Traced and Tracked; Or, Memoirs of a City Detective

by James M'Govan

THE ROMANCE OF A REAL CREMONA.

A grand ball was being given one night in November at the mansion of the Earl of ———, a great castellated place a good bit within a hundred miles of this city. The dancing room was a perfect picture—the floor polished mahogany in mosaic work, the walls panelled in white flowered satin, with gold slips at the edges, and the whole lighted by hundreds of wax candles inserted in brackets and chandeliers of cut crystal, glittering with pendants, while flashing in the head-dresses and on the necks and bosoms of the fair guests were enough diamonds and other precious stones to have bought up the Regalia twice over.

It was in this scene of brightness and grandeur, and strictly exclusive gaiety, that the curious robbery which was to cause me so much trouble and concern took place.

In an assemblage of this kind, one would expect a thief, if he managed to get into the place at all, to turn his attention to the guests and their jewels; but such was not the case, and it was there that the first puzzling element came into the affair.

At one end of the room, partly in a large recess formed by one of the bow windows, and partly in a portion of the room screened off by a rope covered with red cloth, was a raised kind of a dais for the orchestra. This corner was at the end nearest the door, and clustered within the rope, with stands and music complete, was an orchestra of local musicians, under the leadership, for that night only, of a more distinguished player from England. This gentleman, whom I may name Mr Cleffton, had been engaged at some high-class concerts in Edinburgh, and was about to return to England when he was asked as a great favour and at a high fee to play at this distinguished gathering. To play at a dancing party was rather out of this gentleman’s line—to accept a high fee was not, so he went—much to his grief as he soon found.

About midnight, when the room was beginning to become uncomfortably warm, the guests filed out grandly to a supper room close by, and shortly after the musicians were similarly entertained in a smaller room, to which they were led through a long range of carpeted lobbies by the butler himself. Most of the players left their instruments on the seat they had occupied or on the music stand or floor—Mr Cleffton alone took the trouble to return his to its case. He was about to shut and lock this for additional security when he chanced to notice that all the others were waiting on him, and said hurriedly to the butler—

“I suppose the violins will be perfectly safe here? No one will meddle them while we’re out?”

The butler smiled lightly at his concern, and said emphatically—

“Not a soul will go near them.”

So the fiddle case was left open and unlocked, and its owner went away with his companions to regale himself upon cold fowl and tongue and champagne, or whatever wine he fancied most.

Now, when I say that Mr Cleffton fairly worshipped his own instrument, I am, I believe, giving only an ordinary case—all fiddlers, I understand, do that, and the more wretched the instrument the more devout is their homage. Whether this particular fiddle merited the slavish devotion I cannot say. It was very ugly, and rather dirty-looking; but its owner, besides never tiring of admiring it from every possible point of view, had given £40 for it, and afterwards spent a good many more, as I shall presently show, in trying to establish at law that the fiddle he had bought belonged to him; so I suppose it must have had good qualities of some kind.

When, therefore, the orchestra had finished supper and strolled back under the guidance of one of the servants to the ball-room, Mr Cleffton’s first look was towards his fiddle—or rather towards the case in which he had so tenderly deposited it before leaving the room. Then he started, and blinked sharply to make sure that the champagne had not affected his vision. The case was there, as was also a beautifully quilted bag of wadding and green silk in which he was wont to tenderly wrap the fiddle when done playing, and before inserting it in the case; the fiddle bow, too, was there, but the Cremona was gone.

“Hullo! what’s this!” exclaimed Mr Cleffton, in his quick, sharp way, and trying to smile in spite of his concern and pitiable pallor. “Which of you has been meddling with my fiddle.”

Nobody had been touching it, as they all hastened to assure him, reminding him at the same time how he had been the last to leave the room; and then, with concerned looks and widely opened eyes, they looked everywhere about the recess for the missing fiddle, narrowly inspecting every one of the instruments left; but it was all in vain—the fiddle had vanished.

“My beautiful Strad! my beautiful Strad! worth £400!” was all Mr Cleffton could moan out, as, wringing his hands, tearing at the few hairs left in his head, and almost shedding real tears of grief, he trotted feverishly and excitedly round the ball-room, peering into every corner in search of his treasure.

“Perhaps some of the servants may have taken it out to have a scrape while we were at supper,” suggested another player, keeping his own instrument tight under his arm so that there might be no danger of a second tragedy. All the other fiddlers echoed the suggestion, and, carrying their instruments under their arms, followed the distracted leader through the lobbies in search of the butler, or any of the servants likely to throw light on the strange disappearance.

The butler was soon found, and brought out from the supper room proper to hear the story of the Cremona; and in amazement and incredulity he followed the players to the ball-room, where, however, he could only stare and count over the instruments left, with the invariable result of finding them one short. Then the servants were questioned closely and searchingly, but not one of them had thought of looking at the fiddles, far less of taking one out of the room to try it, and the end of the investigation found them exactly where they had begun—that is, staring blankly at each other and saying, “Well, that is strange—how on earth could it have gone?”

By and by odd couples of the guests began to drift into the ball-room, and at length Lady ——— herself, the amiable hostess, appeared, and was informed in a whisper by the butler of the unexpected difficulty.

“One of the violins taken out of the room? oh, impossible,” she incredulously echoed, with a coolness which must have stabbed Mr Cleffton like a sword of ice. “You will find it lying about somewhere when the dancing is over. Could you not play on one of the other violins, Mr Cleffton, and look for your own afterwards?”

Mr Cleffton looked at the honourable lady in pitying and profound contempt for her ignorance, and deep reproach for what to him seemed an indifference absolutely brutal. What! sit down and calmly play on another instrument while his own—to him the best in the world—might be speeding in the hands of the exultant robber to the other end of the world.

This was more than fiddler humanity could endure. High fees and even the countenance of earls were not to be despised, but they were as nothing compared with the loss of his darling instrument, and in a torrent of excited language, such as the lady was seldom favoured with hearing, the bereaved musician told her so. Not another note would he play till he got his own fiddle.

