Chapter II: Part 2

One little circumstance none of us had anticipated now arose, to our embarrassment. The payment of that bill of the landlord of the Green Swan told the story of Fipps's purse with approximate accuracy. Mr. Jollefat, the successful candidate, was now suspected by many people of being near the bottom of my Great Trick. To get at him, however, it was necessary to track and attack Fipps, which, I am sorry to say, the disappointed free and independent electors who could not vote at the late election succeeded in doing. How they discovered him is to me a secret at this day; but they certainly did somehow find him out, and they assaulted him by a battery of writs issued out of her Majesty's Court of Common Pleas, at Westminster. A counsel learned in the law advised that we had a good defence to these actions, on the ground that the agreements for service were contracts to pay money either to induce men to vote--which was bribery--or not to vote, which rendered the engagements null and void. About the first point I believe there could be no doubt; around the second I believe there did exist much room for speculation and legal ingenuity. Mr. Jollefat, however, wished to avoid discredit with his constituents; so it was thought expedient to get rid of the difficulty by another mode. Fipps was a man of cosmopolitan tastes, and he had not the phrenological organs of locality and adhesiveness largely developed. It mattered not much to him on which side of the Atlantic or of the Pacific he dwelt. Somebody on his behalf, an attorney, intimated to the solicitor for Mr. Jollefat that it would be cheaper to "square" Fipps than to submit to the game process all the voters and their actions. One hundred pounds was the sum named as one that would take the eloquent and popular candidate beyond the jurisdiction of her Majesty's judges and officers. The amount was provided, and he quietly set sail, or rather took steam, for the United States of America, where, I am told, an ample scope and opportunity for the exercise of the peculiar abilities of that popular candidate has always been found in the service of the various parties who divide the spoils of the Model Republic.

MISTAKEN IDENTITY

An eminently respectable tradesman was seated in his cosy little parlour, or counting-house, at the back of his shop, within a mile of the Mansion House in the City of London, one summer afternoon in the year 1861. His wife was the only other person present on this occasion. It was an unusual circumstance for this lady to be there, as Mr. Delmar also occupied, for purposes of residence, a neat little house in an eastern suburb of the metropolis. He was, moreover, the father of a family. He had four sons and three daughters, whose ages varied between seven and twenty-two. He was churchwarden of the parish in which he carried on business. He was regarded as the very pattern of domestic virtue, and a model of rectitude in business. Few men, indeed, in the whole world enjoyed a better reputation than Mr. Delmar. Nobody had ever breathed a word against his character, and nobody had a right to do so. His fireside was as cheerful as moderate prosperity, a good wife, and dutiful children could render it.

These particulars about Mr. Delmar, his family, his connexions, his circumstances, and his reputation, are necessary to enable the reader to appreciate the incidents I have to describe.

Mrs. Delmar had come to town, on the present occasion, for the legitimate purpose of shopping. She was giving her prudent spouse an estimate of the call she needed--or considered that she needed--to make upon his purse for a variety of domestic necessities, from little child's-shoes to her own and her eldest daughter's bonnets. Mr. Delmar was checking off the anticipated outlay, or, as I may put it, revising the domestic estimates, with a prudence quite commendable and, I also think, consistent with a good husband and father's affection for those dependent on him.

An assistant of Mr. Delmar's entered the parlour, or counting-house, and observed, "A gentleman wishes to see you, sir, in the shop."

"Show him in, Williams."

"He says he wishes to see you privately, sir."

"Privately!" exclaimed Mr. Delmar, in tones of surprise; "show him in;" and the speaker glanced at his better half as he finished the sentence.

Williams left the room and informed the gentleman, who was standing in the shop, that his master wished him to walk in.

"You told me," observed the unknown visitor to the shopman, "that Mrs. Delmar was with her husband?"

"Yes, sir," was the reply.

"I would rather Mr. Delmar should step out to me."

"He will not do it, sir. He says you are to go in to him."

