‘The notes, sir,’ he said, ‘were left in my father’s trust by a dear old friend of his. My father himself was supposed to have made use of them—a thing of which he was incapable. If I can take to him the news that they are found, I can lift a load of undeserved disgrace from the mind of an honourable man.’
‘I shall be pleased to have your company, Mr. Bommaney,’ the Superintendent answered, touched a little by the young man’s earnestness. So the three got into a four-wheeler, and bowled away to Hatton Garden, and there made entry into the chambers lately occupied by Mr. Steinberg. There was no gas here, but the constable’s dark lantern showed the way. It revealed the safe in the position the communicative criminal had assigned to it. It revealed the notes, snugly spread out in one crisp little heap, and arranged with business-like precision in the order of their numbers.
This golden spectacle once seen, Phil dashed into the street, hailed a hansom, and drove pell-mell, exciting the cabman who conducted him by the promise of a double fare, to the residence of old Brown and old Brown’s daughter. There he told the glorious news, a little broken and halting in his speech. Patty threw her arms about him, and cried without concealment or restraint. Old Brown blew his nose with a suspicious frequency, and shook his adopted son-in-law by the hand at frequent intervals.
‘Phil,’ he cried at last, ‘where’s your father? By God, sir, he never had any need to run away from me, because he happened to lose a handful of paltry money. What had he got to do but come and say, “Brown, it’s gone!” He hadn’t trust enough in me to think I’d believe him. Let’s get at him. Where is he?’
The old boy tugged furiously at the bell-pull.
‘Send Brenner round to the stable,’ he said to the servant. ‘Tell him to get the horses to, and bring the carriage round at once. Where’s your father, Phil?’
‘He’s down Poplar way,’ said Phil. ‘Hornett, his old clerk, is living in the same house with him.’
‘We’ll go down, and rouse him up,’ the old boy said, with a moist eye and trembling hand. ‘Phil, my lad,’ he went on, grasping the young fellow’s hand in his own, ‘I’m getting to be an old ‘un. You wouldn’t think it to look at me, because, thank God, I’ve always known how to take my trouble lightly, but I’ve seen a lot of it in my time, and you can take my word for this—there isn’t any trouble in the world that’s hardly so bitter as for an honest man to have to take another for a rogue.’
So it came to pass that Bommaney senior, who after all, perhaps, hardly deserved to be made a hero of, was plenteously bedewed with the tears of three most honourable and high-minded people, and was, set up in their minds as a sort of live statue of undeserved martyrdom. They who learned the tale afterwards mourned his weakness, and supposed him to be the victim of a too sensitive organisation. He lives now with a genuine halo of sanctity about him, and seems in the minds of some to have suffered for the sake of a great principle, quite noble, but not quite definitely defined.
Odd things happen every day in the world, and pass by unregarded. The worship of Bommaney senior’s sensibilities seems a trifle dull when all things are considered, though one has to be glad that an honest son can think of him with pity mixed with admiration. But perhaps the oddest thing of all in connection with this story may be looked for in the shorthand reporter’s notes of the Recorder’s speech at the Old Bailey, when the accusation against Messrs. Barter and Steinberg came to be heard.