very busy indeed—he was preparing for the war-path. On his table were arranged a number of polished steel implements, which looked like surgical instruments; they were burglar's tools. Half-a-dozen handy bits of candle and a box of silent matches were quickly placed in his pocket; a piece of strong Manilla cord some four yards long, with a sharp three-pronged hook at the end of it, was wrapped around his waist, beneath his virtuous waistcoat; his plain tweed coat carried numerous canvas bags lined with washleather in its back. It was a wonderful coat with innumerable pockets in the inside; in each of these mysterious receptacles he placed one or other of the implements of his trade; a short crow-bar in three pieces, which could be screwed together, formed the last of these, while a big bunch of skeleton keys, a phial full of oil and another of acid were slipped into his waistcoat pockets. He popped a pair of loose felt slippers into his hat, calmly lighted his pipe and proceeded to Old Street. He then called a hansom cab and told the driver to take him to the Swiss Cottage.