"Well, I will see him."

The unknown visitor advanced to the apartment in which the worthy and happy couple were closeted; he cautiously, not to say nervously, opened the door, and seemed to halt in the execution of his purpose.

"I would very much rather see you alone, sir, for a moment."

"You cannot see me alone, sir; this lady is my wife."

"My business is private."

"I have no private business or secrets unknown to my wife, sir," exclaimed Mr. Delmar, growing a little irritated.

"Well, sir, you will oblige me if you will step out a moment."

"I tell you, sir, I have no secrets from my wife. What is your business?"

"You really, sir----"

"What do you mean, sir? I insist upon your telling me immediately what brings you here. And if you do not, I will kick you into the street."

Mr. Delmar uttered these words in a tone which alarmed his visitor, who, perhaps, apprehended the fulfilment of the threat which his delicacy had elicited; but, summoning his courage, he advanced towards the desk and took from his pocket a paper, which he handed in silence to the astonished and indignant husband.

It was a summons to show cause why he should not maintain a female child which one Selina Wilkins, chambermaid at the Griffin's Head Hotel (an excellent hostelry, well known to commercial travellers on the midland road who call at the town of ----), was the mother of.

Mr. Delmar was a man who had seen much of the world, although he had, happily for himself, not known many of its vicissitudes, or its wickednesses and perils. His knowledge and experience were, however, at fault on the present occasion. During two or three minutes of perfect silence, in which the three persons glanced at one another alternately, Mr. Delmar was a prey to conflicting emotions and cross purposes. At first he was disposed, without warning, to enforce the threat he had not long ago made, and punish the agent of the infamous practical joke now being practised at his expense, as he conceived it, by inflicting upon him an ignominious and severe chastisement. Next, he trembled before a vague apprehension that some foul conspiracy might have been devised for the ruin of his own and his family's domestic peace. The inquiry passed through his mind. Had he acted prudently in compelling the disguised officer to serve the process in the presence of Mrs. Delmar? Should he treat the messenger who brought this scandalous official libel with civility? Should he take him into confidence? What, indeed, should he do?

Within the brief space of three minutes he had many times doubted whether, after all, it was a prudent thing for a man of business, and a man of the world, to let his wife know all his secrets. At last he resolved to pursue in this emergency that frankness and uprightness towards his wife, which had been the source of so much comfort to them both in those various emergencies which even the serene life of a prosperous London tradesman occasionally encounters.

The wife had looked on the previous scene in amazement and fear. The changing hues of her husband's countenance, the twitching of the muscles in his face, the spasmodic movement of his limbs, under suppressed rage, disgust, and dread, told her that the document she had seen handed to him was the premonitory note of something very dreadful. If she had not so well and thoroughly known the rectitude and honourableness of the father of her children, she might have jumped to the conclusion, in her bewilderment, that he had committed forgery, or murdered some one, and that the summons was a warrant for his apprehension on a charge that might have consigned him to Portland or led him to the gallows.

The officer was the first to break silence.

"It is a painful duty, sir."

"Never mind. But what does this mean?" Mr. Delmar replied, rapidly passing from affected indifference to painful curiosity.

"You see, sir, what it is," said the officer.

Had Mr. Delmar's leg and boot been slighter than they were, a smile might have passed from the inner to the outer man of the speaker.

"I know, sir, what it is," retorted Mr. Delmar; and summoning all his moral resolution, and lifting himself to a height of moral dignity, which perhaps he had never occupied in any one moment of his wedded life, from the day when in his young and pure manhood he had taken that woman, every way worthy, to be his partner and help-meet to the altar, he added:

"I am very glad indeed, sir, for one thing only,--that I did not consent to see you, or accept at your hand this infamous paper, unknown to my wife."

Still Mrs. Delmar was silent, bewildered, and intensely anxious.

"I have done my duty," said the officer, in an apologetic tone, glancing at the door, as if desirous of withdrawing.