A horrible pause followed, but in the end a compromise was effected, by which all but Mr Cleffton continued to play, while he followed the butler from the room to prosecute his inquiries in the regions below.

A tardily stammered-out word from one of the servants had given them a slight clue to the strange disappearance. During the interval occupied by supper, some of the strange servants being entertained below—that is, the coachmen and footmen of those who had come a distance, and merely put up the horses to wait till the party was over—had proposed that they should take a peep at the glories of the empty ball-room, and, this being readily agreed to, they slipped quietly upstairs under the guidance of one of the servants, and gratified their curiosity.

“But they had been only a moment in the room,” the quaking servant added, “and hardly inside the door.”

The butler made no reply, but to Mr Cleffton he hopefully remarked—

“I suspect some of the coachmen will have your fiddle down in the kitchen,” and to the kitchen they went to find there more than one coachman, but no fiddle, or trace of one. Every one there seated swore that they had not as much as noticed the fiddle, and then they voluntarily underwent a process of searching. Greatcoats were produced and inspected, pockets turned out, and every means tried without success. Then some suggested that they should see if all in waiting were there; they counted off at once, and found that, by comparing the number with that of the plates set for supper in the servants’ hall, they were exactly one short. Who was the missing one! No one could tell, till one jolly-faced coachman said—

“Where’s the surly chap that sat next to me, and never took off his driving coat all the time?”

“Ay, where was he?” every one echoed, and soon to this was added the question, for the first time asked, “Who was he?”

There was no answer to either question. Nobody had noticed the man particularly, though to the jolly-faced coachman he had gruffly said that his name was “Smith, or Jones, or something,” and that he had been “driving some of the folks up stairs.”

Every one in this case, down to the servants of the house themselves, had imagined that every body else knew all about the strange man, and so had paid little attention to him and his odd manner.

Smith had done little but smoke and stare, though he had shown great alacrity in going up to see the ball-room; some, indeed, insisted that it had been he who proposed the treat. More, he had gone up with his heavy driving coat on, and some of the servants had a faint recollection of him loitering near the music stands while the rest of the servants walked round the room looking at the decorations.

“That’s the man that has stolen my violin,” cried Mr Cleffton at this stage of the inquiry. “He would have a big pocket inside his coat,—probably made for the occasion,—and has slipped my Cremona into it when no one was looking or thinking of him. Who does he serve with?”

“Who, indeed?” All echoed the question; but when guest after guest had been enumerated or appealed to by the butler, there came the still more surprising discovery that Smith served no one—came with no one—and was known to no one—had gained admittance, indeed, entirely by the dress he wore, his own cool audacity, and the general flurry in which every one was plunged by the party being held up stairs.

“Get out your horses, and let the villain be pursued,” cried Mr Cleffton, more and more distracted, “the whole robbery has been systematically planned and carried out; but the wretch can’t be far off, and we may overtake him yet. I will give ten pounds to any of you who help to put it into my hands again.”

The incentive was little needed, for a good deal of Cleffton’s excitement had communicated itself to those about him. In a few minutes several vehicles were horsed and ready in the stable yard behind, and on one of these Mr Cleffton took his place beside the driver and with a grand lashing of whips and excited whooping they were off down the avenue, at the foot of which they separated to take the different roads running from the spot. Mr Cleffton, from some idea of his own, had chosen that leading to Edinburgh; but, though the night was clear, and the moon and stars out in the sky, not a trace of the fugitive did they come upon between the mansion and the city. Several tramps they did overtake and rouse up and search without ceremony, but as none of these answered the description of the surly Mr Smith, they were allowed to resume their tramping or snoring, while the agonised fiddler entered the city. Of course his first visit was to the Central Police Office, where he made known his loss to the lieutenant on night duty, and then excitedly demanded to see a detective. It was explained to him that detectives require sleep as well as ordinary mortals, and are not usually kept at the office during the night waiting for such exceptional cases, but this produced little impression upon the musician.

“Everything depends on this matter being seen to with promptitude,” he said. “Give me the man’s address, and I’ll go to him myself.”

They ought to have given him M^cSweeny’s address, considering the hour and the work I had done the day before, but they didn’t; they gave him mine; and out to Charles Street he came at half-past four in the morning, and roused me out of bed, sleepy, stupid, and dazed with having got only three hours rest instead of eight, and, without waiting to see if I understood him, at once began to bemoan his loss.

“My lovely Cremona! my beautiful Strad! spirited away—stolen from under my very eyes! Good heavens, what am I to do? What is to become of me if you don’t trace out the thief?”

“Strad! Strad! Who is she?” I vacantly asked, thinking from the man’s tears that he must mean some young and beautiful maiden, violently abducted from her home and friends.

“The best fiddle in the world—at least, the best that I ever tried, and I’ve tried a few,” he moaned, wringing his hands. “I’d rather have had a leg broken, or lost my head, than that Cremona.”

I stared at him, only half understanding the speech, and inclined to think that he had lost his head.

“You don’t mean to say that it’s a—a fiddle you’ve come to make all this fuss about?” I at last found voice to say.

“A beauty—and the tone of it, three fiddles in one, and as sweet and soft as a flute,” he cried, not noticing my rising anger.

“Good heavens, man!” I shouted at last, “you don’t mean to tell me that you’ve come here and roused me out of bed at four in the morning about a miserable fiddle that you’ve lost? I thought it was something serious.”

“And do you not call that serious?” he returned, after favouring me with a pitying look which was meant to kill me, but did not. “It is serious for me. I’ll never sleep till I get it.”

“I’m sorry for you, but you might at least have let me sleep—till morning.”

“Worth £400—refused £200 for it the other day,” he continued, quite undisturbed.

“£400!” I echoed. “Is it possible you gave that sum for a fiddle?”

“No, not quite so much, but that’s its value,” he slowly admitted.

“How much did it cost you?”

