Perhaps the reader has a judicial mind. I hope he has. Some day he may have to sit on a jury, as no doubt he has already had to do. That frame of mind has enabled him, and will enable him, to discharge his important duties to society as a juryman in a sagacious manner. Well, then, the reader, having a judicial mind, can’t exactly say. The evidence is insufficient. He will wait and hear what other facts I have to disclose, before he gives his decision on the issue I have raised. A wise reservation.
Mr. Crapp went home again after his fruitless visit to the attorney’s office.
He looked critically and suspiciously at his new clerk, to see whether he looked like a thief or not; and he did many other things, which, as they do not touch the issue just raised, or that raised by the question at the head of this narrative, the reader need not ask me to relate.
Mr. Crapp, it may, however, be as well to say, was impatient for the capture of the thief. He reasoned much and seriously with himself on the subject, and came to the conclusion that, if he delayed all action in the matter until the morning, he might be neglecting his duty to society at large. The culprit might escape in the course of that very night to America, or some other sanctuary for crime. Too much time had already been given him for defeating the pursuit of British justice. The police ought to be instructed at once. Yes, he would go to the nearest station-house and inform the police. He did so. The inspector on duty introduced him to Mr. Sergeant Downey, and that expert thief-catcher and mystery-prober took from Mr. Crapp a full, true, and particular account of the matter—as far as the prosecutor could relate it.
Sergeant Downey had not much doubt about catching the offender. The young man had the good or ill fortune to possess a marked and individualised countenance and gait. The offence was, in all probability, his first crime. The officer did not think the thief had left the country; nor had he, as the next incidents will show.
That night a row took place in one of the haunts of pleasure and vice at the West End of the metropolis. A robbery was committed upon a young man from the country in one of the night-houses of the Haymarket, during a squabble between some “social evils” and fast men who had there congregated. The police, on being called in, seized two men on suspicion of having perpetrated the offence. One of them next morning was liberated by the sitting magistrate. His pocket-book, his card-case, and his own explanations, warranted his declaration that he was “a gentleman,” and innocent of the robbery. Another, and a young man, was not so fortunate. Having, he said, the fear of the reporter and the newspapers before his eyes; being, he added, unwilling to disgrace his respectable friends; and being withal sure to lose his situation if it transpired that he had spent an evening in such disreputable society,—he refused to give his name and address. The victim of the affray could not identify the reticent person as the thief, and was ready to admit the reasonableness of his excuse for secrecy; but the magistrate thought the police ought to know something more than they did about him before he was set at large. “It was,” the learned gentleman said, “very strange that a young man should have about him, in such a place, in bank-notes and gold, about three-and-twenty pounds.” Notwithstanding his appeals and protestations, and in despite the air of injured innocence he put on, and although the police knew nothing to his disadvantage except his presence at the scene of the robbery and the possession of this money, he was remanded, in order that further inquiries might be made about him.
Sergeant Downey paid a visit to the house of detention, and was allowed to see the reticent prisoner. The sergeant asked him if his name was not Thinshanks? The prisoner said, “No, it wasn’t.” The officer shook his head in token of doubt about the truthfulness of that denial, and grinned sardonically. He went direct from the house of detention to the abode of Mr. Crapp. Both afterwards visited the temporary prison. The plausible sufferer was at once identified by the tradesman as his absconded clerk. Mr. Thinshanks, although sullen and as reticent as ever, was humiliated and crushed by the terrible eye of his late master.
Mr. Crapp’s solicitor, when first consulted by his client, advised him not to think of prosecuting. Such a step was, he said, unsatisfactory. If the thief were caught, the affair would cost his prosecutor a tidy sum of money, in addition to his present loss, and a world of trouble to boot. The prosecution could not be left in the hands of the police. If so, the scoundrel would, in all probability, escape; and who could tell that he might not then turn upon the kind master he had robbed, and bring an action against him for false imprisonment? If, on the other hand, the prosecution were conducted by Mr. Croak with proper vigour and skill, so as to secure a conviction, as the scoundrel merited, Mr. Crapp would have to pay a bill of costs; he would have to kick his heels for several days about the Surrey Sessions-House (the atmosphere of which was physically deleterious); he would sustain discomfort, lose his temper, and impair his digestion, or perhaps his health, in addition to the loss of his money. Mr. Crapp inveighed against the rules and practice of British criminal jurisprudence, because it did not bear all the cost of prosecutions, liberally pay witnesses for their time and trouble, and hold out premiums to loyal men for their energetic pursuit of justice. But, at any necessary cost, and any unnecessary inconvenience or annoyance, he said he was prepared to do his duty by hunting this forger as near to the gallows as such a culprit might be driven.
When Mr. Croak was informed that the criminal had been taken, and that upon him nearly half the proceeds of the cheque had been found, the legal gentleman’s objections to a prosecution were not so pointed and decided as they had been. He merely observed to his client that the fellow must now be so prosecuted as to insure his conviction; and he thought, although he did not so say, that the money which Mr. Thinshanks had not dissipated would suffice, in addition to the scanty allowance of the Home Office, to pay the cost of his judicial condemnation. Mr. Crapp, who ostentatiously grieved over the wickedness of the foolish young man, withal begged that, in the interests of outraged justice, Mr. Croak would employ all his eminent skill; and at the same time wished it to be understood that when the trial came off he desired the counsel for the prosecution would inform the judge, the jury, the spectators, the reporters, the readers of newspapers, and the outer world, that he, Mr. Crapp, the prisoner’s kind-hearted master, recommended him to mercy.
James Thinshanks was in due course taken before one of the magistrates of Southwark on the accusation for which he had not been arrested, and the one for which he had been taken up was dropped.