"You may leave," said Mr. Delmar.

I draw a veil over the scene which followed. It is enough, at all events, the reader should know that Mr. Delmar read the document to his wife, explained its exact purport, and craved her assistance in penetrating the mystery. He had no occasion to ask her whether she believed him guilty of the offence attributed to him. She volunteered an assurance of her belief in its untruthfulness. She felt and declared that it was the result of some awful mistake of personal identity, or some most foul conspiracy.

It would be incorrect to say that the interchange of confidence did not leave a painful sense of the possible consequences of this mysterious incident; yet it may be affirmed that the event did not estrange a particle of that woman's love, nor for a moment excite in her breast one flimsy or evanescent doubt of the fidelity of her husband.

The unfortunate man who was thus called upon to defend himself against a charge of which he was no more guilty than my reader is, went to his lawyer, who said he could not make it out. This gentleman, Mr. Drawly, was at a loss to determine whether his client was fool enough to be deceiving him, or whether he was the victim of what Mrs. Delmar had called a foul conspiracy, or whether an artfully planned scheme of extortion had been practised against him.

I was now consulted. I should have liked to have been intrusted with full personal discretion, so that I might have investigated the mystery in my own way. I think I might have more easily cleared it up, if I had not been embarrassed by the definiteness of my instructions. I was, however, told to inquire, in the first place, whether Selina Wilkins had employed any solicitor, and if so, to put myself in communication with him. I was told to use my best skill in tracing what I could; at the same time, if the professional man on the other side were a man of reputation, to deal frankly with him. I was to explain the position in life and the character of the defendant, and urge the improbability of his having committed any such offence against domestic propriety as that he was charged with; and I was told to endeavour to get the affair cleared up or settled without scandal or notoriety.

I did as I was requested. My habit, when my instructions from solicitors were definite, was to follow them implicitly. This commonly saved me much trouble, and when the result was not unsatisfactory I liked that course all the better; but sometimes the plan a little tantalised and vexed me, because I conceived that through it I missed my aim, and did not obtain the credit by success I might otherwise have done.

In this case I ascertained that the young woman had, on the recommendation of her former master and mistress, employed a solicitor, who stood very high among the lawyers in that part of the country where he dwelt. He received me courteously, and expressed his willingness to tell me all about the case. He, however, insisted that the defendant must be a wily rascal, a consummate hypocrite, a mean-spirited fellow, &c. &c. He told me there could not be the shadow or shade of a doubt about the case; and he entered into the matter in the spirit of a partisan imbued with the righteousness of the side he was engaged to fight on.

As to the identity of the person, he thought any defence on that head must break down; for he had obtained, through his agents in London, a description of Mr. Delmar, which corresponded exactly to the description given him by his "unfortunate client." It is true that the poor girl had not, he said, seen the fellow since her misfortune, because she had not the money to pay visits to London; nor, indeed, was her strength sufficient to enable her to make that journey and back without peril to her life. Grief and shame and bitter mortification had held her tongue until the last possible moment; and it was only when material evidence of her wrong-doing became palpable to her mistress, that she admitted the injury which had been done her. "Why, sir," observed the provincial lawyer, "even after the poor girl's condition had been ascertained, she refused to tell who was the author of her misery, and clung to the foolish belief that, as he was a perfect gentleman, he would one day redeem his promise by making her his wife. The way it was found out, sir, was this. She went home to be confined. Her mother one night searched her little portmonnaie, and there found the blackguard's card. So her friends ascertained his name and address."

When I had obtained these particulars from Selina Wilkins's attorney, it was almost post-time; so I wrote an account of my interview with the lawyer as rapidly as I could, and sent it to London to the solicitor from whom I had received my instructions.

I had an answer by electric telegraph, desiring me to pursue my inquiries, as there could be no doubt the case was one of conspiracy or fraud.

Some of the further particulars of this mysterious case had perhaps better be stated in the brief narrative I can furnish of the inquiry before the magistrates.