“£40,” he rather reluctantly answered.

“There’s a slight difference between 40 and 400,” I ventured to remark.

“A mere nothing,” he said, with the greatest gravity stumbling on a joke; “that’s common in fiddle buying. You don’t always give for an instrument exactly what it’s worth.”

“Then its value is just the price which you choose to put on it?”

“That’s about it;” and then he hastily changed the subject by narrating all the circumstances of the strange robbery much as I have put them down, only taking much longer to go through.

When he had finished I quietly returned to the point at which he had broken off, pretty sure that he had a reason for avoiding it.

“If the fiddle is worth £400, and you got it at a tenth of that price, you must have got a great bargain?” I observed.

“I am coming to that,” he answered, with a groan. “A great bargain? Yes, I thought so too at the time, but I’ve never had peace since I bought it. It has a history, and as that, I am sure, has something to do with the robbery, you may as well hear it now.”

“Then there is more to listen to?” I ruefully returned, with something like an echo of his groan, and a wistful thought of the cosy blankets I had left. “Will it take long to tell?”

“Not very long—it must not, for I must have you and some of your comrades out to watch the departure of the Newcastle trains.”

I groaned in reality then, and resignedly began to dress.

“Well, go on—I’m listening,” I said, with a very bad grace, which, however, he was too grief-stricken to notice.

“Well, I was swindled in buying the violin—regularly diddled,” he said, with some exasperation.

“You were swindled? I thought it was the other way?” I said, stopping in surprise.

“So did I, but I was mistaken,” he answered, with a writhe. “This was how it happened. I was playing at Newcastle last year, when a man named John Mackintosh, who said he had a real Cremona violin, or one that was said to be real, called upon me, and said he wanted my opinion of it. I had nothing to do during the day, so I went to his shop,—a little den down near the New Quay, in which he sold ginger beer, sweets, and newspapers,—and saw at a glance that it was a splendid instrument. It was of no use to him, for he is only a wretched scraper, who would be as happy with a twelve-and-sixpenny German fiddle, so I determined if possible to get him to sell it. He asked what I thought of it, and I said indifferently that it might be a real Cremona and it might not, but it was worth about £10.”

“That would be a lie, of course?” I quietly observed.

“Well, in a sense, yes,” he stammered, flushing a little. “You know I was speaking professionally.”

“Oh, indeed? Professionals always lie, then?”

“No, no—you mistake. I mean that professionals can never afford to give so much as ordinary buyers with lots of money. But the man was deeper than I had expected—he’s a Scotchman, you know, and they’re always cursed long-headed. He said, ‘Ah, but I wadna gie that fiddle for twice £10.’ I laughed at him, but at length I said I would buy it from him, and give him the £20. Blast him, then I found he wouldn’t sell it at all!”

“And you came away without it?”

“I tried him every way—pointed out how much more useful the money would be than the fiddle to him, but he only said dryly that ‘he would think aboot it,’ and thus I left him. The next time I was in Newcastle I called upon him again, and saw the violin, but this time Mackintosh was not in the shop, but an uncle of his, who said he could not sell the fiddle without the owner’s consent, but hinted that if I made a reasonable offer for it he had no doubt I might make a bargain the next time I came. Well, I did call on my next visit, and saw the uncle, who said that Mackintosh had decided to sell it if I would make the price £40, and I snapped at the offer at once. I asked when I could see Mackintosh, but the uncle only said, ‘You can get the fiddle frae me as weel as frae him—if ye hae the money wi’ ye?’ I had the money, and counted it out at once, while he wrote out a receipt, put a stamp on it, and signed it ‘John Mackintosh.’ Then I got the fiddle, and thought as I bore it off that I was happy for life.”

“But you weren’t?”

“I wasn’t. I had not been home many days when I got a note, vilely written and spelled, from Mackintosh, demanding back his fiddle, and saying hotly that his uncle, the drunken beast, had no right to lend the fiddle to me, or even let it out of the shop. I replied sharply that I had bought it, paid £40 for it, and held the receipt; to which he replied that his uncle had left him, and gone no one knew where, but the fiddle was never his uncle’s, nor had he power to sell it, and that Mackintosh himself had never fingered a penny of the price, and did not mean to, but insisted on getting back his Cremona. Here was a nice swindle; yet what could I do? I offered him other £20 to let me keep it, but he laughed at the offer, and then brought an action-at-law against me for the return of the fiddle.”

“And what was the result?”

“The result as yet is only that I’ve had to pay away nearly £20 in lawyer’s fees; but, as I stick to the fiddle, and would burn it sooner than give it up to him, I suspect that in desperation he has planned this robbery, and now is making his escape to Newcastle with the fiddle in his possession.”

“Oho! and that’s the end of it,” I exclaimed, now seeing the awkwardness of the case he was putting into my hands. “Was it this man Mackintosh who offered you £200 for the fiddle the other day?”

“No, no! That was another person altogether. But what has that got to do with the case in hand?”

“Nothing, perhaps, but we’ll see. Who was he?”

“Oh, a curious, half-daft customer, who has a craze for buying fiddles. He lives a mile or two out from this city, but heard me play on mine at one of the concerts, and invited me out to try his and compare them with mine.”

“Did he seem very anxious to buy yours?”

“Oh, fairly daft about it—offered me my pick of his selection of fiddles and £200 down for it, but I only laughed at him. He doesn’t play at all, so of what earthly use would it be to him? He has been in an asylum, I understand, at one time, and I could believe it, for none but a daft man would give the prices he has given for the fiddles he has. One wretched thing, with no more tone in it than a child’s sixpenny toy, cost him £180. He’s been beautifully swindled.”

“Swindling seems to be rather a prominent feature in fiddle-buying,” was my comment; but while I made it I was thinking of something else.

