And so we watched her go sobbing down the street, with her shawl held up to her eyes.
“Now, what are yer holding me for?” said Mr. Rummles impudently. “You’ve got the right chap, and I’ll thank yer to let me go!”
“Yes! I know I have got the right chap,” I answered him, with a good shake, “and I mean to tell the magistrate so, first thing to-morrow morning.”
So we hauled them both off to the station-house, and locked them up for the night, though I never believed for a moment, but that I was right, and that Rummles, finding himself pursued, had dropped the watch into the other’s pocket.
It was a very handsome watch, with a heavy chain, and a gold locket containing hair. On one side of the case was a monogram, but so twisted and turned that Looseley and I could make nothing of the initials; and on the other a crest of a dragon and a spear, and some words in Latin that were spelled thus—“Vivit post funera virtus.”
We couldn’t make nothing of the matter, naterally, but Looseley locked up the watch safely, and the next morning by ten o’clock we were all before the beaks.
Well! the upshot of that was, everything went against poor Nick. I felt sure in my mind it was Rummles as I had seen take the watch; but when my evidence came to be sifted it was only a supposition after all, for I couldn’t say I had seen the watch, only the glitter—and supposition don’t go for much in court. And then the watch had actually been found on Nick.
There was no supposition about that, and the fact that he was known as a companion of Rummles went against him. And so the examination ended by Nick being committed for trial, and that scoundrel, Rummles, let go free.
When I see his grinning face as he left the court I could have struck him across the mouth. But I was powerless in the matter, and Nick was sent to prison to wait his trial for theft. When that poor gal, Nan, who had been in court at the time, heard the beak’s decision, she dropped straight down as if she had been shot. Rummles was going to take charge of her.
“I’ll take the young lady home in a cab,” he says; “I’m a great friend of hers, and she would rather I would take charge of her.”