In addition to the usual side pockets, they were fitted with pockets behind on a level with the hip, and in these receptacles he used, she told me, to stow away his revolver, and whatever instruments he had to take with him.
The inside of the trousers on the left-hand side was filled with a piece of oilskin or glazed cloth, to prevent the iron from chafing the burglar’s skin.
Mrs. Thompson also showed me how, by turning in his left foot and by bending up his make-believe arm towards his shoulder, the little man used to assume deformity.
I also obtained from her a description of a burglar’s stick, as she called it, which Peace found useful in climbing, and an instrument still more remarkable which, she said he possessed, as a kind of portable step ladder of seventeen steps, which he was able to fold into so small a compass that he could go out with it underneath his coat without attracting attention.
It was provided with hooks, for the purpose of fastening to walls and window ledges, but she said he never used it, owing, I suppose, to the fact that it was a clumsy apparatus to affix noiselessly.
After that she continued her narrative as follows:—
Peace never went out without leaving me with a revolver which, I dare say, I should have the courage to use had occasion presented. He had four revolvers altogether, and the three he left at home I destroyed, when I found he had been taken. Yes, as you suggest, I sank them. When he came to London he ceased to appear as a one-armed man, except in the presence of a man whose name I will not mention.
PEACE’S CAPTURE—DISPOSAL OF PROPERTY.
When we saw in the papers that he had been taken Mrs. Ward cried out, “Oh, my poor Charlie—my poor Charlie! I must go—I dare not stay here; Willie, you must go too.”
I then asked her, “And what is to become of me then?”