“But I’ve had luck, I won’t deny that. There was that case of them sharpers down in the eastern counties. It wasn’t till all others had failed that they put me on to the job. I didn’t know the chap wanted, not even by sight; and yet I was certain that he knew me. He’d been doing the confidence trick with a young man of this town, and had robbed him of over a hundred pounds. He made tracks out of the place—no one knew where. He was a betting man, and I hunted for him high and low, at all the racecourses of the country, but couldn’t come upon him. We were in London, last of all, and it was rather a joke against me at Scotland Yard, where I had been, as usual, for help. They’d ask me if I knew my man, and I was obliged to say ‘No.’ And if I thought I knew where to find him, and I had to say ‘No’ to that too; and they always laughed at me whenever I turned up. I was just about to travel homewards, when I thought I’d try one more chance. There happened to be a sporting paper on the coffee-room table, and I took it up. I saw two race meetings were on for that day—Shrewsbury and Wye. I’d go for one, but which? I shied up a shilling, and it came down Wye. So to the Wye Races I went, with the young man who had been duped.
“The course was very crowded as we drove on. A couple with a great lottery machine caught my eye; one was taking the money, the other turning the handle, which ground out mostly blanks. ‘Sergeant,’ whispers the young fellow to me all at once, ‘that’s him!’ pointing to the man who was taking the money. But how was I to take him? I got down, and sent the trap to the other side of the tents, then stepped up to my man and asked him plump for change for a five-pound note. He knew me directly, and showed fight. I collared him, and moved him on towards the trap, when the roughs raised a cry of ‘Rouse, rouse!’—rescue, that is, you know—and mobbed me. I held on—never let go, sir, as I said before, that’s the motto; but they broke two fingers of my right hand in the shindy, and it was all I could do to force the fellow into the trap, but I did it with my left, while I kept off the crowd with the other arm. But I nearly lost him again on the way, all through being a soft-hearted fool. His wife came after us, and at the station begged hard to be allowed to go down with us. I agreed; what’s more, I took the cuffs off him, and let them talk together in the corner of the carriage. They nearly sold me. It was in the —— tunnel, dark as pitch, and the train making a fine rattle, when the wife put down the window all of a sudden, and he bolted through. I caught him by the leg, in spite of my game fingers, but only just in time; and after that I handcuffed him to myself—his wrist to mine.
‘Now,’ says I, ‘where you go, I go.’ And that’s the rule I’ve always followed since.
“The London police have no very high opinion of country talent, but we beat them sometimes, all the same—not that I want to say a word against the Metropolitans. They’ve such opportunities, and so much knowledge. Now there was Jim Highflyer; he’d never have been ‘copped’ but for a couple of London detectives. He was a first-class workman was Highflyer, and he once spent a long time in this town—not in his own name. While he was here there were no end of big burglaries, and we never could get at the rights of them. One of the worst of the lot was a plate robbery from a jeweller’s in Queen Street. A man with a sack had been tracked by one of the constables a long way that night into the yard of a house, and there he was lost. The house belonged to one of the town councillors, Mr. T—— by name, a most respectable man, very free with his money, and popular. We searched the yard next morning, and found a lot of the plate in a dust-heap. Mr. T—— gave us every assistance. It was quite plain how it had come there. There was no suspicion against Mr. T——, of course; and do what we could, we couldn’t pick up the man we wanted. By-and-by the town councillor went away for a long spell; the house was shut up—not let, as he was coming back, he said, and did once or twice. After he left the burglaries stopped, and I’d have thought very little more about it all if it hadn’t been that I heard a man, who had been arrested for an assault, and was in ——shire Gaol, had been recognised by two London detectives as a notorious burglar, Jim Highflyer. He’d got a knife upon him, and the name of the maker was a cutler in this town; also a silver pencil-case, with the name of the jeweller in Queen Street. I went over to the gaol, and identified the man at once. It was the town councillor himself, Mr. T——. We searched his house here after that, and found it crammed full of stolen goods. You see, there it was the Metropolitans did the job. Highflyer would have got off with a few weeks for the assault, but they knew him and all about him. He was ‘wanted’ just then for several other affairs. He got ten years, did Master Jim.
