“With eleven more, on two of the window-soles of your staircase.”
“Hidden there by them?”
“I can’t say,” replied I; “but hark ye, when would be the best time for me to see the ladies and Mr Harvey together—if in the fustian, so much the better?”
“To-morrow forenoon,” replied he. “They are all on the stravaig to-day.”
“Well, in the meantime, Richardson, you are mum.”
“Dumb.”
And leaving my useful informant, I proceeded on my way, ruminating as usual. It didn’t need a witch to tell the intention of the deposit, or the place selected for it. The false money would, of course, be dangerous in their room, and even in their pockets it would be imprudent to have more at a time than perhaps the single piece they were trying to utter. The deposit was thus a little outside bank, from which the three might severally supply themselves any number of times a-day; and though the bank stood a chance of being broken, they could lose nothing, while there would always be the difficulty of connecting them with it either as depositors or drawers. The scheme exhibited at least adroitness enough to satisfy me that the three were experienced hands. And yet, just observe the insanity of crime, whereby it renders itself a fool to itself. These clever people, no doubt, never thought that their splendid dresses, their engrossing admiration of their persons, and their exacting claims on the attention of those who would have been very willing to pass them by, only tended to the sharpening of official vision.
On making some inquiries at the Office, I learned that from what we knew as yet of the great Mr Harvey, there could be little doubt that he was a personage who for years had been driving the same trade in the south of England, where he had been often in trouble, and where not less than in London he was reputed as the best “coiner” in the kingdom. His companions were also known as adepts, whose beauty and accomplishments in another peculiar line enabled them to help the common store. Nor was Harvey limited to one department alone, being as well adapted and inclined for taking good money as for coining or uttering bad; so that viewing them as possessed of these three sources of income, we need not be astonished at their personal equipment. How little people know of the money that passes, like water over stones, through the hands of such gentry! The swell is talked of as a poor devil, with stolen finery, who lives merely in that sense from hand to mouth, which implies only freedom from want. A swell is not thus made up or maintained. It is an expensive character. The hunger and burst may haunt him as an inevitable condition; but as is the hunger, so is the burst with them—an extravagance this latter that would provoke the envy of many a fast youth, born in a mansion, and who runs through his property as fast as the horse he rides. I am speaking of England. It is seldom that we have the pleasure of seeing the true grandee here. Scotland is too poor for them. Yet I have sometimes caught them grazing on our lean turnips, when the English fields were infested with these foxes, the detectives.
So I had got on my beat no fewer than three swells, and surely a hunter of sorry thieves like me behoved to be on my honour. There is, I understand, a difficult etiquette how to approach the great, and how to recede, without shewing to their circumcised eyes the back part of your person. Would I not require a lesson to save me from being dishonoured and disgraced by some offence against the code of genteel behaviour? Might they not smile at my Scotch bluntness and vulgarity, and refuse obedience to a baton of Scotch fir? One consolation at least—if the rose is for polite nostrils, the thistle is for thin skins. I scarcely think that I tried a rehearsal that night; but I was saved from all fears by my hope of being received by my great man in a fustian jacket; and as for the ladies, they might consider an Earlston gingham or a Manchester print sufficient for the trade of melting and silvering.
Next day I was on my watch, when about twelve o’clock I saw my great man enter the stair-foot of Ashley Buildings. The glance I got of him satisfied me that Richardson had not exaggerated his grandeur. Everything on him was of the best, and the jemmy cane shewed the delicacy of the hand by which it was held, and by which, too, it was made to go through those exquisite twirls, so expressive of a total absence of such a thing as thought, always necessarily vulgar, when one is surrounded by vulgar people. I gave him time to be natural, that I might be easy, and then went up stairs, leaving my assistant and two constables at the foot. Mrs Richardson shewed me in, but the mint was locked, on the principle of the Queen’s establishment, where valuables run a risk of being taken away. I knocked and listened. Surely my grandees were in dishabille. At last my appeal, which they knew probably was not an usual one, produced uneasiness, so that the cool-bloodedness, which betokens high breeding, was reversed—low words, but quick—rapid movements—small chatterings. At length, perhaps at mere hazard, a voice inquired—