Repairing, accordingly, to the Club, one forenoon, I questioned Mr Ellis as to the habits of the waiters, and, in particular, which of them lived out of the house. I found that one man, Donald M‘Leod, had a house in Rose Street, with a wife and no children; and in order that I may not take too much credit to myself, I may state that that man was more suspected by his master than any of the others. I was now so far on my way. I called the waiters together in a room with closed doors.
“Now, gentlemen,” (that’s my polite way) “I have to inform you that there is a robber among you. Bags and portmanteaus have for a lengthened period been opened in this house, and sums of money extracted. All who are innocent will be glad to answer in the affirmative to my question. Will you consent to your trunks and persons being searched?”
“Yes,” answered every one.
“Donald M‘Leod,” continued I, “an honest married man, with a decent wife, I have no doubt can have no objection to my going to his house and taking a look about it—not that I have any suspicion of him because he lives out of the Club, but that his trunks being at home, I must make him like the others.”
“No objection,” replied honest Donald, whose honesty, however, did not sit so easy upon him as honest Rab’s of certain romantic notoriety.
“You will all remain here till I finish my process in the house.”
To which last question having got the answer I expected, I went out and told Mr Ellis to take care that no messenger should, in the meantime, be allowed to leave the house. The search among the trunks yielded me just as much as I expected—perhaps a little more, in the shape of certain love epistles, which might have made a little fortune to the street speech-criers. What a strange undercurrent, swirling in eddies, does love keep for ever moving! But what had I to do with love, who only wanted money,—two things that are so often cruelly separated, but which should be for ever joined.
I then proceeded to Rose Street, and soon finding my house, I knocked gently. A quiet, decent-looking woman opened it.
“Are you Mrs M‘Leod?”
“Ay,” she answered without fear or suspicion, for what did she know of James M‘Levy the thief-catcher?