Traced and Tracked; Or, Memoirs of a City Detective

by James M'Govan

“He’ll come oot waur than he gangs in,” she exclaimed in despairing accents, and with bitter reproach.

“Exactly, there’s little doubt of that,” I answered with assumed coolness.

“Is that a just punishment?” she pursued, almost choked with tears, as she clung to the arm of her son, who now seemed to shrink from her in shame, and to long for the seclusion of the cells.

“It’s the Nemesis of crime—the chief part of the punishment,” I returned; “they should think of that before they begin.”

We had to part them by force, and she called me a monster and a brute, which I don’t think I am, though I did feel a little like one at that moment.

Whether Jim had any prompter to his first crime, other than poverty or the desire for tobacco and other luxuries, I never knew. If he had, the man was probably one of the working plumbers, and possibly took warning by Jim’s detection and pilfered no more. At the end of the thirty days his mother was over at the jail door to receive him with open arms and take him home with her. He promised there, at the jail gate, that he would have done with crime for ever. I heard him speak the words, and I believe he sincerely meant to keep the pledge. But there were two things which neither he nor his mother calculated upon. The first was that the taint of crime was now upon him. Who would employ a lad who had been convicted and imprisoned for theft? The second was still more serious, though at the time it probably seemed trifling indeed. In prison, Jim had met his fate in the shape of a young fellow of about his own age, named Joe Knevitt. Joe was the very antipodes of Jim in nature and disposition, yet a very strong friendship appears to have sprung up between them. Joe was sly, cold, cautious, and thoroughly unscrupulous with friend or foe; Jim was daring, hot-headed, impulsive, and passionate. Joe was a professional thief by birth and training; Jim was the reverse. Joe was as cunning a rascal of his age as ever came through my hands, and could never be limed for any but the most trifling sentences, and probably did not reveal his real character to his new acquaintance. When Jim was set at liberty Joe had a week or two to remain in jail, so they might have been separated for ever but for the taint of crime.

Jim was really not much worse through being in prison, but things were very much worse for him. He tried to get work, and was everywhere asked for his character. Sometimes he took courage and confessed the truth, but when he did he was invariably dismissed at once without further parley and with marked distrust. Then his mother scraped together enough money to send him to Glasgow, in the hope that he would succeed better where he was not known. Jim used every penny of the money, and tramped back the forty miles in a half-famishing state. Of course his mother cheered and consoled him, and slaved for him at her wash-tub without a murmur; but a young lad must fill up his time in some way. He could not sit all day looking at his fingers, and he needed a little money if only to keep him in tobacco. He met Joe Knevitt one day, and from that hour his troubles seemed at an end; his silence and sullen despair vanished, he was always cheerful and kind to his mother, and never wanted money. But how the money was earned and how his time was spent he never could clearly explain. He was not much in the house, and was never absent for a night at a time, but his mother was deep in her work and knew nothing, whatever she may have feared. I daresay she had many a sorrowful hour, and pleaded and remonstrated with him unceasingly, for the singular feature of Jim’s case was that his new life did not harden him against his mother. If he was becoming dissipated and brutalised, no trace of that was ever expended upon her. With her he was always subdued and silent or full of promises for the future. There were thus two influences at work—one dragging him downwards and the other tugging him back. Joe Knevitt’s proved the stronger, for when this had gone on for some time Jim was again in my hands. This time it was for an attempt—the very daring of which almost took my breath away. I suppose the planning had been done by Joe Knevitt, but the execution—the lion’s share of the work—fell to Jim.