On the day appointed for the hearing Mr. Delmar came down from London, attended by his confidential and most respectable solicitor, and by a gentleman of the long robe whose name had figured in a thousand Old-Bailey narratives. The young woman was examined. Amid tears and sobs and threatened hysterics, she related her story. It was to the effect that a gentleman, or "commercial," she styled him, who had visited the town of ----, and stayed five or six times at the hotel where she had been in service, had paid his addresses to her with great ardour, and, under cover of a promise of marriage, effected her ruin. She had no hesitation in declaring that the defendant was the man. The card on which was printed his name and address was produced in Court. A severe cross-examination by the defendant's counsel did nothing to shake these allegations. Although the gentleman had not been many times to the hotel in question, he appeared quite familiar with the town, and she had seen him enter a rival hostelry before she knew him as one of her master's guests or customers. The defendant was sworn. He denied that he had ever seen the young woman before, or that he had been in the town for several years, or that he had ever in his life stayed at the hotel where she had been employed.

The complainant's attorney argued that the case against the defendant was conclusive. It did not, he said, admit of a shadow of doubt. He heaped vituperative aspersions upon the head of the defendant, for adding insult to injury by his disreputable defence. The defendant's counsel, on the other hand, contended that the evidence of the complainant was incomplete; that it was in several respects highly improbable; and that it should not counterbalance the testimony of the most respectable defendant in his own behalf. The learned gentleman called upon the magistrates to dismiss the case, and intimated that, if the decision were against his client, he should appeal. The magistrates agreed with the complainant's attorney; expressed an opinion that she was a much ill-used young woman; and said a few things uncomplimentary of the defendant, upon whom they expressed their willingness to do what, by the way, they could not help doing, I believe--that is, give him an opportunity of appealing against their decision.

It will occur to the reader that there were several means of rebutting some of the special facts upon which the complainant's case must have rested, as it did rest, although I omit them for the sake of brevity, as they are not necessary to the explanation I have to give of one leading fact.

The reader will wonder how that card of the defendant's fell into the hands of the complainant. I will say at once, in order to clear away some mystery, that the young woman herself was no doubt honestly mistaken, although somewhat rash in the evidence she gave as to the identity of her undoer.

But, unless some confederate had given her that card, how could she have obtained it? It must have been palmed off upon her by some unmitigated villain, who was content to divert inquiry from his own track into that of an innocent and right-minded man's household, to the peril of the destruction of his own and his family's happiness.

To track this miscreant was my special mission. I had not much time to effect a discovery before the appeal must be heard and decided.

Mr. Delmar could not help me. He had given his card, at various times, to various people; and within a few years a few hundred persons might have been the conscious or unconscious media, direct or remote, of conveying the fatal pasteboard from his hand to that of the complainant.

After I had been a week engaged in the effort to track the double culprit--having, let me frankly say, no clue by which I hoped to discover him--I was getting weary of the task, when a ray of light dawned through the imperfect memory of Mr. Delmar. He recollected that, about ten months before the complaint was laid against him at ----, he had been obliged to visit Norwich on urgent business. A man who owed him a considerable sum of money was then in embarrassment, and had called a meeting of his creditors, at which Mr. Delmar was invited to attend. After this business had been completed, he intended returning to town by a late train, but allowed himself to be detained in conversation with his fellow-sufferers until it became necessary to abandon that intention. He accordingly put up for the night at the Saracen's Head Hotel, and sought to while away the hours which intervened before bed-time by a social pipe and glass in the commercial room. Here he met, as a stranger of unpretentious manner always does, with a cordial greeting and good-fellowship. One man, however, Mr. Delmar became very chatty and familiar with. This man, who told him his business--that is to say, what "line" he was in--in the course of conversation took out his card-case and was about to hand Mr. Delmar his card, when unfortunately, as he said, he found that he was out of cards, but he told him his address. Mr. Delmar also took out his card-case, and, very unfortunately indeed, as the sequel shows, he gave the commercial his printed name and address.

