IN QUEER COMPANY.
IN TWO PARTS.—PART I.
If the following account of what happened to me a few years ago serves no other purpose, it may pass muster as an illustration of two old sayings, namely, that ‘One half of the world does not know how the other half lives,’ and that ‘Truth is often stranger than fiction.’
It was late on a very cold afternoon during the winter of 1876-77, that I was hurrying westward along the Marylebone Road, congratulating myself upon having turned my back upon the bitter east wind, and comparing the climate of London towards the end of December with that which I had been enjoying exactly twelve months previously, when at Calcutta, as one of the Special Correspondents with the Prince of Wales. I had got nearly as far as the Edgware Road, when a man touched his hat to me and asked me for the wherewith to get a night’s lodging. He did not look like an ordinary or a professional beggar. His clothes, although very shabby, were evidently well made. He looked so pinched and weary, that I stopped and fumbled in the ticket-pocket of my overcoat for a sixpence to give him. He stared at me very hard indeed whilst I was getting the money, and as I handed it to him, broke out with an exclamation of wonder, asking me whether my name was not so-and-so. I replied that it was; and asked him where he had ever seen me before. To make a long story short, this poverty-stricken man asking alms on the public streets turned out to be a gentleman I had known many years before, when he was a captain in one of our crack lancer regiments, and had a private fortune of his own of more than fifteen hundred a year. When I had last seen him, he was a man of little over thirty; but was now on the wrong side of fifty; and owing to want, care, hunger, cold, and dirt, looked very much older. He had always been a very fast man. Betting, cards, and doing bills at sixty per cent., had worked out their legitimate ends upon him. I had lost all sight of him for fully twenty years, but remembered having heard that he had been obliged to sell out on account of his many debts. All this, and much more too, he related when he came to my house, as I had told him to do, and helped him as far as it was in my power, with a little money and some old clothes.
When I asked him what he intended to do for the future, he said that if he could only get a decent outfit and a few pounds for travelling expenses, he had an opening in Paris that would soon put him on his legs again. It so happened that I knew slightly two or three men who had been in the same regiment with this individual; and of these there was one who was very well off. I therefore wrote out an appeal for the poor fellow, sent it to the different parties; and was greatly pleased when I found that instead of realising, as I had hoped, some ten or fifteen pounds, the contributions sent me came to upwards of thirty pounds. With this money I first got the unfortunate man a fairly good outfit of clothes, and then made over to him the balance left, about six pounds, to use as he liked. He was exceedingly grateful; and asked me to express his thanks to those who had responded so generously to my letters. It was about a fortnight after I had met him on the Marylebone Road that he called to bid me farewell, and to thank me again for all I had done, which, after all, was merely having written some half-dozen letters, and taken a little trouble in getting his clothes as good and as cheap as I could. He told me that he was leaving for Paris that evening.
For five or six months I neither saw nor heard anything about him. At the end of that time I received a note from this individual, telling me he was in London, saying he would like to see me, and giving me his address at a respectable hotel near Leicester Square. I wrote an answer; and as I happened to be going into the neighbourhood, called at the hotel, intending to leave it there. But as the waiter told me that the gentleman was at home, and was then writing in the coffee-room, I went there, and found my former acquaintance, who seemed delighted to see me. He had evidently prospered since I last saw him. He was well, if perhaps somewhat flashily dressed; had what seemed to be a valuable pin in his neck-scarf, a thick gold chain from one waistcoat pocket to another, and two or three rings on his fingers. He looked more like a Frenchman than an Englishman; and would certainly have passed a better muster at Brebant’s or in the Café du Helder than he could have done in a London club. But what showed more plainly than anything else that he had done well, and what pleased me greatly, was that he there and then pulled out a roll of bank-notes and insisted upon repaying me what I had collected for him from his former friends. It was in vain that I protested that those gentlemen had parted with their money as a gift and not as a loan; that I did not know where to find them at present; and that I begged he would not think of repaying me the small portion I had contributed to the amount. No; nothing would serve him but to make me take the money and to give it back as best I could to those who had assisted him in his great distress.
As a matter of course, I was very curious to know by what means he had, in some measure at anyrate, recovered his position in the world; or how he had managed to fill his empty purse. But to all my questions he gave the most evasive answers. Remembering what his pursuits used to be long ago, I felt certain that he had got into some lucky vein of play or of betting, and that he was making a living either by cards or on the racecourse. But after a few days’ observation of what he did, I was sure that I was labouring under a mistake. Just at that time of the year several of our great race-meetings were in full swing; but he never went near any of them; nor did he ever attempt to go back amongst the men who had been his companions long ago. I offered to get his name put down as an honorary or visiting member of one or two good clubs; but he invariably declined. When he asked me, as he often did, to dine with him, it was always at one or other of the best foreign restaurants in London. When I called on him at his hotel, he seemed to be always busy either writing or receiving letters. One night I looked him up about eleven P.M. on my way back from the theatre. But they told me at the hotel he always went out between nine and ten P.M., and seldom came back before the small-hours of the morning.
