"Pray tell us what it is?" exclaimed one of the committee, his face lighting up as if scales were falling from his eyes, and he was to be suddenly extricated from the "mystery of darkness."
"Well, gentlemen," he responded, "my partner and I have satisfied ourselves that we are on the right track. In our business, you must know, one case is often suggestive in unraveling another. We get to be able to track old offenders, as the Indian tracks his enemy through the forest. It would take me too long to explain the whole mystery to you. But you may be sure that we've got hold of some of the right 'ear marks' of these villains, and my partner is not only willing to undertake the case, but I am confident that he will work it out all right. This is all I can say to you on that point. Shall he go ahead?"
"Certainly, certainly," responded the committee, one after the other, "if you think it can be done; our neighbors must have relief from these outrages."
"Well, one thing I wish to enjoin upon you, gentlemen. In calling a public meeting, and appointing you as a committee to come publicly to me, your citizens have taken false steps. Your business ought to have been kept private—known only to a few of you at most, and that in positive secrecy. Now the first steps toward undoing this false one, is for you to report, on your arrival home, that you couldn't get me; that I was on the point of starting for Europe; but that you told me your story, and I said it was all the work of some old burglars, whom the police had driven out from this quarter, and that there was probably connected with them an old London burglar by the name of 'Jerry Black,' or who bore that name once, and is now supposed to be living in Cincinnati; that I said further that 'twas a very hard case to work up, these old burglars understanding their business so well, and that the best way was for your citizens to defend their houses and themselves as well as they can, and wait for some accident to disclose the robbers, for 'murder will out' sooner or later."
The committee replied that they would heed the advice perfectly.
"Now, then, for the special injunction, which is this. Talk as little in general about your visit here as you can, each of you; but do you each be careful on this point, namely, not to mention the fact that you met my partner, or that I have one at all. Indeed, you can truthfully say that I have no partner, if anybody there should happen to have heard that I have; for although we are partners in the sense of companions, and coöperators sometimes, yet we are not 'partners' in the legal sense of that term, though we call each other so, in the style of the profession. Remember this!"
The committee promised to do so, and we went on talking together, laying our plans to the extent that I should duly visit the place; that none of the committee was to recognize me if he met me in his walks; and that I should probably appear there as a Cincinnati merchant; for the detectives of the best repute in Cincinnati had already visited the place unavailingly, and it would not be suspected that poorer ones would be employed from Cincinnati. I made inquiries of the committee about the various businesses transacted in the place, and asked the names of the other leading citizens, for the committee were all of them of the "heavy men" of the place. Learning all I thought of use of these gentlemen, I promised to appear, if my life was spared, in due time, and not at a late day at that, in the town and go to work; and the committee left.
It was a useless promise which we exacted of the committee that none of them should recognize me when in their village; for when they came to the office I had but a little while before returned from an expedition, in which I had worn a simple but effectual disguise. That removed, and my coat exchanged for another one in my closet, a few minutes after the committee left, they would not have recognized me had they returned at the time.
Duly after the departure of my partner for Europe I was on my way to Ohio. Before he left we had talked up the matter in all the possible phases it could present, and among the last things he said to me, on our way down to the steamer, was, "That case may bother you; but it seems to me now as easy as going down hill. We have the sight of it, and if the committee report as I instructed them, you'll succeed at once. In your first letter to me" (which, by the way, it was agreed should be sent by the next week's steamer) "I shall not be surprised to learn of 'victory won.'"
"O, no, impossible; you forget the distance."