I was not long in drawing the inference--nor would any person, I apprehend, be--that this commercial was the villain of my story.

With a photograph of Mr. Delmar in my pocket, I speedily took my ticket for Norwich, and had not much doubt about overtaking the rascal.

Would the reader like to know how I got hold of the fellow? It will appear a very simple and easy process when explained, and I don't take much credit for it. Give a shrewd man a clue, and I warrant you, if he have time and opportunity, he will follow it to the end.

Well, then, the way I pursued the clue to its extremity was this. I concluded at once in my own mind that this man's "proclivities" had been manifested wherever he went, and that at more than one of the hotels and commercial inns on his road he would have left a clear recollection of his name and line on the retina of a pretty chambermaid.

I was right. After making myself agreeable by innocent devices with the chambermaids at the Saracen's Head Hotel, at Norwich, I ventured to let one of them see the picture of the man I wanted. I saw at a glance that no tender regard for him was felt by this female observer. I noticed something like pique, or it might be disgust for him. This was enough for me. I frankly told the young woman that I wanted to track and punish him for a mean and vile crime. I saw that, although chambermaid at an inn, she had a woman's sense of propriety. However, to make doubly sure of her aid, I appealed to her by another argument, which might be supposed to have some influence with a young woman who had to live upon small fees and perquisites. I offered her 5_l._ reward if she enabled me to discover him, and in earnest of my sincerity and means of so rewarding her I handed her a sovereign at once. She told me she thought my photograph was a copy of the features of Mr. John Brown, who travelled in the cigar line, who had been at that inn some time ago, and who might be expected again in a week or a fortnight at most, as the time for his visit to Norwich must have almost come round. She said she would show the photograph to the other servants, if I would lend it to her, and as I could easily get another, I did so. The rest of the servants agreed that that portrait was not exactly like Mr. John Brown, but it was something like him too. "Very like him," one said. Next morning's delivery brought to the hotel, among other letters for expected people (which letters where placed in a rack in the commercial room), two for Mr. John Brown of London. The next day Mr. John Brown of London arrived, and I was struck by the resemblance of the man as he opened the door of the commercial room, in which I was then sitting, a little anxiously watching for his arrival. It is needless to take the reader through the subsequent steps of my investigation. He will see that I had almost bagged my game. It is enough to say that a few inquiries upon the subject elicited the fact that a regular traveller (on the road in which the town of ---- and the Griffin's Head Hotel were situated) being suddenly taken ill, and many accounts being due to the house he travelled for on that line, Mr. John Brown was ordered to do the midland journey for him a few times. It was on one of these journeys that he found his evil opportunity for seducing the domestic of the inn, and playing off upon her the mean trick which led to the summons against Mr. Delmar, the reckless testimony the complainant bore as to his identity, and his condemnation by the justices. It is only necessary to add, that the decision against Mr. Delmar was quashed at the Quarter Sessions; and that his character as a man of unblemished honour and domestic virtue was, if possible, strengthened by the ordeal he had to pass through.

AN UNSCRUPULOUS WOMAN.

Some years ago I was retained to penetrate the mystery of a case in many respects not very unlike the celebrated Road murder; and I was to bring the criminal to justice if possible. It was a case of child murder. The house in which the horrid deed was perpetrated was a cottage, standing in the midst of ample grounds--perhaps ten acres in extent--communicating with a turnpike-road, not much used or frequented, and along which no vehicles passed, except those going to or from the cottage or an adjacent farm-house.

I feel that I am at liberty to indicate the locality of this deed no further than to say, it was in a south of England county.

In order to explain the nature of the case I should, however, remark, that the occupiers of the cottage were, a gentleman who had retired from a business in London, his wife, children, and servants.

The man was cynical, misanthropical, and morbidly disposed to seclusion. He was an eccentric man, and he every where excited prejudices against himself. Even the retirement of this cottage was not so complete as to exclude him wholly from contact with the world, or to shut him in from these prejudices.

