“Not just,” she replied, again laughing and thrusting her nimble fingers, so like instruments of legerdemain, deep into the cuff—“not just. Suppose you were to find the note in here after I am gone, would you just say you got it there, and nothing of me?”
“Perhaps I would.”
“Then search your cuff,” she cried, swinging his arm to a side, “and you will find it.”
And running away, she threw behind her the words: “But be sure and act honourably, and give it to the prig.”
The constable was a little confused, but he did not fail to begin to search the cuff, from which Jean, while pretending she had deposited the £5 in the receptacle, had absolutely extracted the spoil,—the identical note which she had placed there at the instant of her seizure on the night it was stolen, and which he had carried about with him for two days, altogether unconscious of the valuable deposit.
The man could swear, as in a rage he searched and found nothing, but he couldn’t detect, and I don’t think he ever knew the trick played off upon him; for it came out long afterwards when Jean was safe, and in one of her fits of bragging, how she did the authorities.
These are not my experiences, and I can give no guarantee of their truth; but, as I have said, I should have liked to be the man who held the candle, supported in the socket by such a valuable bit of paper; and I must add, that I should have liked also to be the man who wore the coat with the deep cuff.
So much for such talk as goes on amongst us. But I have had enough of experience of Jean to enable me to say that she was the most “organic thief” of my time. So much was her make that of a thief, that I doubt whether training in a ragged school would have had much effect upon her. The house she occupied in James’ Square was a “bank of exchange,” regularly fitted up for business. In the corner of a door-panel of every bedroom, there was a small hole neatly closed up with a wooden button, so as to escape all observation. Then the lower panels were made to slide, so that while through the peep she could see when the light was extinguished, she could by the opened panel creep noiselessly in on all fours and take the watch off the side-table, or rifle the pockets of the luckless wight’s dress. She made occasionally great catches, having once “done” £400; but she was at length “done” by the paltry sum of 7s. 6d. I have heard that she is still alive in Australia, and married, perhaps driving, like a pastoral Arcadian, “the yowes to the knowes.”
The Orange Blossom.
HOWEVER assiduously I have plied my vocation, I have never thought that I was doing the good which our masters expect of us in stopping the sliders on the slippery scale of criminal descent. They only commence again, and when they slide off altogether others rise to run the same course. If I have taken credit for a diminution, I suspect that Dr Guthrie has had more to do with it than I. Sometimes I have had qualms from a conviction that I have been hard on many who could scarcely be said to be responsible. I have been, no doubt, often an unwelcome intruder upon merry-makings and jollifications, but then it may be said for me that these merry-makers were merry at the expense of others. Well, “you have stopped marriages where one of the parties was innocent.” True, but the innocent party was attracted by the glitter of stolen gold, and why should a resetting bridegroom escape a loss any more than a resetting pawnbroker? A dowried thief in stolen orange blossom may be a pretty object to a loving snob—to me, however, she is nothing else but a thief, and if I am bound to tear her from his arms, I have just the satisfaction that I transfer her to the arms of justice, who will hug her a good deal closer.