It is a pity that he told me of the Newcastle affair, for from the first I had caught the idea that the offerer of the £200 would be found to have some connection with the theft. The bringing in of another clue completely upset my first instincts, and made me give them less prominence than I should otherwise have done. The description of the surly, sham coachman, too, did not tally in any particular with that of either Mackintosh or his uncle, though, as Cleffton remarked, that did not go for much, as they might have employed another to do the job for them.

There was little time for either thinking or further inquiries, for on consulting the railway time tables I found that trains started by both lines for Newcastle at a few minutes past seven, and as I could not divide myself into two, I would have to rouse M^cSweeny—rather a joyful task—and prime him with details and descriptions, and set him on to watch one station, while I and Mr Cleffton took the other.

As the early train from the Waverley Station did not run farther than Berwick without a break, I thought the Caledonian more likely to be tried, and decided to take that one, while M^cSweeny took the Waverley. There was no boat for Newcastle from Leith till next day, so we were pretty safe in trying only the railway stations.

We got down to the Pleasance, roused M^cSweeny without compunction, and then hurried off to our different posts of observation. I took up my stand close to the booking-office, with Cleffton watching close by, and there we stood till every passenger had been served with tickets, and the train moved out of the station. Not one carried a fiddle, or suspicious bundle, or had any appearance of having one concealed about them, and not one answered the descriptions either of Mackintosh, his uncle, or the sham coachman. Cleffton was manifestly disappointed, and eager to know what I thought.

“Wait till we hear what M^cSweeny has to say,” was my reply, and we drove along to the other station to find that my chum had actually made a capture, and lugged him off to the Office, fiddle and all. Cleffton was in high spirits, but swore horribly when he found that the prisoner was only a harmless blind fiddler, with an instrument having more patches and splices than his coat, and worth only half-a-crown. Then I gave my opinion freely—

“I’m afraid we’re on the wrong scent.”

Cleffton, however, had formed his own theory, and insisted on all the trains for Newcastle being watched that day; and this was done, but without success. Even then he would have held out, but in the course of the day I sent a telegram to a skilful man on the Newcastle staff, asking him to find out if Mackintosh had been out of town, and at night I had an answer giving a decided negative. Not only was he at home, and serving his customers as usual, but he had even spoken confidently of recovering his valuable Cremona, in a month or two at the most, by the ordinary processes of law.

“Recover it, the cheating scoundrel!” cried Cleffton, when I read him the message, “after me paying him forty pounds for it!”

“Not him—you did not pay him,” I quietly corrected.

“A regularly planned swindle!—all made up between them,” he hoarsely iterated.

“I have little doubt it was,” I thoughtfully replied; “but did it never strike you as curious that a man in his position should possess such a valuable instrument. Did he never tell you how it came into his possession? It is just possible that it was not really his to sell.”

“Do you think so?” eagerly cried the excited victim. “By heavens, I would give a ten pound note this minute if you could fasten a crime of any kind on him. That would be revenge! He always declared to me that he bought it in a disjointed state from a broker in Edinburgh here for £3. Perhaps it was stolen.”

I said nothing, for either way Cleffton would lose his fiddle, and probably the money he had paid for it. I had no doubt that the false sale had been planned and arranged by Mackintosh; and was quite sure that the man who could do so would not stick at trifles, but it did not therefore follow that he had stolen the fiddle. I gave the whole matter a night’s thought, and in the morning wished heartily that the fiddle had been burned to ashes a year before I was born, for I seemed to get deeper into troubles and difficulties the more I studied and investigated.

I now put Cleffton and his theories aside, and began to work the case in my own way. After getting from him the address of the gentleman who had offered him £200 for the Cremona, I made my way out to the mansion which had been the scene of the robbery. I then worked my way in towards the city, and, after two days’ hard work, at length discovered two persons who had seen a man answering the description of the sham coachman at an early hour on the morning of the robbery. One had seen him on the road, another had seen him in the city; but neither seemed to have any suspicion that under the big coachman’s coat there was concealed a bulky thing like a fiddle.

From some of the servants I had learned that the man was red-haired and big boned—that he had a slight cast in the eye, and that he undoubtedly knew something about horses and driving. I therefore decided that if I should have the good fortune to discover him I would find him to be some dodging groom or stableman of doubtful reputation rather than one of my own family of recognised “bairns.”

My next step was naturally a visit to the eccentric connoisseur, whom I shall call Mr Turner. It happened, however, that before I had advanced to this stage Mr Cleffton had to leave the city for England to fulfil several important engagements, and I was for a little rather puzzled as to how I should be able to identify his violin, if I were lucky enough to get my eyes on it. Fiddles, of course, are all alike to me, and unless by some marked difference in the colour I could not tell one from another. Mr Cleffton tried to prime me a little by speaking of certain marks and printed tickets which I would find about the fiddle, but when he admitted that some of the fiddles already in Mr Turner’s possession had these very tickets and marks I was more helpless than ever. At last a happy thought struck him just as he was leaving town, and he dropped me a note directing me to an old Edinburgh musician who had been playing second fiddle with him on the night of the ball. This gentleman had seen and closely examined the Cremona more than once, and, having a perfect knowledge of all the peculiarities of such valuable instruments, would know the missing one, I was assured, among dozens. To this gentleman, therefore, I went, and we arranged that he should take me out to Mr Turner’s as a friend wishing to see the rare collection of old violins. We then set out for the nearest cab-stand, as the place was three miles out of town, and on the way I chanced to say—

“But are you perfectly sure that you would know this fiddle so as to be able to swear to it? It would be very awkward for us all if we made a false accusation.”

“I’ll know it when I see it,” was the confident reply, “and I’ll tell you why. I have a strong suspicion that I’ve seen the fiddle before—ay, and played on it, too. If it’s not the £50 Cremona that my old chum, M——, of the Theatre Royal, lost about ten years ago, it must be its twin brother.”

“Lost? How could a fiddle be lost?” I faintly returned, as with a sinking heart I anticipated fresh complications.

“Well, or stolen—it was never rightly known how it happened,” promptly returned my companion. “I was there at the time myself, and I’ll tell you all about it as we go out.”