“But the neatest and about the longest job I ever was concerned in was young Mr. Burbidge’s case, and that I did in London without any help from the London police. He was in the theatrical profession; a smart young chap, greatly trusted by his manager, who employed him as a confidential secretary, and allowed him to keep the accounts and all the cash. No one checked one or counted t’other. One fine morning he went off with a big sum. He’d been to the bank and drawn a cheque to pay the weekly wages; but he bolted instead, leaving the treasury empty and the whole company whistling for their ‘screws.’ The manager was half mad, and he came at once to the police. The chief sent for me. ‘It’s a bad business, thoroughly bad, and we must get him,’ he said. ‘Spare no pains—spend what money you like, only catch him, if you can.’ In jobs of this sort, sir, time goes a long way. Burbidge had got a good start, several hours or more; it was no use my rushing off after him in a hurry, particularly as I did not know which way to rush. So I set myself to think a little before I commenced work. The ‘swag’ stolen was large. The thief would probably try to make tracks out of the country as soon as he could; but which way? To Liverpool, perhaps, and by one of the ocean steamers to the States; or to Hull, and so to Sweden and Norway; or London, and so to France and Spain. I sent one of my men to the railway station to make inquiries, and another to wire to the police at the ports and to Scotland Yard to watch the Continental trains.
“The job I kept for myself was to find out what I could about young Burbidge’s ways. It’s the only way to get a line on a man who’s made off in a hurry and left no clue. So I called at his rooms. He lived in comfortable apartments over a tobacconist’s, and was a good customer to his landlord, to judge by the number of pipes I saw over the mantelpiece, all of which were as well coloured as a black-and-tan. The rooms were just as he left them—he might really have been coming back in half-an-hour, only he didn’t quite intend to, not if he knew it. The chest of drawers was full of clothes; there were boots already polished; brush and comb on the dressing-table. In the sitting-room the slippers were on the hearth, books, acting-plays lying on the sofa and about the floor, a writing-desk, but not a single scrap of paper—not a letter, or an envelope, or even an unreceipted bill. He’d made up his mind to bolt, and he’d removed everything which might give us the smallest notion of which way he’d gone.
“It was just the same at the theatre. He’d had a sort of dressing-room there, which he’d used as an office, with a desk in it, and pigeon-holes and a nest of drawers. It was all left ship-shape enough. Files of play-bills, of accounts receipted and not, ledgers, and all that; but not a paper of the kind I looked for. I made a pretty close search, too. I took every piece of furniture bit by bit, and turned over every scrap of stuff with writing on it or without. I forced every lock, and ransacked every hiding-place, but I got nothing anywhere for my pains. The manager was with me all the time, and he didn’t half like it, I can tell you. No more did I, although I wouldn’t for worlds show that I was vexed. I tried to keep him up, saying it’d come all right—that patience in these things never failed in the long run; and I got him to talk about the young chap, to see if I could come upon his habits that way. ‘Who were his friends, now?’ I asked. ‘He’d none in particular—not in the company, at least, or out of it.’ ‘Ah! who might this be?’ I said quietly, as I drew out of the blotting-paper a photograph of a young lady: a fair-haired little bit of a thing, with a pretty, rather modest, face, which I felt I should know again.
“The carte de visite had the photographer’s name on it, and his address, that of a good street. This was my line, of course. I made up my mind to follow on to London at once. Then one of my men came in to say that Burbidge had been seen taking a ticket—to London? No; only to Shrivelsby—a long way short of it. It was some game, I felt certain. He might have gone to London, and paid excess fare; but I wired to Shrivelsby, and also to town. No one like him had been seen at Shrivelsby; he hadn’t got out there, that was clear. Only one person did, and it wasn’t Burbidge; at least, the person did not answer to his description. It was only a man in a working-suit—a mechanic on the look-out for work. Nor had he been seen at Euston; but that was a big place, and he might easily have been missed. So I started for London at once, taking the photograph and another of Burbidge, whom I had never seen in my life. It is not difficult to hunt out who owns to a carte de visite, particularly when the portrait’s that of a theatrical. I got upon the track of the lady fast enough, directly I went into the photographer’s place. There was a likeness of her in his album, in the very same dress, and her name to it, Miss Jessie Junniper. I soon found out more too. Before night I knew that she was playing at the Royal Roscius, and that she lived in a street of little villas down Hammersmith way. I took lodgings myself in the house just opposite, and set up a close watch. In the morning, early, Miss Jessie came out, and I followed her to the Underground Railway. She took a ticket for the Temple Station. So did I, and I tracked her down to the theatre. Rehearsal, of course. Three hours passed before she came out again. Then a man met her at the stage door, a very old gentleman, who leant on a stick, and seemed very humpty-backed and bent. They went down the Strand together to Allen’s, the great trunk-maker, and through the windows I saw them buy a couple of those big trunks, baskets covered with black leather, such as ladies take on their travels. ‘ ’Um,’ thought I, ‘she’s on the flit.’