He had married--much later in life than is usual with prosperous men--about a year before he took up his abode in the place I have described. His wife had been a poor young woman, although rather beautiful, and, in my opinion, her amiability and goodness compensated to such a man for her lack of intellectual qualifications.

At the time I speak of there were living in this cottage Mr. Robinson, his wife, their two infant children, and two general domestic servants--one of whom, a young woman about twenty-three years of age, they had brought with them from London to this retreat in the south of England.

One morning in June, Mrs. Robinson arose from her bed about half-past six o'clock, and before dressing herself, as was her custom, she crossed the straggling passage and drawing and dining room to a chamber beyond, in which her children and the servant, who performed the duties of nursemaid, were supposed to be sleeping. Two of them were sleeping. She was, however, astonished to observe that one appeared cold to the touch. In amazement and horror the poor woman discovered that the third--her youngest child--was sleeping in the embrace of death!

The bereaved mother rushed frantically to her husband, who was just awakening from his slumbers, and she roused him to perfect consciousness by her shrieks and wild ejaculations. The husband was soon astir, and every body seemed, as every body ought to have been, affected by intense grief.

The loudest interest and most demonstrative agony was that poured out in sobs, tears, interjections, and apostrophes--all vague, incoherent, indefinite--by the nursemaid.

I will not dwell upon the frightful incident, nor attempt to sketch in detail the lamentations and misery of that household. It may suffice to observe, that wicked rumour said all sorts of uncharitable things. The local gossips were immensely dissatisfied with the proceedings at the inquest;--the acumen of the coroner, or the want thereof; and the sagacity of his jurymen, or its deficiency. Among the dreadful facts asserted by rumour (which, let me observe, is, in nineteen out of twenty cases, altogether wrong in her suspicions and asseverations) in this case, were charges of improper intimacy between the nursemaid and the master, and jealousy on the part of this girl towards her mistress, which had, it was suggested, led up to the perpetration of the crime, through a desire to wreak vengeance out of a mother's agony. One ingenious theorist--a sort of local oracle in the estimation of many, and the possessor of all wisdom in his own--hinted that the mean, selfish, egotistical tradesman, Mr. Robinson, afraid lest his children should encroach too rapidly on his accumulated profits, had hit upon the Turkish expedient for thinning families; using, in this case, the hand of his dishonoured servant to carry out his infamous design.

The surgeon who made a post-mortem examination--a man by no means unskilful in his profession--who declined to say whether the inclination of his belief favoured the theory of an accidental death or of wilful murder, did, however, upon oath, admit that it was possible the child might have been smothered by its nurse in the course of a night quite accidentally.

The coroner's jury were for two hours very much divided in opinion about what verdict they should return. Some were for a verdict of wilful murder against Mr. Robinson. One man would have liked to have brought in a verdict that would have handed over his wife to the tender mercies of Jack Ketch. In justification of the eleven others I may add, that a strong disposition was felt, amid the solemnity of that investigation, to inflict corporal punishment upon the stupidest fellow. A very strong desire was felt in the breast of more than the majority to return a verdict of wilful murder against the nurse, either with or without yoking her master in that condemnation. The coroner was consulted, and, with an immense amount of circumlocution, which mightily puzzled and confused his sapient aids, that functionary gave it as his opinion that no evidence before the jury was sufficient to justify a verdict of wilful murder against any one. He also ventured to tell the jury that they had better, perhaps, find what he called "an open verdict;" that is to say, one of "wilful murder," without divining the culprit, or one of "found dead," and leave the cause of death an obviously more open question still.

About this time I was consulted by a gentleman, without the intervention of any lawyer, and I was requested to look up the facts in an impartial manner; my directions being to nothing extenuate, nor set down aught in malice.