I groaned, and resigned myself to listen.

We got to the cab-stand, and were soon rattling out from Edinburgh, and when out on the smooth country road my new assistant very eagerly threw off the following information:—

“We were playing at a ball out by Penicuick—six or seven of us altogether—and as it was a jolly affair at a gentleman’s seat, we were driven out and in in an open trap. My chum, M——, of the Theatre Royal,—he’s dead now, as you know,—was leader, and had his best fiddle with him—a splendid Stradivarius Cremona, which cost him £50. I had a great liking for the instrument, and used often to try it, and have got the loan of it often when I had a solo to play. We were through with our business about three in the morning, and I remember perfectly that it was a clear, cold night, with plenty of moonlight. We had had some refreshments during the night, but every one of us knew perfectly well what he was about. M—— was the last to step into the vehicle that was to bring us in, and he came out with his fiddle and case in his hand, and said, ‘Mind yer feet or I pit in my fiddle—better that you sud be crampit for room than that my fiddle sud come to ony herm.’ We made room—the fiddle case was shoved in on the floor of the vehicle among others there lying, the door at the back was shut, and we drove off, singing, laughing, and joking, and as jovial and happy as kings. There was a toll-bar some distance in, and I remember some of us getting out to knock up the toll-keeper and get him to open the gate; and it is possible that the door of the trap may not have been shut immediately on the journey being resumed, but, at all events, the door was found open when we came to the next toll, which was near Edinburgh. When we got to the Theatre Royal—the most central place for us all—we got out, and M——, who was joking and laughing till we had all got out our instruments, began groping about under the seats, and then said, ‘Some o’ ye hae taen my fiddle.’ We counted over, and searched everywhere, but the Cremona and case were gone.”

“Lost on the road, I suppose?”

“Yes, or stolen—it was never found out which. The loss was not thought serious at first, for there was a brass plate on the case bearing the owner’s name, and it was expected that the fiddle would be picked up by some of the early carters coming in to the market, and that a mere advertisement and small reward would ensure its restoration. But though the advertising was tried, and every inquiry was made, the fiddle has never been heard of since.”

“And did you not tell Cleffton all this when you saw the fiddle in his possession?”

“No; I was not sure that it was the fiddle. But I thought of it, and was very near saying it.”

I made no further comments on the new information. I was not anxious that he should prove correct in his surmise, but hoped that the case would be narrowed rather than broadened. With this end in view I thought proper to prime my companion well as to the questions he was to ask the gentleman we were on our way to see, leaving to myself rather the task of watching and analysing.

Mr Turner had a craze for buying fiddles which he never did, and never could, play upon, and I mentally placed him in the same position as a bibliomaniac, who would sell his soul to get hold of some old musty volume not worth reading, simply because it happened to be the only copy in existence. Such a man, I had no hesitation in deciding, would steal as readily as a man drunk with opium. My only difficulty was how to make sure that the fiddle had been stolen at his instigation, and, if that were made clear, how to get at the stolen article.

The cab stopped at a little hamlet about three miles from the city, and I was shown into the drawing-room of Mr Turner’s house, in which we were speedily joined by a dirty-looking man, very shabbily and raggedly attired, and evidently straight from digging in the garden, whom I had difficulty in believing to be the wealthy gentleman I had come to see.

The face was rather repulsive, on the whole, until my companion spoke of his rare fiddles, when it became animated and bright with the ruling passion of his life. Then he turned to a cabinet in the room, and unlocked it as solemnly as if it had been an iron safe full of diamonds and gold, and brought out several old fiddles, very much cracked and mended, and every one, if possible, uglier than another, and which were placed successively in my hands, with a triumphant look, which evidently meant, “Admire that, or be for ever condemned as ignorant and stupid.”

I examined them closely as I had been instructed by Mr Cleffton, and even brightened a little when I found one which had the printed ticket inside of which he had spoken, but on referring the matter to my companion, he only smiled and said—

“Oh, that’s a Strad., too, but it’s only a copy, and a very poor one. The other was a real Cremona. By the by, Mr Turner,” he abruptly added aloud, in response to a signal from me, and while I pretended to bend over the fiddle in my hand in wrapt devotion and admiration, “Do you remember that Stradivarius which Cleffton refused to sell you?”

“Yes; what of it?” The words were somewhat hastily thrown out, and I fancied I noticed a kind of nervous flutter in his voice as he spoke.

“It has been stolen.”

“Stolen? Impossible!”

These were his words, and natural enough under the circumstances, but it is impossible to convey in print the whole effect of the exclamation. There is more in the manner in which words are spoken than in the words themselves. The appearance of surprise and incredulity was—or appeared to me to be—manifestly forced; the eyes of the man had an absent and uneasy expression, as if, while he was mechanically pronouncing the words, he was saying to himself—“Is there any danger? Can any one have hinted to him that I might have been the thief?”

“It is not only possible, but a fact,” pursued my companion.

“And how was it done?” asked Mr Turner, with more coolness.

The fiddler briefly ran over the incidents of the theft, but when he came to explain that all the suspicion rested on the sham coachman, Mr Turner dissented warmly. “They’ll find that that has been a cock and bull story of the servants to screen themselves,” he said decidedly. “The whole thing is absurd; and my opinion is that the fiddle is safely hidden somewhere about the house in which it was missed.”

“The police don’t seem to think so,” I quietly observed.

“The police!” he scornfully echoed, “a parcel of blockheads—they’ll never lay hands on it, I’ll swear. When anything is stolen, of course, they have to make a show of activity, but it’s all humbug. They never recover the stolen thing.”

“I think you’re mistaken,” said I, with some truth, as the reader probably is aware.

“They’ll never see it,” he hotly and positively persisted. “I’ll stake twenty pounds on it.”

“Perhaps you’ll lose,” I laughingly returned. “Now, Mr ——, you bear witness that Mr Turner has promised to pay £20 to the—say the Royal Infirmary—if the police get back Mr Cleffton’s fiddle.”

