Secret Service; or, Recollections of a City Detective

by Andrew Forrester

The trial for perjury, after a short interval, was proceeded with, and ended in the prisoner’s acquittal.

Whereupon Mr. Keeneye, as one of the counsel for the prosecution, rose after a conference with his learned brother retained for the defence, and, addressing his lordship, begged that, owing to the sudden illness of the prosecutor, the trial of the prisoner might be postponed. The prisoner’s counsel felt, they said, some difficulty in resisting the application after what they had seen, but added, that they thought the prisoner, who had done nothing to cause his lordship’s illness, was entitled to be liberated on bail. The judge, after glancing at the depositions, said he did not see that the accused had any such claim, and declined to attach that condition to the adjournment of the case, as prayed for by the prosecution.

Clara, who from the gallery beheld all that had gone on, and who devoured every word that had been uttered by the lawyers and the bench with greedy ears, maintained a wonderful show of self-possession, but was stirred by the intensest and most anxious thought. She left the court when this decision had been arrived at in her brother’s case; he being, indeed, quite unconscious up to this moment as to what had taken place in his absence, and, when it was explained to him, being left ignorant for the time of its cause.

Next session the prisoner was again brought up for trial. His lordship attended—but not her ladyship. She was induced to remain at home by the solicitude of her husband, who apprehended the effect upon her of the fetid atmosphere of the court. Although he had been up to the day first appointed for the trial resolutely bent upon securing to the prisoner the weightiest punishment he could get inflicted, he was now prepared to recommend the prisoner to mercy.

The evidence, which in the briefs as originally delivered to counsel disclosed a complete chain of proof, was remodelled. They now contained a narrative which set forth the difficulties of the theory for the prosecution, and went far towards explaining away the points against the accused. The briefs for the defence, which as originally delivered set forth no possible answer to the charge, now contained a theory which reconciled the evidence as it stood, or was expected to stand, with a possibility of the innocence of the accused.

A witness for the prosecution did not answer to his name when called; and the reader may be informed that this witness had gone beyond the jurisdiction of any English tribunal. The result was, that the prosecution broke down, and the culprit was liberated.

The explanation of this miscarriage of justice is simple. Pretty Clara was the mistress of the noble lord. He had indeed seduced her some years before, and she had been living since then (unknown to his wife) under his lordship’s protection. She was the sister of the prisoner. She was innocent of all participation in or knowledge of the robbery. For many years she had not seen that brother. They were orphans. They had both been thrown upon the world at a very early age to earn their own bread. She, when not more than fourteen years of age, had been placed in one of the West-End millinery houses, and had won a promotion to the counter of a shop in Oxford Street. He had occupied a situation in a City warehouse, but had never obtained a promotion by the exercise of any industry or fidelity on his part.

Brother and sister had both diverged from the paths of virtue in different ways and at different times, and had been for a period of six years unknown to each other. Neither cared to let the other know his or her whereabouts, pursuits, and mode of life. What had become of her, the reader knows. Of him it is necessary to say, that he robbed his employers, who forgave what they correctly believed to be a first offence, but discharged him without a character. From step to step he travelled deeper and deeper into the mazes of criminality, until he got inextricably involved with associates in various cases of fraud, larceny, and burglary.

The mode in which the robbery had been effected was very simple. The prisoner had won over the affections of a servant in Lord H——’s household, and used the information he thus obtained to effect, with her connivance, if not her assistance, the crime for which he afterwards stood charged at the Old Bailey. This, however, was not his first appearance in that court. He had been there on a former occasion, and had, as on this day, been acquitted by a flaw in the evidence against him. The sister, through whose instrumentality he now escaped, became acquainted with his last crime and peril by a newspaper, which, in noticing the cases laid before the grand jury, mentioned, as a fact discovered by the prosecution, the real name of the accused, and one or two instances of his early career, sufficient to prove his identity with her lost brother.

From the moment when Clara made this discovery, it had become impossible for her to get access to his lordship. Her first thought was to throw herself at his feet, and ask, as the only disinterested favour she had sought at his hands, and as the highest reward for her dishonour—a brother’s liberty. Foiled in this, her woman’s wit suggested a communication with the attorney for the defence. She had no difficulty in ascertaining who had that task allotted to him, and she met Mr. Wheedle, who arranged with her the stratagem which proved so successful.