In London, a busy man has little or no time to think of any one’s affairs except his own; but I confess that this gentleman used often to puzzle me not a little. His seeming prosperity in money matters as compared with his former circumstances, and the singular life he led, caused me often to wonder what were the sources whence he derived his income, my curiosity being not a little increased by his evident desire to keep me in the dark as to the truth of the case. But the solution of a difficult social problem almost invariably comes to hand when least expected, and this case was no exception to the rule.
I had not seen my friend for some two or three weeks, when I received a note asking me to call upon him, as he had met with a bad accident and was confined to his bed. I accordingly went to see him; and found that he had slipped upon the street, had injured his knee somewhat severely, and was suffering great pain. He had called in a surgeon, who had ordered the most perfect rest for at least ten days or a fortnight; and having no other friend in London of whom he could ask a favour, he begged me to help him in certain matters of business which could not be neglected. As a matter of course, I offered to be of any service I could to him; and he said that the first favour he would ask of me was to go to a small news-agent near Soho Square and ask for any letters directed to ‘T. D.; to be left till called for.’
I did so; and found there four letters so addressed, all bearing French post-marks, and took them to him at the hotel. He opened them with evident eagerness, and read them with an anxiety which he could not disguise from me, although he very evidently tried his best to do so. The contents of these communications seemed to give him great annoyance. After a short time, during which he seemed deep in thought, he wrote out a curious, mysterious advertisement, such as we read almost every day in the ‘Agony column’ of the Times, and asked me to get it inserted in three of the chief morning papers. I read what he had written, and wondered not a little what he meant. In the advertisement, ‘Adventure’ was requested to ‘keep dark until Phillip wrote.’ The sick man saw me smile as I read it, and looked very anxious and embarrassed, assuring me that there was no harm whatever in the hidden meaning of the notice. Having work of my own to attend to, I left him, saying I would call again the next day. But he begged so earnestly for me to come before post-time, that I consented to do so. He told me that he did not like intrusting his letters to the people of the hotel, who were either very curious or extremely neglectful on all such matters. I therefore returned in the afternoon, when he handed me two letters, which he asked me to post. They were both addressed to Paris, to persons with French-like names, and were to be left poste restante at different post-offices. The next day but one he asked me to go to the same small news-agent near Soho Square and ask for any letters that might be there for him. I found two, and brought them to him. He read them with great eagerness; and again wrote two letters, which he asked me to post for him, evidently not caring to trust the people of the hotel with his correspondence. This went on almost every day. On one occasion, he took out of one of the letters I brought him a draft from a Paris bank upon one in London for one hundred pounds payable to ‘T. C. Dane, or order.’ He indorsed it, and asked me to get it cashed for him, which I did. He evidently saw that I was not only puzzled as to what his mysterious business could be, but that I had serious thoughts of not coming near him again until I found out whether my doing so would compromise myself. And apparently acting upon a sudden impulse, he all at once opened out and made what I may call his confession to me.
‘For some time past,’ he began, ‘I have seen that you wonder what my business is, and why I am so mysterious with regard to what I do and what I write. Well, I will now make a clean breast of it.’
He then told me that some two or three years previously, he had got into what he called ‘worse than a mess’ in Paris. He had somehow got mixed up with a gang of card-sharpers, without knowing to what an extent they carried on their dishonest practices, and had so far compromised himself, that the French police had him at their mercy. They had, however, let him off, holding over him the power they had to prosecute him at any future time, should they think he deserved it. But they made certain conditions with him; and these were, that he should go to London, and furnish them from time to time with all the information he could gather respecting certain receivers of goods, stolen in France, who resided in this metropolis. In order to do this the more effectually, he had managed not only to get acquainted with the leaders of a gang which worked for their friends in Paris, but he had also got himself received as one of them, and used to go to their meetings almost every night. The work, as he told me, had been most unpleasant, but it was nearly at an end; and the French police had promised that he should very soon be altogether free from his engagements with them.
To mix with people of whom little or nothing is known, and to penetrate into places which are hidden from the generality of mankind, has always had a great charm for me. Mr Dane was not a little surprised when, instead of leaving him after I had heard his story, I told him he would do me a great favour if he took me to a meeting of his dishonest friends; and that I would pledge myself never to give any information that might lead to a single member of the band getting into trouble. After making some objections to my request, he at last consented; and said that the first night he could get out he would go to the meeting of the gang by himself, but would then make arrangements for me to accompany him the following evening. And thus it was that I managed to get into very ‘queer company.’