Mr Turner appeared to think this a very good joke, and laughingly repeated his offer. We had by this time looked over every fiddle in his possession, as he averred, and as I had no search warrant, and no grounds for trying to get one, we had to take leave without any further discovery. But while we were being shown to the door by the shabby and ragged proprietor, I busied myself with inquiries as to the number of servants he employed. The house was a big one, and there was at least half an acre of garden ground attached to it, and I was in hope that he might keep a man, or hire one to help him to keep it in order. In this I was disappointed. He kept but two servants, and never hired a man for his garden, unless when actually forced to it by bad health. He kept neither horse nor machine, and always walked in to Edinburgh when business called him thither, so my sniffing after a horsey manservant went for nothing. I knew, however, that Mr Turner had been perfectly aware of Cleffton’s engagement to play at the Earl of ——’s, and was loath to believe that I was on the wrong scent.

I therefore bade the eccentric man rather an absent-minded good-bye, and had moodily settled myself in the cab for a good think, when a sudden thought came to me as we were leaving the hamlet behind. A little further down the road from the house we had visited was a wayside cottage with a few jars of sweets and biscuits and a couple of tobacco pipes stuck prominently in one of the windows, thus intimating that the place was meant for a shop. If any gossip—any news or information was to be collected regarding any one in the place, it was surely to be got in such a house as this, and my hand was on the check string in a moment.

When I got inside the cottage, a clean, tidy woman came bustling through from the back room, wiping her hands on her apron as she came. I was a little at a loss how to begin till I noticed some bottles of lemonade in a case behind the little counter, and asked to be served with two.

Chairs were handed us, and we decanted the lemonade in comfort, talking about the weather and roads as we did so, and then I indifferently turned the conversation to the strange customers that the good woman would be in the habit of noticing on the road.

“I suppose you never notice any men coming to see Mr Turner up the way there—a coarse, red-haired man, for instance, in a big coachman’s coat, and having a slight cast in his eyes?”

“Mr Turner’s no ane to hae mony folk coming aboot his hoose—he’s owre greedy for that,” was the answer, “but I think I did see a man like that a day or twa syne—no gaun to Mr Turner’s, but coming the other road. He cam’ in here and bocht a half-ounce o’ tobacco and a pipe.”

“Going in towards Edinburgh, you mean?”

“No that either, for he asked the nearest road to the railway station.”

“He couldn’t be going to Edinburgh, then, for the station is two miles farther on, and he would have been nearly as quick to have walked. Have you any idea if he had been at Mr Turner’s?”

“No me; I never clapped een on the man afore.”

“Was he carrying anything?—a fiddle case, for instance?”

“No, no—naething but a deal box, tied roond wi’ a string. It wasna sae big as a fiddle case. He laid it doon on the counter while he filled his pipe. I think there was a ticket on it—put on wi’ iron tacks—and a name on the ticket.”

“What name?”

“I never lookit. Maybe it wasna a name. I never like to be impident, and didna look very close.”

I questioned her closely on the man’s appearance, and found that it tallied very closely with that of the sham coachman. Yet I was anything but hopeful of the result. The description might have suited fifty innocent men who might pass her little shop in the course of a forenoon. Still I resolved to follow the clue a little further, and directed the cabman to turn his horse off at the first bye-road, and make for a railway station two miles further on. It was quite a small place, a branch from the main line, and to my satisfaction I found the booking clerk who had been on duty on the day named by the woman. This lad recollected the red-haired man perfectly, but when I said, “Where did he book for?” he looked at me with a puzzled expression, then thought a moment, and said—

“Did he book for any place?”

It was now my turn to look puzzled.

“I don’t know—I suppose he did when he walked two miles to get to the station,” I said at last. “Why else would he come here?”

“He brought a parcel,” said the lad, turning to one of his ledgers and flapping over the leaves. “He booked it, I know, but I don’t think he took out a ticket or waited for the train.”

“What kind of a parcel?”

“A light box. I think he said it was to be kept dry, as there were artificial flowers and ribbons in it. Ah, here is the entry—it is not paid you see—he said we’d take greater care of it if it wasn’t prepaid—‘Sent by James Paterson, to Robert Marshall, Linlithgow. To lie at station till called for.’”

“Was the box big enough to have held a fiddle?”

“About that size, sir. I don’t think it would have held the fiddlestick too. The fiddlestick is longer, and would take more room.”

“Was the box called for at the other end, do you know?” I asked, beginning to be more hopeful.

“I don’t know about that—it was sent away, and that’s all we have to do with it. These parcels are generally expected, and don’t lie long unclaimed.”

“You’ve got a telegraph handy—would you just send a message through, particularly asking if that box has been called for?” and I calmly sat down and motioned the clerk to his place at the instrument; and in a short time had the welcome news that the “box was there still, and had not been asked for.”

I looked at my watch and then consulted a time-table, and found that if I drove smartly into Edinburgh I could easily get a fast train to Linlithgow, without waiting for the slow connection with this out-of-the-way branch line. Afraid of looking foolish if I found myself mistaken, I dropped my companion at Edinburgh and took train for Linlithgow alone. The moment I got out, and the bustle of the train’s arrival and departure was over, I got the booking-clerk to turn out his parcel press, and easily found the box I was in search of. It was but roughly put together, and appeared to have been made out of the undressed spars of an old orange box; but by shaking it sharply I soon ascertained that it contained something harder than either flowers or ribbons. After a consultation, I was allowed to use a chisel to the lid, and easily prised it up sufficiently to pull out the paper and straw with which it was padded, and found snugly reposing underneath, a fiddle which in every respect answered the description of that stolen from Mr Cleffton.

I had little doubt that I had fairly recovered the stolen property, but I was just as anxious to get hold of the thief. It appeared to me that the sending of the fiddle by rail to this quiet station was merely the adoption of a safe hiding-place till the hue and cry of the robbery were over, and that as soon as the actual instigator felt safe he would appear to claim the box. I could not afford to wait so long; so I got permission to fasten up the box and leave it, while I returned to Edinburgh bearing the fiddle.

