"'Oh, you mean the Frenchman,' replied the purser; 'he's in the washroom.'
ONE WHO HAS BEEN ROBBED IDENTIFYING THE THIEF AT NEWGATE.
"While this was passing I had put on my silk hat and taken up my valise, and was standing before the glass (a la Francais) taking a final view of my toilette, and snapping off some imaginary dust and lint, as the two detectives stepped in, and after looking me well over went out, and I saw them no more. That proved to be the last ordeal through which I passed in Ireland. After being convinced that they had left the steamer I went to my berth, and being thoroughly exhausted I fell asleep in an instant, not awaking until the steamer was entering the harbor of Glasgow.
"After my arrest a month later in Scotland, during the transfer to London and afterward to Newgate, while awaiting trial, the detectives told me that they were in Cork three hours after I had left, and one of them related their adventures substantially as follows:
"'We arrived in Cork Saturday afternoon and were not long in finding the temperance hotel where you stayed on Friday night, and the hat you left behind. After a long hunt we ascertained that a jaunting car had left the stand some hours previously and was still absent.
"'We had a good laugh at those blunder-heads, the Cork officers, letting you slip through their fingers, and then showed them how we do things. After some delay we traced the cab across the bridge to the shop where you got the boy to go for it. The shopwoman was quite voluble about you, saying she knew all the time that you were an American by the accent, and described the bag and ulster which we had ascertained were in your possession. Of course, we were now satisfied that we were on the right scent, but could get no further trace or the direction taken by the cab. We therefore sent dispatches to all the telegraph stations within fifty miles to put the police on the watch and sent messengers to the outlying places, but somehow you slipped through our meshes, and nothing turned up until the car man returned at about 11 p.m., as drunk as a soldier on furlough. After putting him under a water tap until he was half drowned we got him sober enough to tell where he had left you; but he swore you were a priest, and his evident sincerity caused us all to roar with laughter. This angered him, and he said: "Ye may twist me head an' dhroun me intirely, but I wull niver spake another wurrud about the jintelman at all, at all," and sure enough we could get nothing more out of him.
"'We had a carriage ready, and, jumping in, we were at the wayside inn by midnight and terrified the old woman half out of her wits in arousing her out of bed. After a while she gathered them sufficiently to show us that you had six hours the start of us. The boy who carried your bag could give us no points, but we concluded you intended taking the branch line at Fermoy for Dublin. We drove right on, arriving at the Fermoy station at 1 p.m., but, getting no trace we telegraphed to all the stations along the line to Dublin, and there as well to be on the lookout. Who would ever have thought of your taking the opposite direction, penning yourself in at the end of a branch line, at a small inland town like Lismore? Why, you were, as we discovered the next morning, at that moment sleeping quietly at the Lismore Hotel, and only about ten miles from where we were working so industriously for that £5,000! Well, you "done" us fine that time!
"'After you so cleverly threw us off the trail, we could get no trace until Sunday morning, when we received a dispatch from Lismore, stating that a man had come on the last train, stayed at the hotel and left at daylight without paying his bill. "Hello!" said I, as soon as I read the dispatch, "we never suspected Lismore; he has been there all night and is off again!" We telegraphed to Clonmel, Waterford and other places; then left for Lismore, where we arrived, paid your bill and took the bag with us. Surmising that you might make for Clonmel, we looked for and found the place where you got the car, but no news as to what direction you had taken. It would have made you laugh, as it did us, to see the old livery man stamp about and tear his hair when he found how easily he could have made the £5,000—if he had "only known."