Five minutes later the business was accomplished. We had caught the pickpocket in flagrante delicto, and one of our men had come up in time to help us to ease her of the watch and chain she had just stolen from Adam. We gave her the alternative of going to prison for both thefts she had committed that day, or of purchasing present immunity by delivering the alderman’s gold repeater to us.
“Well, if ever I let a set of lags take me in again like that!” she remarked, in great disgust. “Here, take the blooming ticker, and thank your stars that none of my pals are about.”
When Alderman Lanimore received his property back safe and sound the next morning, he could not restrain his admiration of our astuteness, which had of course suppressed disenchanting explanations.
“Wonderful!” he exclaimed. “I never heard tell of anything like it. Your deductions and methods of reasoning must be more than human. Wonderful!”
VI. A Broken Trust
“I am sure, Miss Bell, that there is much more in this than meets the eye. Mrs Wemysson’s conduct is so altogether unexpected and inexplicable that it can only be accounted for on the hypothesis of some peculiar development of events of which her daughter and myself are supremely ignorant.”
“Will you kindly recapitulate all the circumstances of the case to me, Mr Wigan?”
“Certainly. You see, Miss Alice Wemysson and I have known each other since we were children, and I can hardly remember the time when I did not dream of love in a cottage with Alice. Yes, it was really to be love in a cottage at first, for a more ambitious prospect did not disclose itself to us until lately. My father has too many claims upon his purse to be able to give his sons more towards a start in life than a good education. And, until he died, no one dreamed that Mr Wemysson possessed more than a modest competence.
“The attachment between Alice and myself was so patent to all our friends that our names have been coupled together for years. But no formal engagement existed between us, and though Mr Wemysson seemed to be rather fond of me than otherwise, he always insisted that his daughter was too young to know what was best for her, and that there was still plenty of time to decide her future.
“Things were in this position when Mr Wemysson died, and then it transpired that he was a comparatively rich man, having left ten thousand pounds to his wife, and ten thousand pounds to her in trust for Alice Wemysson, who was the daughter of the testator’s first wife. The young lady was then eighteen, and she was to be under the absolute guardianship of her stepmother until she was twenty-one. If she married contrary to the wishes of her guardian, she was to forfeit her inheritance.