My first visit was to the gentleman who had introduced me to Mr Turner, and he identified the fiddle at a glance as Cleffton’s; but he did more. Getting out a fiddle bow, he ran his fingers over the strings in a testing way, and at last said decidedly—

“I could stake my life on it that that’s M——’s £50 Cremona that was stolen as I told you. Suppose we go along to his house and see?”

“I thought you said he was dead?”

“So he is; but his widow is alive, and may know the fiddle. We will not prompt her in any way, but just show it her and see if she has any suspicion of the truth.”

I was so pleased at the identification of the fiddle as that stolen from Cleffton—which was all I had been employed to find—that I offered no objection, and we walked through a street or two to a semi-genteel place, where I was introduced to the widow of the musician, and found her a shrewd and superior woman—one picked out of a hundred, I should say, for quick intelligence.

My companion opened the conversation by asking to see one of her late husband’s instruments to compare it with that we had with us, and in the course of the testing he managed that our fiddle should find its way into the widow’s hands. In a moment or two I saw her start and look at it more closely, then take it nearer the light and examine it closely at the scroll work close to the screwing pegs, and then she turned to my companion perfectly amazed, and said—

“Do you know what I’ve discovered?”

“What?”

“This is my fiddle—the one that was stolen from M———the £50 Cremona lost on the Penicuick road.”

“Impossible!—that one was bought in Newcastle.”

“That’s nothing. I don’t care though it had been bought in Australia—it’s his fiddle. Look here”—and she pointed to some scratching on the varnish in among the scroll carving—“what do you call that?”

We both looked very closely, and I said at last—

“It’s like the letter M scratched with a pin.”

“It is just that, and was scratched with a pin in this very room. He did it one night before me, saying, ‘If ever any one runs away with my fiddle I’ll know it by that whether they change the ticket or not.’ You need not take the fiddle away with you, for I claim it as mine.”

Here was a poser, but I was not to be so easily deprived of what was mine only on trust. I quietly took the instrument into my hands, saying—

“At present, Mrs M———, the fiddle is in the hands of the police, and as soon as you make good your claim to it I have no doubt it will be surrendered to you, but it seems to me that you will require to advance better evidence than that of a mere scratched letter.”

“I for one can swear to the instrument,” observed my companion.

“And half a dozen more, when they see it,” added the widow warmly. “I will raise an action for its recovery to-morrow.”

“Tuts! do not be so hasty—save your money in the meantime,” I advised. “I may get the evidence for you quite easily, if I can get the thief to confess. But that will necessitate a journey to Newcastle, so it can hardly be done in a day.”

I said this pretty confident that the swindling Mackintosh who had sold the fiddle to Cleffton would turn out to be the original thief, and took away the instrument and made preparations to secure him. I had before this made an arrangement whereby any one calling for the box at Linlithgow station should be detained and arrested; and the whole case now presented the curious spectacle of two robberies, two claimants, and two thieves. A telegram to England, according to arrangement, brought Mr Cleffton down in joy and ecstacy to claim his beloved fiddle, but only to be all but heart-broken with the intelligence that it was believed to be stolen property, and could not be given up till all claims had been fully investigated. The day after, I managed to run down to Newcastle. I easily found the little shop of Mackintosh, and considerably startled him by saying—

“My name is M^cGovan, and I have come from Edinburgh about that affair of the Cremona. I want you to come with me.”

The name appeared to be known to him, for he became ashy white before I had done speaking, and then with chattering teeth managed to say—

“I can’t leave my business; but I’m willing to lose the money. I’ll pay Cleffton back the £40 out of my own pocket, if he gives me back the fiddle.”

“Out of your own pocket?” I growled. “Man, don’t try that on me. The whole thing was a regular plant. But, as it happens, it’s not that part of the business that has brought me here. It’s the way you got the fiddle—it was stolen.”

“Stolen? Then it wasn’t by me,” he cried, with fearful earnestness. “I can swear that with my hand on the Bible. I bought it from a broker in the Cowgate, in Edinburgh.”

“That’s a common story—you’ll have a receipt, I suppose?” I answered, with a grin.

“I have, and I’ll show it you,” and much to my surprise he very quickly produced a badly written and spelled receipt for £3, bearing a stamp, and signed “Patrick Finnigan.”

“Now, be cautious what you say,” I returned, after a long look at the paper. “I happen to know Finnigan, and know him to be an honest man. You declare that you bought the fiddle from him—the fiddle which Cleffton bought from you for £40?”

“I declare that solemnly.”

“Then how did he get it?”

“I don’t know; but it runs in my head that he said he bought it at a country auction sale. It was in two pieces when I got it—the neck was away from the body.”

All this seemed probable enough, but I thought proper to take Mackintosh with me to the Newcastle Central, and have him locked up, while I returned to investigate his statements. Taking the fiddle and receipt with me, I called on Finnigan and asked him to try and recall the circumstances of the sale. That he managed to do when prompted by several statements of Mackintosh to me—particularly one as to the fiddle being in a broken state, and having hung in the back shop in a green bag, when Mackintosh asked to see it. Questioned then as to how it came into his possession, he said—

“I was out in the country at an auction sale—it was at a farm about six miles from here—and there were two or three fiddles put up. This was the last, and as it was broke—though the auctioneer declared that it only needed a little glue and new strings to make it play beautiful—nobody would bid for it, and I got it for five shillings. I always meant to sort it up, but was afraid I mightn’t do it right. One day the man who bought it came in and looked at a fiddle I had in the window, and then asked if I had any more. I showed him that, and saw him look pleased and eager like, so when he asked the price of it I thought I’d drop on him, and said £5. He prigged me down to £3 and then took it away, saying he didn’t think it dear.”

“You can’t remember the name of the farm, I suppose?” I wearily remarked, beginning to despair of getting to the bottom of the strange complication.

