The Lost Heir

by G. A. Henty

"That is a change! I thought you said the billiards and cards paid well; but I suppose you have got something better in view?"

"They did pay well, but I have a very big thing in hand."

"That is the right line to take up," the other said. "You were sure to get into trouble with the police about the card-playing before long, and then the place would have been shut up, and you might have got three months; and when you got out the peelers would have kept their eyes upon you, and your chances would have been at an end. No, I have never had anything to do with small affairs; I go in, as you know, for big things. They take time to work out, it is true; and after all one's trouble, something may go wrong at the last moment, and the thing has to be given up. Some girl who has been got at makes a fool of herself, and gets discharged a week before it comes off; or a lady takes it into her head to send her jewels to a banker's, and go on to the Continent a week earlier than she intended to do. Then there is a great loss in getting rid of the stuff. Those sharps at Amsterdam don't give more than a fifth of the value for diamonds. It is a heart-rending game, on the whole; but there is such excitement about the life that when one has once taken it up it is seldom indeed that one changes it, though one knows that, sooner or later, one is sure to make a slip and get caught. Now, what will you take? Champagne or brandy?"

"I know that your brandy is first-rate, Harrison, and I will sample it again."

"I have often thought," went on the other, after the glasses had been filled and cigars lighted, "what a rum thing it was that you should come across my brother Bill out among the islands. He had not written to me for a long time, and I had never expected to hear of him again. I thought that he had gone down somehow, and had either been eaten by sharks or killed by the natives, or shot in some row with his mates. He was two years older than I was, and, as I have told you, we were sons of a well-to-do auctioneer in the country; but he was a hard man, and we could not stand it after a time, so we made a bolt for it. We were decently dressed when we got to London. As we had been at a good school at home, and were both pretty sharp, we thought that we should have no difficulty in getting work of some sort.

"We had a hard time of it. No one would take us without a character, so we got lower and lower, till we got to know some boys who took us to what was called a thieves' kitchen—a place where boys were trained as pick-pockets. The old fellow who kept it saw that we were fit for higher game than was usual, and instead of being sent out to pick up what we could get in the streets we were dressed as we had been before, and sent to picture-galleries and museums and cricket matches, and we soon became first-rate hands, and did well. In a short time we didn't see why we should work for another man, and we left him without saying good-by.

"It was not long before he paid us out. He knew that we should go on at the same work, and dressed up two or three of his boys and sent them to these places, and one day when Bill was just pocketing a watch at Lord's one of these boys shouted out, 'Thief! thief! That boy has stolen your watch, sir,' and Bill got three months, though the boy could not appear against him, for I followed him after they had nabbed Bill, and pretty nearly killed him.

"Then I went on my travels, and was away two or three years from London. Bill had been out and in again twice; he was too rash altogether. I took him away with me, but I soon found that it would not do, and that it would soon end in our both being shut up. So I put it fairly to him.

"'We are good friends, you know, Bill,' I said, 'but it is plain to me that we can't work together with advantage. You are twenty and I am eighteen, but, as you have often said yourself, I have got the best head of the two. I am tired of this sort of work. When we get a gold ticker, worth perhaps twenty pounds, we can't get above two for it, and it is the same with everything else. It is not good enough. We have been away from London so long that old Isaacs must have forgotten all about us. I have not been copped yet, and as I have got about twenty pounds in my pocket I can take lodgings as a young chap who has come up to walk the hospitals, or something of that sort. If you like to live with me, quiet, we will work together; if not, it is best that we should each go our own way—always being friends, you know.'

"Bill said that was fair enough, but that he liked a little life and to spend his money freely when he got it. So we separated. Bill got two more convictions, and the last time it was a case of transportation. We had agreed between ourselves that if either of us got into trouble the other should call once a month at the house of a woman we knew to ask for letters, and I did that regularly after he was sent out. I got a few letters from him. The first was written after he had made his escape. He told me that he intended to stay out there—it was a jolly life, and a free one, I expect. Pens and paper were not common where he was; anyhow he only wrote once a year or so, and it was two years since I had heard from him when you wrote and said you had brought me a message from Bill.