Who was this gentleman? What his motive? What the latent desire he really had? Who did he wish to clear, and upon whom may he have desired to fix the doom of punishment attaching to the supposed crime, I must be excused from stating.

Just before my visitor called upon me to undertake this matter, I had received instructions to investigate a case of forgery upon a bank, to a large extent. I was to receive, as a reward for my services in this case of forgery, a very liberal fee; and I had also, as I have always had, a distaste for investigations into the mystery of deeds of blood. I have never been the agent through whom a culprit's neck has been encircled by a halter. That is an awful responsibility (for fear of mistake) that I have always shrunk from. Frankly, let me say, I would rather have avoided this engagement altogether, and I did, I think, very gracefully escape from personal action in the matter, by showing my visitor a letter enclosing an instalment of one hundred pounds on account of my fee over the forgery case. He was a man of business, and saw at once that I could not be expected to give up a lucrative and comparatively easy job of that kind for the less remunerative, and in any event less agreeable, inquiry he desired me to prosecute. I, however, took his retainer, upon the understanding and condition that I should act in this case by a deputy, and simply overlook and generally superintend or advise and direct my assistant's labours.

The reader may as well be informed, that through the intervention of a friend of my visitor's, my assistant was provided with lodging in the cottage, and was told to use that sequestered retreat of commercial ease as the central point of his investigations.

I accordingly employed the best man I could get or spare from the other case I had in hand, in which I needed some assistance, and sent that person down to the south of England.

I don't think this man was quite up to his work. Of course I had not formed that opinion when I set him about the job; but a review of what transpired now inclines me to think he made a too palpable show of his suspicions. He made no secret of his quality, or the work he had in hand; but for this he _may_ have had adequate reasons.

Mr. and Mrs. Robinson were both convinced that the murder (if murder it was) had not been committed by any one in their household. They were both prepared to spend any amount of money in defence of their suspected servant, if she had been arrested on suspicion. They had come to the conclusion that the sad affair was the result of an accident,--which was not an over-strained hypothesis.

If, however, it was a case of murder, for which there seemed no apparent motive, it must have been committed by somebody obtaining access from the outside to the room in which the child was sleeping; and a cursory examination of the place showed my man it was by no means a difficult thing to obtain both access and egress through a window opening upon a side of the cottage. My man would have arrived at the conclusion very soon that the death of the poor child had been caused by accident, and would have returned to London, but for the not over recondite suspicions generated under his own eye in the cottage itself.

Very curious to know his opinion, very eager in the suggestion of contrary and improbable theories, and very profuse in expressions of regard for Mrs. Robinson and "dear little Willie," was the nursemaid. She followed my man about with a closeness which seemed to indicate a kind of fascination or terror. At least this is what he told me he thought of her conduct. This alone marked out that girl as the murderess to his mind, and he resolved to linger as long as he could, with a decent show of appearances, in the cottage, thoroughly confident that something would turn up to fix the crime on her, and perhaps somebody else in connexion with her.

The room assigned to him was a rather capacious and tolerably comfortable one, adjoining that through which the little child passed to heaven, and some distance from the chamber in which its nurse had slept since the "accident." Of course my man was not superstitious, and had no unnatural fears--to which circumstance, perhaps, may be ascribed the fact that he left his dressing-case open and his razors loose during his stay at the cottage.

My man was moreover not afraid of ghosts, which perhaps was fortunate. The window-catch was broken, and the lock of the door was so dilapidated that it would have kept no impudent dog or cat from entering, and it afforded the room no protection against intruding spirits.

One night, about a week after his arrival at the cottage, he had fallen into a sleep,--such a sleep as a man of his profession might be allowed, a sort of permanent half-wakefulness, in which the footfall of an elf would have aroused consciousness without stirring a muscle or raising an eyelid, and from which a salute of artillery could not have disturbed him abruptly enough to produce a quiver or a twitch of skin or muscle,--when that insecure door did open, and the form of a woman, in her night-dress, appeared at his bedside.