“I don’t know the name of the farm, but I think the name of the farmer who had died, and who had owned the fiddle, was Gow, or something like that. I could take you to the place though, and maybe that would do as well.”

I thought the proposal a good one, and got a cab the same afternoon, and drove out towards Penicuick, then by some cross roads, through which the cabman was unerringly directed by Finnigan, we reached the farm in question. Here I was not surprised to learn that nothing was known of the Gows who had formerly occupied the farm. Gow himself was dead, and his surviving relations gone, none knew whither; but, in the course of my inquiries, I came across an old man—a ploughman or farm worker, who had served with Gow for many years, and to him I turned as a kind of forlorn hope, though, as it happened, I could not have hit upon a better if I had hunted for years.

“It’s about an old fiddle that was sold at the roup when the old man died,” I explained, in rather a loud key, for the old man was a little deaf. “It was broken at the time, and was sold for five shillings.”

“I mind o’d perfectly,” said the old man. “It was the fiddle that we fund on the road gaun to market. The maister was on ae cairt and me on the tither; and it was quite dark at the time, but there was a heavy rime on the grund, and the fiddle was in a black case, and I noticed it as we drave by, and stoppit my cairt to pick it up. The maister stoppit his too, and then when he had lookit at the fiddle, and tried hoo the strings soonded, he said, ‘Them ’at finds keeps, Sandy. I’ll gi’e ye five shillings to yoursel’, an we’ll say naething aboot this to naebody.’ So we shoved it in alow the strae, and there it lay till we got back frae Em’bro’. The maister played on it, and likit it better nor his ain; but on the Saturday after he cam’ to my hoose late at nicht, wi’ the case and fiddle in his hand, and said, kind o’ excited like, ‘Sandy, in case onybody should ask after this fiddle I think we’d better pit it ooten sicht for a wee. Get your shuill, and dig a hole ony place where it’s no likely to be disturbed.’”

“And you did it?”

“Deed did I. I dug a hole, and the fiddle and case lay there for mair nor a year. But it was never claimed, and we got it oot, and he played on it for a while, but the damp ground had spoiled it in some way, and he never likit it sae weel as at first. Then it gaed in twa ae day in his hands, and was put awa in a bag till the day o’ the sale.”

“And what became of the case?” I asked, with great eagerness.

“Ou, the maister used it for a long time to haud ane o’ his ain fiddles, and it went wi’ it at the sale to Thompson o’ the Mains.”

“Was there not a brass plate on it bearing a name?”

“A brass plate? I raither think there was a brass plate on it when we fund it, but I never saw it after. Maybe the maister had ta’en it aff.”

“Not unlikely,” I dryly observed. “Did you never hear of the fiddle being advertised for?”

“No me; I didna fash muckle wi’ papers at that time.”

“You must have known that you were as good as stealing the fiddle?—that it must have had an owner?” I sternly pursued.

“I said that at the time, and advised the maister to adverteese it in the papers, but he only laughed, and said he would tak’ a’ the risk.”

“Can this Mr Thompson who bought the case be found now?”

“Naething easier, sir,” the man readily returned. “The farm’s no a mile off.”

I began to see the end of my task now, and, with the old ploughman to lead the way, at once drove to the Mains and was introduced to Mr Thompson. The fiddle case was at once produced, and then I smiled as I discovered on the top of the lid a square indentation and two rivet holes, which had evidently at one time contained a brass name-plate. With little difficulty I got the fiddle case away with me, and drove back to Edinburgh, where it was identified by the widow at a glance as that of her husband’s lost instrument.

I now had the whole case traced out to its core, and lying clear as a written history before me, but as there was only one fiddle to give away among the claimants, it will be seen that the task before us was not only difficult, but almost certain to bring upon us the dissatisfaction of some of the so-called owners.

While I had been investigating, Mackintosh, thoroughly frightened, had sent a draft for £40 to Cleffton, asking him to return the fiddle at his leisure and say no more about it; but when he was set at liberty he had the doubtful satisfaction of finding that he had lost both the money and the fiddle. I waited patiently to see if the box at Linlithgow would be called for, but evidently the senders had become alarmed, for they never turned up. I then tried to ascertain from Mr Turner’s servants if a man like the sham coachman had been seen about that gentleman’s house, but they were too wary for me, and denied it point blank. I then turned to Mr Turner himself, and, hinting in no measured terms that he was the prime mover in the robbery, commanded him to pay over to the Infirmary the sum of £20, which the grasping villain very reluctantly but abjectly consented to do.

There now remained but the two rival owners to deal with, and I am certain the case would have gone to the Court of Session but for a thought which struck me when Cleffton was one day arguing his view of the case to me.

“You gave £40 for the fiddle, and thought it well worth the money,” I said. “How much do you really think the fiddle is worth?—I mean privately, between ourselves.”

“It would be cheap at £400,” he said with a sigh. “I should never have sold it for that.”

“Then I’ll tell you what to do,” was my prompt rejoinder. “The widow to whom the fiddle undoubtedly belongs never speaks of it as worth more than £50, she has no use for the fiddle herself, and would doubtless be glad of the money. Go to her and offer her £50 for it, and that, according to your own confession, will be £350 below its value.”

“Hang it! I never thought of that! I’ll try it,” he exclaimed, “though I’m afraid even fifty pounds will not buy it, and I don’t know how on earth I’m to raise more.”

“Perhaps you’ll get it for less,” I hopefully suggested, but I was mistaken. The value of the fiddle had risen in the widow’s estimation, but in a day or two Cleffton came back with a carefully-worded receipt, penned by his own lawyer, and empowering us to hand him the Cremona, which he had bought from the widow for £65. When the fiddle was placed in his hands he fairly hugged it, and kissed it as fervently as I have seen mothers embrace their lost children. I smiled pityingly at the spectacle, but perhaps he would have done the same had he seen the mothers getting back their idols. We are good at pitying each other.