“I tried him every way—pointed out how much more useful the money would be than the fiddle to him, but he only said dryly that ‘he would think aboot it,’ and thus I left him. The next time I was in Newcastle I called upon him again, and saw the violin, but this time Mackintosh was not in the shop, but an uncle of his, who said he could not sell the fiddle without the owner’s consent, but hinted that if I made a reasonable offer for it he had no doubt I might make a bargain the next time I came. Well, I did call on my next visit, and saw the uncle, who said that Mackintosh had decided to sell it if I would make the price £40, and I snapped at the offer at once. I asked when I could see Mackintosh, but the uncle only said, ‘You can get the fiddle frae me as weel as frae him—if ye hae the money wi’ ye?’ I had the money, and counted it out at once, while he wrote out a receipt, put a stamp on it, and signed it ‘John Mackintosh.’ Then I got the fiddle, and thought as I bore it off that I was happy for life.”
“But you weren’t?”
“I wasn’t. I had not been home many days when I got a note, vilely written and spelled, from Mackintosh, demanding back his fiddle, and saying hotly that his uncle, the drunken beast, had no right to lend the fiddle to me, or even let it out of the shop. I replied sharply that I had bought it, paid £40 for it, and held the receipt; to which he replied that his uncle had left him, and gone no one knew where, but the fiddle was never his uncle’s, nor had he power to sell it, and that Mackintosh himself had never fingered a penny of the price, and did not mean to, but insisted on getting back his Cremona. Here was a nice swindle; yet what could I do? I offered him other £20 to let me keep it, but he laughed at the offer, and then brought an action-at-law against me for the return of the fiddle.”
“And what was the result?”
“The result as yet is only that I’ve had to pay away nearly £20 in lawyer’s fees; but, as I stick to the fiddle, and would burn it sooner than give it up to him, I suspect that in desperation he has planned this robbery, and now is making his escape to Newcastle with the fiddle in his possession.”
“Oho! and that’s the end of it,” I exclaimed, now seeing the awkwardness of the case he was putting into my hands. “Was it this man Mackintosh who offered you £200 for the fiddle the other day?”
“No, no! That was another person altogether. But what has that got to do with the case in hand?”
“Nothing, perhaps, but we’ll see. Who was he?”
“Oh, a curious, half-daft customer, who has a craze for buying fiddles. He lives a mile or two out from this city, but heard me play on mine at one of the concerts, and invited me out to try his and compare them with mine.”
“Did he seem very anxious to buy yours?”