Traced and Tracked; Or, Memoirs of a City Detective

by James M'Govan

“There’s a chance of getting the chronometer, too, if we get the man,” I quietly observed. “Just leave your name and address, and all particulars, while I go and see if I can lay hands on Tommy.”

I fully expected that I should get Tommy at some of his usual haunts, and return within the hour, but I was giving Tommy credit for far less ability than he possessed. I chanced to know his favourite hiding-place, and went to that direct. He was not there, and had not been near it for days. All his haunts were tried with a like result. Then, a little annoyed, I “tried back,” and discovered the entry and common stair in the Low Calton in which he had burrowed while his pursuers rushed by. Two boys had seen him there, and they testified that he had turned back towards Greenside as soon as it was safe to venture forth; and from that point all trace of him disappeared. I hunted for him high and low, for days on end, in vain; and what added to my mystification was the fact that Tommy’s relatives and acquaintances were as puzzled and distressed at his disappearance as I could possibly be. At first I thought it possible that he had left the city, but in a day or two had reason to believe that such was not the case. Tommy never went farther than Glasgow or Paisley, and as he had not been heard of or seen in either of these places, a queer thought came into my mind. Could it be possible that Tommy had wandered into bad company and got knocked on the head—in other words, murdered—for the valuable treasure he carried? I note the strange suspicion, not because it turned out to be correct in regard to the loss of Tommy’s valuable life, but because the treasure he carried was to bring him trouble quite as unexpected as his disappearance had been sudden. While I had thus been hunting in vain, and Tommy’s friends had been almost mourning him as dead, and even ungenerously hinting that I had had a hand in his slaughter, Tommy was enjoying the sweets of a well-earned repose in—of all places in the world the last I should have thought of—the Infirmary! He had got hurt, then—run over with a cab or something—in his flight? Not at all. Seized with a fever, then? Neither. He was as sound in body and limb as myself. It was simply this. Before the chronometer had come in his way, Tommy, who was lazy and hard-up, had gone once or twice to the Infirmary complaining of some imaginary trouble, which the doctors could not understand. His object was to get admitted as a patient, and have a month or two’s rest and retirement from the uncertainties of the thieving profession—to be coddled up in bed and tended night and day, and fed up with wine and other delicacies too often denied to the most ingenious malingerer in prison. Tommy was one of those clever malingerers, but he preferred to practise the art in a place where he could at any moment gain his liberty by ending the distressing symptoms of disease.

That was the position. The thought of making the Infirmary his hiding-place came to him as an inspiration. In Greenside he caught a ’bus which took him up to the head of Infirmary Street for a penny. He just managed to get within the gate of the Infirmary when he was seized with such a paroxysm of his trouble that he dropped almost insensible at the feet of the janitor. The house surgeon was summoned, and, as Tommy was then too far gone to be removed with safety to his home, he was borne in an invalid’s chair to the nearest ward, and there put to bed. Close to the head of this bed, and below the sash of one of the windows, was a little shelved cupboard, in which was stowed some of the other patients’ clothing—tied up in bundles till they should be needed again. Tommy’s agony was never so bad but that he could look after the folding up of his clothes, and more especially his trousers, in the pocket of which now reposed a gold chronometer worth at least £60. Such tender solicitude did he evince for the safety of these worn and shabby articles that the attention of more than one person was attracted, and the surgeon sharply demanded whether he had not any tobacco concealed about the pockets, to which Tommy gaspingly replied that he never used tobacco or snuff—a pathetic lie. As soon as the clothes were bundled up and put away in the little cupboard, Tommy had a relapse which occupied the surgeon and nurses for an hour at least, and effectually banished from their minds all remembrance of the little incident of the clothes.

Next forenoon, when the time arrived for the professors and students to make their round, it was found that Tommy’s trouble had all settled in his back and neck, for in the one he had such dreadful pains that he could scarcely lie in bed, and in the other a chronic stiffness which a year or two’s rheumatism could hardly have equalled. There was much grave consultation around his bed, and Tommy tried hard to learn the result of the deliberations, for he had a wholesome dread of being scarified on the nape of the neck with hot irons, or cupped on the shoulders, as he had been in the prison hospital for a similar attack, but all that passed was spoken in whispers, and sometimes in a language which Tommy did not understand.

Tommy was left ill at ease on two points. He feared some surgical appliance of a painful nature, and he had fidgetty feeling regarding the safety of his hard-earned chronometer. He never took his eyes off the door of the little cupboard except in sleep, and even then the slightest footfall roused him to wakefulness. Then there was a danger of some patient recovering and needing his clothes, and taking out those of Tommy by mistake. Tommy fidgetted himself almost into a fever over that possibility, the more so as he had on one side of him an evil-looking cabman, with a face as bloated as a Christmas pudding, who he was sure was a thorough rascal. In the bed on the other side was an innocent-looking Irishman, named Teddy O’Lacey, who sympathised with him very heartily, and whom Tommy set down as a born idiot and simpleton.

He had no fear of the fool of an Irishman; it was the bloated cabman he watched and dreaded. After considering the whole matter, Tommy decided that the chronometer was not in a safe place, and that night waited till every one in the ward was sound asleep, and the night attendant out of the way. Then he nimbly slipt out of bed, opened the cupboard, took out his clothes, and hid the chronometer under his pillow. He could there feel it with his hand almost constantly, and, if any nurses came to make his bed, could conceal it in his hand till they were gone. At all events he felt more comfortable with it beside him, and acutely reasoned that, even if it were seen, in its chamois leather cover it would excite no suspicion, as several patients had watches hanging by their beds or under their pillows.

Another day passed away, and all Tommy’s fears had subsided. The professors ordered nothing but harmless physic, and the chronometer was safe under his pillow, so Tommy settled himself to the full enjoyment of his well-earned repose. He slept soundly that night, and was so refreshed in the morning that he did not immediately think of his chronometer. After breakfast, when he did thrust in his hand, the treasure was gone! Tommy could scarcely believe his own senses. He grabbed wildly under the pillow, over the bed, under the sheet—everywhere; he even forgot in his sweat of mortal agony that he had a stiff neck, and stooped over the edge of the bed to see if haply it had fallen to the floor.

All in vain. The prize had vanished. Worse and worse, he dared not report the loss, for if the chronometer were hunted for and found, no matter who should be the thief, a police case would certainly follow, and Tommy get seven years at least. He looked around. The Irishman was sleeping, as was his wont; the cabman, on the contrary, was eyeing Tommy in a manner that convinced the latter of his guilt.

“You’ve got it then?” was Tommy’s savage thought. “I’ll see if I can’t take it back from you. I always know’d that cabmen was thieves, but I hardly think they’ll match a professional.”

The day passed away, and the hour for visitors arrived, bringing Teddy O’Lacey’s wife, who spent an hour with her husband, and was introduced to Tommy, and departed, hoping that he would soon be well.