If any one was to offer me one hundred pounds to show him where the place in which the thieves and receivers of stolen goods is or was situated, I could not do so, even if it was honourable to divulge what I had promised faithfully to keep secret. This much I may say, that having dined in the Strand, we walked up Catherine Street, and turned to the right when we came to the court that flanks the south side of Drury Lane Theatre. Here my companion stopped, took out of his pocket a pair of spectacles, and said I must put them on before he could take me any farther. I did as he desired; and found the glasses to be so dark that I could not see an inch beyond my nose. My friend laughed; and linking his arm in mine, said he would conduct me safely; but that he was obliged to make it a point I should not be able to recognise the streets we passed through, even if I wanted to do so. As near as I could guess, we took some ten minutes to reach our destination, after I had put on the glasses. My companion then stopped, knocked in a peculiar manner at a street door, told me to take off the spectacles, and led me through what seemed to be a coffee-shop of the most humble kind. In a large room beyond this, there were seated six or seven men, who were not by any means all of the same type. Two or three were evidently Frenchmen, and were talking together with the usual volubility of their nation. The rest were scattered here and there. All were smoking. Some had cups of tea or coffee before them, whilst others seemed to be indulging in spirits-and-water. My companion was greeted by all present as a friend they had been waiting for and were glad to see. He introduced me to the party assembled as ‘one of us, just come from Paris.’ No questions were asked, nor, beyond one or two civil inquiries, was any particular notice taken of me. I was asked what I would drink, offered my choice of cigars or cigarettes; and then the meeting commenced to discuss, in an informal kind of manner, the business which had brought those present together.
From what I could gather, it seemed that there had been, a few days before, a robbery of valuable jewels in Paris; and that the difficulty of those connected with the affair was to get the plunder safely over to the United States. The London police had been put on the alert; but the thieves—or shall I call them the agents and helpers of thieves?—did not seem to fear them. They discussed very freely the relative merits of the French and English detective systems; saying, that in cases of housebreaking and murders, the latter rarely failed to bring the offenders to justice; but that in cases of clever ‘plants,’ the former were much more to be feared.
‘You never know,’ said one Englishman present, with a round oath, ‘where or when you may come across those horrible French spies. Why, we might have here, in the very midst of us, some one who is in their pay.’
I thought to myself how little these fellows knew that my friend who had introduced me into the room belonged to the very tribe whom they feared so much. But of the United States they spoke in the highest terms; or in very much the same manner that an artisan who could not earn the wherewith to pay for dry bread in this country, might praise some place in the Far West where industry was certain to gain an honest living. From what I gathered, it would seem that whenever a robbery on a large scale is carried out, the first object of those concerned is to get ‘the swag’ out of the country as soon as possible. Thus, the produce of a plunder in Paris is almost invariably taken to London, and vice versâ. If the thieves can so arrange beforehand as to get away from where the theft has been committed within a few hours of the completion of their handiwork, they believe themselves to be all but safe, or at least the chances are about five to one in their favour. If they have the luck to get clear of Europe and safely land in America, the chances are that they will get clear altogether, realise a good price for their plunder, and make things pleasant all round. The United States, as I said before, is a capital country to go to; but South America is still better. In neither of these parts are many questions asked; but in the latter country the prices given are higher than in the north, and sales are more readily effected. In London, the market for jewelry is by no means good; for, as a rule, the stones have to be taken out of the setting; and the latter has to be secreted or instantly melted, else the police are pretty certain to get scent of the affair.
It must not be thought that those composing the very singular company amongst whom I found myself were at all in the burglar line. I don’t believe that there was a single housebreaking implement to be found amongst them. From all I gathered, they were the receivers, and not the actual robbers, of valuable goods. They talked together of their common pursuit much in the same manner that so many brokers might converse respecting the fluctuations of the Stock Exchange, or a party of farmers might give their opinions respecting the coming corn or other crops. What surprised me most was the manner in which the company, one and all, spoke of what they called their ‘business,’ as if it was of the most legitimate kind; and I feel certain that they would have resented warmly the words of any one who threw the shadow of a doubt upon the propriety of their occupation. In what they said of things in general, they all appeared to be very much of the same way of thinking; or, at anyrate, they expressed themselves as holding very much the same views. On one subject only did I hear strong language expressed, and that was when one of them—who, from what he said, seemed to have come from France very recently—gave an account of the manner in which the Paris detectives had found out a certain robbery, and had brought those who had perpetrated the same to justice. For individuals in the pay of the police, or rather who belonged to the same, to disguise themselves and mix with the individuals who were more or less ‘wanted,’ they regarded as ‘low’ and ‘sneaking’ in the extreme. They were unanimous in their opinion that if the French system of detecting robberies was ever introduced into England, this ‘would no longer’—as one of the party expressed himself—‘be a country for any honest man to live in.’