Traced and Tracked; Or, Memoirs of a City Detective

by James M'Govan

But “pleasures are like poppies spread,” and poppies, as everybody knows, contain a deal of poison. These three conquerors were in turn to be conquered—the fate of all. They began to feel queer, as if the wild war-dance had not agreed with them. They got worse, and another bathe was proposed; but their clothes were scarcely off, and their toes in the sea, when they fell down writhing and howling. It was a clear case of cramp. A great crowd gathered about them; rescue-men distinguished themselves in hauling the three boys out of a full inch of water; and they were borne howling to the baths. They roared while they had breath, and then lay limp and insensible. A doctor summoned in haste placed his hand on one of the stomachs—he must have been a family man—a pump was sent for, but before it arrived they had each begun to relieve themselves. Still they were very ill, and it was quite clear to the doctor that they had been poisoned. As they said nothing of the sugared cake they had devoured, but admitted that they had eaten a pennyworth of gingerbread among them, the poor seller of the gingerbread was pounced upon by the police, and lugged off to prison as a wholesale poisoner. The three hapless victims being quite unfit for removal, a telegram was sent to their parents, stating that they had been poisoned, but were expected to recover.

The effect of this message upon the parents of the two companions was alarming, but Coglin it only enraged. At first he stood horrified like the rest, but then, guessing something like the truth, he burst into a fit of passion, and said that it was all Burfoot’s doing. His mode of reasoning was this—Burfoot had been the cause of him having to prepare the poisoned cake; through him preparing that cake his own boy had been poisoned; therefore Burfoot, in addition to his past crimes, was guilty of a deliberate attempt to murder the baker’s son. What reprisal, what punishment, could be too great for such a wretch?

Coglin resolved to be his own avenger as before, and went to Portobello to see his son. He affected to believe Bob’s story of being poisoned by the pennyworth of gingerbread, and reminded him of how often he had warned him against eating anything that was not baked at home. Bob was delighted to get off so easily, and humbly promised to remember the advice, which he did by never again putting a cake baked by his father within his lips. When the boys were brought home, and the unhappy seller of the gingerbread had been liberated, with his raven locks turned grey with terror of the scaffold, Coglin was at liberty to punish the criminal. This time he resolved to make his vengeance sweeping in its character, and to confide the execution of it to no one but himself. To decide on the special punishment required a deal of thinking, but all Coglin’s thinking pointed to one qualification—the retaliation must include personal loss to Burfoot. Coglin had already lost considerably by Burfoot’s crime; it was but just that Burfoot should suffer in the same manner. While Coglin was at a loss to decide the matter, the newspapers or public press kindly came to his aid. In these he saw described a case of fire-raising by wandering tinkers, who had made up a pellet of chemicals, procurable at any drysalter’s, which, on being thrown down among straw or wood, spontaneously ignited, and burned so fiercely that the whole place was speedily in a blaze. Coglin for nights on end devoted himself to amateur chemistry, and with such ardour that he at length produced a pellet, quite good enough to set the whole of Burfoot’s donkey-shed and pig-styes in flames. The pellet, when finished, resembled a lump of badly-dried clay; and to ensure its safety, Coglin, when it was finished, placed it in one of his metal confection pans, and locking it in his bakehouse, went to survey his foe’s premises and decide upon the best spot for throwing the pellet. He succeeded to perfection. There was easy access to the place, a convenient window to the shed, plenty of straw inside, and the whole of the sheds were of wood as dry as tinder, and promising a grand blaze. It gave Coglin additional satisfaction to know that Burfoot’s place was not insured. While the baker was thus settling matters at the other end of the town, a curious incident was taking place on his own premises. His shop and house were in the front street, and the bakehouse in a lane at the back. While Coglin was gone, his wife attended to the shop, and while doing so was asked by a customer for a little barm. To get that she had to take down the key of the bakehouse from its accustomed nail, and go down to the place herself, while the customer waited in the shop. She was not long gone, but woman’s curiosity in that short time had induced her to peep into the closed pot. Finding only a dirty piece of clay inside she examined it closely, and then tossed it into a corner among some chopped wood there stacked, and then hurried off to her customer with the barm. They conversed earnestly for a time, and then parted mutually pleased. When the barm-buyer had gone, a boy ran into the shop with the startling message—

“Your bakehoose is bleezing!”

It was blazing, and had been for some time, as the infuriated tailor above could testify. He had barely time to secure his kirkgoing suit and his spectacles when the whole tenement was in a blaze. He swore at the bakehouse and its owner as the ruin of him and his prospects. His furniture and effects were all lost, and he did not hesitate to hint that the whole had been done intentionally.

He was in the midst of these recriminations when Coglin appeared, and stood speechless before the blazing house.

“You did it on purpose, because you kent I wasna insured, and because you thought I went into your bakehouse and spoilt your batch,” cried the distracted tailor, pouncing on the astonished baker and trying to throttle him black in the face; “but I’ll hae the law to you, or I’ll tak’ your life wi’ my ain hands.”

They fought madly for some moments, and were then, considerably damaged, torn asunder by the bystanders. The tailor raved like a madman, and, astonishing to all, the baker listened to his frenzied accusations with the greatest meekness and calmness.

The truth is that the tailor, in his passion, had allowed several words and expressions to escape him which for the first time made Coglin doubt his own acumen in accusing Burfoot of the first outrage, and ask himself at the same time if it was not possible that the real perpetrator was Thomas Elder, tailor. The man had a strong hatred to him, and they had quarrelled quite as bitterly as he and Burfoot.

The words and expressions would admit of no other explanation than Elder’s guilt, and now several circumstances recurred to Coglin’s memory to confirm the idea. The tailor had bought herrings on that day, and witnessed the quarrel, and might easily have conceived the plan of entering the bakehouse and smearing the window and board with herring scales to convey the idea that the herring hawker was the criminal.