The place chosen was a clothier’s at the South Side—a shilling-a-week clubman—whose business premises were the third flat of a land of houses, the fourth of which was the top. There was not the slightest chance of getting in unseen by the door, as one part of the flat was let to a person who was seldom out of the house. The remainder was locked up when not occupied by the clothier and his band of tailors, and most of the windows looked to the back. It happened that the house was a corner one, and after much study and reconnoitering the intending thieves decided upon a mode of entering which I would not have risked for all the webs of cloth that ever were woven. A quiet and very dark Sunday night was chosen for the attempt. The two got up on the roof of the corner house joining that occupied by the clothier, and Jim, who had under his coat a long length of rope wound round his body with which to lower the webs of cloth to his pal, crept down to the edge of the slates, and loosened with his practised hand the zinc roan or rain gutter running along the edge of the slates. This precarious bridge he sloped over the angle to the window of the clothier’s store-room, a distance of only about twelve feet, but with a slope on it that would have made anyone shudder had they been forced to walk that plank against their will. Joe steadied the top end of the frail bridge, and Jim went sliding down and across with his life in his hands. He was seen doing it, and the accidental spectator afterwards assured me that his own hair nearly stood on end as he saw it done. The passage was accomplished swiftly, and in safety, but Jim’s difficulties were only begun. He stood on the window-sill, three storeys from the ground, but tug as he could the window-sash refused to move. Fancying that it might have been fastened inside he removed one pane of glass in a fashion of his own, inserted his arm, and found to his dismay that the window was not bolted in any way, but only paint-fast. To attempt to move it he knew would be folly, and yet he could not go back to the opposite roof. There was only one way out of the fix—to strip off his jacket and the rope he had brought and try to wriggle through that open pane. He removed as many of the points of broken glass as he could with the aid of his jacket, but in doing so let go the end of his rope, which dropped into the green behind, and left him there isolated and helpless. He cursed over the loss, doubtless, but quickly began the wriggling business, and in a few minutes had struggled through—his shirt sleeves and waistcoat, and even his skin, considerably torn and damaged in transit. When he was in, and the whole coast clear, he thought little of the trouble and danger. He passed to the next room, found the window of that more manageable, and coolly proceeded to select his plunder. He did not hurry himself, for he had not the slightest suspicion of having been seen, every window near him being dark. Having made his selection, he was in the act of tearing up a web of cloth into strips to replace his lost rope, and lower the plunder by, when he was startled by a sudden, shrill whistle, at the far-off end of the green below. He knew the whistle, and what it meant—danger! but could not conceive why the shrill sound should have been thrown out at such a time. Joe was surely growing childishly timid. Jim went to the window, ready opened, and peered out. Not a soul was in sight. Reassured, he went back to his rope-making, but had made no progress worth recording, when a loud knock at the outer door of the house brought him to his feet, with his heart beating fast with dismay. Only till he heard the door opened and a rough voice say something about “thieves in the house,” did he delay. He did not even think of a rope of cloth strips. The hands of the police were already on the door of the room. He sprang at the window, remembering as he did so the exact position of the roan pipe running down outside the house into the drains below. The pipe was of cast-iron, and fastened to the wall with strong stancheons. Jim grasped it from his perch on the window-sill, and ran down it hand under hand as if it had been a rope. It was a feat he would never have attempted in cold blood. He reached the green just as the policemen thrust out their heads at the window above and sprang their rattles. Then he dived for the nearest doorway, but was there met by a man who had helped to give the alarm, and who collared him and gave him a hard struggle for liberty. Jim was younger and lighter than his captor, but he was desperate, and he came off victor, and, leaving the man almost breathless on the ground, he was off into hiding as fast as fear and his supple limbs could carry him. The struggle, however, had taken place near a bright stair-light, and the vanquished man had a full and clear view of Jim’s features, and was able to give me, an hour or two later, such a description that I had little doubt of being able to trace the scared thief. Only one had really been seen at the job, and I was not surprised, on making inquiries for Joe Knevitt, to hear that he was “away in Glasgow, and had been there for a week.” The same could not be said of Jim Hutson, for I found him in his mother’s house demurely kneeling by the hearthstone, and helping his mother by chopping sticks. He denied having been out the night before, and his mother with tears supported his statement—doubtless believing it true—for he might have waited till she slept before he went out. But I had to take him, and, of course, he was identified—picked out of a dozen men without a moment’s hesitation—and locked up. His mother was at the Police Court next day (in tears, of course), and with her old appeal on her lips—

“Jim was aye a gude laddie; he may be guilty, but he’s been led away.”

I could not listen to her this time, and kept out of her reach. How could I say a word in favour of him now, when I knew him to keep company constantly with the worst of my “bairns?” Jim was remitted to the High Court, where he got a year’s imprisonment. I nipped up Joe for another affair some time after, so in misfortune they were not divided.