Traced and Tracked; Or, Memoirs of a City Detective

by James M'Govan

Shorty received the news not with the satisfaction I had expected, but with a stony stare which seemed to me absolutely idiotic. He made no remark of any kind, and showed neither gratitude nor resentment. It turned out, however, that he and The Fin did not get off so easily, but were convicted and sent for thirty days to prison for “loitering with intent.”

Meanwhile Scott persisted in his fatal and blundering silence, and his case came on for trial. He pleaded “not guilty,” and the case went to proof, when the evidence, which, link by link, appeared to demonstrate his guilt beyond the shadow of a doubt, took him completely by surprise. There was the selling of the chain; his contradictions and prevarications; the finding of the plunder, and the fact that he had worked on the premises—all damning.

The summing up of the evidence had been completed, and the jury were about to find him guilty without leaving the box, when Scott excitedly asked to be allowed to make a statement in his defence.

“I am innocent of either theft or housebreaking—such crimes never entered my head,” he tremulously declared. “If I’ve done wrong at all it was only in not giving up the articles when I found them. I was sent to a land in H—— Street to repair the fastenings on the hatches leading to the roof, which had been broken by the sweeps or some one. The landlord had been ordered by the police to have them repaired, and I was sent to do it. There were two hatches—one at the head of the stair, and one in the roof; and in the loft between was a cistern. It is a big one, and stands at the side of the loft. I had to get a candle to see my way across the beams, and when I was coming back, after putting on a new hasp, I saw something like the corner of a cotton handkerchief in the space behind the cistern. It just caught my eyes as I was passing, and I went round and pulled it out, and found in it all the things I am accused of stealing. I had no idea they were stolen, or how long they might have been hidden there, and I thought I might keep them.”

This statement produced no impression either upon the Bench or the jury, or, if it did, the impression was damaging to the accused. In the first place, there was an air of romance about his story—it looked like another ingenious lie—and did not account for the plunder being left there, or give any clue to the real thieves. Then, even supposing the strange statement to be true, it still left Scott self-convicted of a serious crime—appropriating to his own use what he perfectly well knew did not belong to him. Without hesitation the jury found him guilty, and he was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment, it being his first offence.

And he was innocent! what a shame! some one exclaims. Well, I don’t know. He was not innocent in intention. He was actually a thief, though not the actual first thief, and he suffered a just punishment.

And now to return to Shorty and The Fin. It does not appear that these amiable gentlemen met Scott in prison, or, if they did, that they exchanged confidences on the case which interested them so deeply, and in their seclusion the newspapers were not regularly placed upon their breakfast table, even had they been blessed with the ability to read them. It was agreed that Shorty should go over to the hide and get the plunder, while The Fin went to a safe reset to arrange about its disposal. This programme worked perfectly in all but one trifling item—the finding of the plunder. Shorty did himself up with soot to resemble a chimney-sweep, and with a ladder and the proper key of the hatch got up to his hide behind the cistern, only to groan and curse over the fact that the cotton handkerchief and its contents were gone. The truth flashed on him at once—some one had found the plunder. Shorty was as much enraged as if he had been robbed. While he stood there cursing, something bright caught his eye between the beams behind the cistern, and, stooping down, he picked up the servant’s silver ring—the sole remnant of the valuable plunder, which had in some way fallen out of the cotton handkerchief. Shorty was so furious that he was near pitching it as far as he could throw, but again that fateful second thought came to restrain him, and he put it into his pocket and returned to The Fin, to whom he related the facts, with the exception of the finding of the ring. The Fin, as I have noticed, was a silent man. He heard the whole with open eyes and shut mouth, and Shorty was himself too much enraged to notice that The Fin was displeased and suspicious. Some men would have stormed, and taunted, and uttered their suspicions, and even fought over it, but that was not The Fin’s style. He uttered no reflection, but when Shorty left him, The Fin took the precaution of following him.

Being newly out of prison, Shorty’s funds were low, and he went to the reset who had just been visited by The Fin, and managed to extract two shillings out of him in exchange for the servant’s silver ring. Every article of the plunder was by that time known to The Fin, having been frequently described by Shorty, and more particularly this ring, which Shorty had been so near leaving behind.

Scarcely had Shorty got into a public-house and exchanged one of the shillings for some brandy, when The Fin was up at the reset’s house demanding to know what Shorty had sold, and how many pounds sterling he had got for it. The reset, rather staggered, at last declared that Shorty had sold only the silver ring, and showed the trinket in confirmation.

The Fin did not believe a word of it, but he was a still man, and said nothing. Before three hours were gone he was with me, and had given me such information regarding another feat of Shorty’s that at last I drew a long breath of satisfaction, for I was sure of a conviction and a good long sentence.