Here, as far as I am concerned, all positive knowledge of this curious piece of family history ends. Of subsequent transactions between the parties I had no personal cognizance. I only know there was a failure of justice, and I can pretty well guess from what motives. The parties I arrested in Birmingham were kept in strict custody for several days; but no inducement, no threats, could induce the institutors of the inquiry to appear against the detected criminals.
Mrs. and Miss Ashton, Lady Redwood and her children, left town the next day but one, for Redwood Manor; and Mr. Repton coolly told the angry superintendent that “he had no instructions to prosecute.” He, too, was speedily off, and the prisoners were necessarily discharged out of custody.
I saw about three weeks afterwards in a morning paper that Mr. Malvern, “whom the birth of a posthumous heir in a direct line had necessarily deprived of all chance of succession to the Redwood estates, and the baronetcy, which the newspapers had so absurdly conferred on him, was, with his amiable lady and family, about to leave England for Italy, where they intended to remain some time.” The expressed, but uncompleted will of the deceased baronet, Sir Thomas Redwood, had been, it was further stated, carried into effect, and the legacy intended for Mr. Malvern paid over to him. The Williams’s never, to my knowledge, attained to the dignity of a notice in the newspapers; but I believe they pursued their original intention of passing over to America.
Thus not only “Offence’s gilded hand,” but some of the best feelings of our nature, not unfrequently, “shove by Justice,” and place a concealing gloss over deeds which, in other circumstances, would have infallibly consigned the perpetrators to a prison, or perhaps the hulks. Whether, however, any enactment could effectually grapple with an abuse which springs from motives so natural and amiable, is a question which I must leave to wiser heads than mine to discuss and determine.
Part VI.
THE PURSUIT
THE reader need scarcely be told that albeit police-officers like other men, chiefly delight to recount their successful exploits, they do, nevertheless, experience numerous and vexatious failures and disappointments. One especially I remember, of which the irritating recollection did not pass away for many weeks. I had been for some time in pursuit of a rather eminent rascal, though one young in years, and by marriage respectably connected, who, by an infamous abuse of the trust reposed in him by the highly-respectable firm who employed him, had contrived to possess himself of a large sum of money, with which, or at least with the portion of it falling to his share—for we discovered that he had been for some time connected with a gang of first-rate swindlers—he hoped to escape to America. The chase was hot after him; and spite of all his doublings and turnings, and the false scents adroitly thrown out by his confederates with the view to favor his escape, I at last fairly ran him to earth at Plymouth, though in what precise spot of it he burrowed I could not for the moment ascertain. Neither was I well acquainted with his features; but in the description of his person furnished me there were certain indelible marks enumerated which, upon strict examination, could not fail to determine his identity. He purposed, I ascertained, to attempt leaving England in a barque bound for New York, which was to sail from Plymouth on the day after I arrived there. Of this I was fully satisfied, and I determined to capture him on board. Accordingly, about half an hour before the ship was to sail, and after all the passengers had embarked, two of the local officers and I got into a boat which I had some time previously engaged to be in readiness, and put off to the vessel. The wind was decidedly fair for the emigrant ship; and so stiffly did it blow from the north-east, that four hands, I was informed, were required, not indeed to convey us swiftly out, but to pull the boat back against the wind, and the strong tide which would be running outside the breakwater. The sea dashed smartly at times over the boat, and the men pulled their sou’-wester caps well over their eyes, to shield themselves from the blinding spray. We were speedily on board; and the captain, although much annoyed at the delay, paraded his motley passengers as well as crew before us; but to my extreme surprise our bird was not amongst them! Every possible and impossible hiding-place was thoroughly but vainly searched; and we were at length compelled to a reluctant admission that the gentleman we were in quest of, had not yet honored the captain of the Columbia with his patronage.
We sullenly returned into the boat; and the instant we did so, the anchor, already atrip, was brought home; the ship’s bows fell rapidly off; her crowded canvass dilated and swelled in the spanking breeze, and she sprang swiftly off upon her course. It was a pretty and somewhat exciting spectacle; and I and my companions continued to watch the smartly-handled vessel with much interest till a point of land hid her from our view. We then turned our faces towards Plymouth, from which, I was surprised to find, we were apparently as distant as ever. “The tide, let alone the wind, is dead against us!” growled the master of the boat, who was now pulling the near oar, in reply to a remark from one of the Plymouth officers. This man had steered on going out. A quick suspicion flashed across me. “Where is the other boatman who came out with us?” I sharply demanded. The old seaman, instead of replying, turned himself half round towards the weather-bow oar, exclaiming, “Easy, Billy—easy; let her nose lay a little closer to the wind!” This, I readily saw, was done to conceal a momentary confusion, arising from the suddenness of my question—a very slight one by the by, for the fellow was an old man-of-war’s man, with a face hardened and bronzed by service, weather, grog, and tobacco smoke. I repeated the question in a more peremptory tone. The veteran first deliberately squirted a mouthful of tobacco juice over the side, and then with an expression of his cast-iron phiz, which it is impossible by words to convey a distinct idea of, so compounded was it of diabolical squint, lamb-like simplicity, and impudent cunning, replied, “That wor a passenger to Yankee Land—a goin’ there, I’m purty suspicious, for the benefit of his health.” I looked at the Plymouth officers, and they at me. The impudent ingenuity of the trick that had been played us seemed scarcely credible. “He—he—ho—ho!” rumbled out of the tobacco-stifled throat of the old rogue, “If he wor somebody you wanted, it wor uncommon well done. Didn’t you obsarve him jump into the main chains of the barkey jist as you wor leavin’ on her, and cast us off a minute afterwards? He perfarred stoppin’ with us whilst you wor rummagin’ the hooker—he—he—ho—ho!”
It was useless bandying words with the fellow; and though I felt desperately savage, I had sense enough to hold my tongue. “Pull smartly,” said one of the Plymouth officers; “a shot will bring her too yet.”
“Why, ay,” rejoined the imperturbable seaman; “it mout, if you could get speech of the admiral in time; but I’m thinkin’ we shall be a good while yet pullin’ in against this choppin’ wind and head sea.”
And sure enough they were! More than another hour, by some boatman-craft unexplainable by me, for the sailors apparently rowed with all their might, were we in reaching the landing-place; and by that time all chance of compelling the return of the Columbia was long past.