And so I left the tavern. I had got my trace, and knew where to go for my men, and I had, moreover, a well-grounded suspicion not only as regarded him whose name I had mentioned, but also his companion. I sent immediately for two constables, and having procured these, and been joined by my assistant, I proceeded to Brodie’s Close in the Cowgate. Arriving at the foot of a stair, I planted there my constables, and mounted till I came to a door familiar to me on prior occasions. I gave my quiet knock,—a signal so regular, that, as I have sometimes heard, it was known as “M‘Levy’s warning.” Whether known as such now, or not, I cannot say, but it was quickly enough responded to by no less a personage than the famous Lucky Shields herself. The moment she saw me she recoiled, but only for an instant, and then tried to detain me—the ordinary sign that I should be in. Without saying a word I pushed her back, and making my way forward, got at once into the middle of one of those scenes of which the quiet normal people of the world have no more idea than they have of what is going on in the molten regions of the middle of the earth, on the surface of which they are plucking roses. A large room, where the grandees of a former time drank their claret to the tune of “Lewie Gordon;” all about the sides a number of beds—one or two rattled up of pine stumps—another with black carved legs, which had supported fair dames long since passed away, alongside another with no more pretensions to decayed grandeur than could be put forth by a sack of chaff and a horsecloth. Close to that a ragged arm-chair, with a bundle of hay rolled up in an old napkin, to serve when there was an additional lodger. A number of chairs, marrowless, broken, and rickety; a white table in the midst of all, covered with glasses and tankards, all replete with the ring of drinking echoes, and shining in the haze of tobacco smoke, illuminated by bright gas.
My ears were more bewildered than my eyes; for the room, with its strange furniture, was familiar enough to me; but I had some difficulty for a minute or two in distinguishing the living articles. Round the fir table sat my hero of the box, Patrick Shields; alongside of him, Henry Preger,—so true an associate of Shields, as to render it impossible for me to doubt his participation in the affair at Coates Crescent; and along with these Daniel O’Hara, a gentleman with a peculiar turn of thought, which induced him to believe that a watch in another man’s pocket was out of its proper place. The two first were still fuming with the effects of Mrs Devlin’s whisky, and O’Hara seemed to be great, as master of the new-brewed potation, whisky-punch, which he had been handing round to the young women. I don’t want to paint vividly, in my slap-dash way, where picturesqueness is only to be effected at the expense of the decencies of life, and you don’t want pictures of vice. Then, what boots it to describe such women. Their variety is only a combination of traces which are as uniform as the features of sensuality. Yes, these young women, who were quite familiar to me—Agnes Marshall, Jessie Ronald, Elizabeth Livingstone, Hannah Martin, Julia Shields—were simply representatives of thousands bearing the same marks,—one, a demure but cunning catcher of hearts and purses; another, a fair and comely living temple, with a Dagon of vice stuck up in it; another, never sober except when in a police cell, and never silent except when asleep, and scarcely then, for I have heard the cry of her wild spirit as it floated in drunken dreams; and another, the best resetter in the city, from whom a century of years in prison would not have extorted a Brummagem ring of the value of a glass of whisky. If I force so much of a picture upon you, it is because, as a part of society, you deserve to know what your laws and usages produce.
It was not for a little time after I entered that the confusion of tongues ceased. Their spirits had received such an impetus from the effects of the spirituous, that the speed could not be stopped; and even when the noise was hushed, it was only after the muttering of oaths. Meanwhile, a glance told me I had got into the very heart of the reset-box of Mr Jackson’s fine jewellery. Finger and ear-rings glittered in the gas-light, and the expensive coats, at the top of the fashion, made Shields and Preger look like gentlemen who had called in from Princes Street to see the jewelled beauties. I have always had my own way of dealing with such gentry. I took out my musical box, and pulling the string, set it agoing. I have heard of music that drew stones—mine drew bricks. Shields and Preger fixed their eyes wildly upon me; and the women, who knew nothing of the meaning of M‘Levy’s music, first shot out into a yell of laughter, and then, rising, began, in the madness of their drunkenness, to dance like so many furies, keeping time, so far as they could, to the tune of the instrument. I could account for this insensibility to danger by no other way than by supposing that they had not previously seen the box, and did not see the consequences that were likely to result from my visit.
After the hubbub ceased, I addressed my man in the first instance.
“Patrick,” said I, “I am come to return your box.”
“It’s not mine,” replied the youth; “I have nothing to do with it.”
“It’s mine anyhow,” cried the unwary mother, who all this time was looking through the smoke like a tigress. “The spaking thing is mine anyhow, for didn’t me own Julia get it from a raal gintleman to learn her to sing, and isn’t what’s hers mine?”
And how much more of this Irish howl I might have heard, I can’t say, if the son had not shot a look into her which brought her to a sense of her imprudence.
“And it’s not my box afther all, ye vagabond,” she cried, in trying to retreat from her error; “for wasn’t mine an ivory one, and didn’t it play raal Irish tunes? Come here, Julia; is that your box?”
“No,” said Julia.