Her step excited the wakefulness of my man as he lay with his face to the door. He gently opened his eyes wide enough to enable him to examine and measure the form of the nocturnal visitor, without permitting her to notice the effect of her presence. He saw her glance round the room, which the beams of the moon lighted up sufficiently to exhibit the several articles on the toilet-table and elsewhere. My man thought his interrupter's eyes fell upon the loose razors, and he availed himself of the opportunity afforded by the turning of her face aslant from his bed to disengage his arms somewhat from the bedclothes. He was now prepared to meet an attack upon him by her with his own material weapons.

He had misunderstood the woman's object in visiting his bedchamber that night.

She turned again in the direction of the bed. He now thought it prudent to let her see that she was noticed. He coolly raised himself up on his haunches, and fixed his eyes upon her.

"What do you want here?" he rather sternly inquired; and the words seemed to alarm her.

She replied, in faltering accents and spasmodic sentences, "What? I want to see you. Why do you look at me all day? What do you mean by looking at me as you do? Do you mean to say that I killed Willie? Say any thing against me, and I will ruin you. Promise me you won't say any thing against me, or I will scream out."

Then steadily glancing at him, she uttered what no doubt were about the only words she had intended to say, "If you don't promise me here, as you are sitting in that bed, that you don't suspect me, that you won't say any thing against me, that you won't look at me as you do and try to make people suspect me, I will cry out. I will say that you have taken improper liberties with me; that you have seduced me; that I have been awakened in my sleep by conscience, and am afraid of your other evil designs."

"Oh, you will, will you? And what then?"

"What then? Why, won't people say that, after getting me to come here and sleep with you, you denounced me in order to cover your own improper conduct?"

My man admits that he thought this "devilish clever." If he had not been the intended victim, I believe he was so enamoured of the skill of this young woman that he might have offered to take her into a detective partnership, and set up in business with her in opposition to me. But he saw his danger, and did not like being made the object of an experiment with such very fatal incidents surrounding it.

He seized her wrists with one hand, and with the other thrust her from the bedside, placed his hands in so doing over her lips, seized one of the razors lying on the table, and held it before her eyes to terrify her, saying nothing, however, which had reference to that instrument; then he suddenly dropped it near the spot where they were standing, seized her again, and shouted with all his might.

My man was not to be outwitted.

He charged this young woman with having stolen into his bedroom, knowing it to be unfastened, when she calculated that he would be asleep, and knowing also that he had been imprudent enough during his stay in the house to leave his razors on the toilet-table. He declared that he awoke just as she was in the act of putting the razor to her own throat, intending to commit suicide in his room, with the intention, it was suggested, of fastening upon him the crime of her murder.

It will only be necessary to further inform the reader, that although no evidence could be procured sufficient to maintain an indictment for wilful murder against this nurse, and although it was generally believed that she had committed the murder (a fact about which I had my doubts, for I believe the child was accidentally smothered in its sleep, as children often are), no evidence was offered to the jury in support of an indictment for the capital offence; but she was accused and punished for the attempted suicide.

THE INCENDIARY GANG

In the year 1833 I was engaged to investigate the circumstances attending a fire--one of a series--which had ended in claims upon several of the great London offices, and which fires were believed to have arisen out of wilful fraud.

The present fire broke out on a Monday afternoon between one and two o'clock, in a warehouse belonging to an extensive bonnet manufactory near Dunstable, in Bedfordshire.

Among the peculiar circumstances of this case was the somewhat remarkable fact, that the business of the manufactory had just been transferred from one proprietor to another, and that the policy of insurance was in the hands of the company's officers, at its headquarters in London, for the purpose of having a transfer of the contract endorsed thereon.

The new proprietor informed the fire-office that he had resolved upon enlarging his premises, in order to extend his business.

In a letter to the company he indeed stated, in precise terms, that he then had on hand several large export orders to complete. The policy, which had covered an insurance of 3000_l._ hitherto, was now increased to 4500_l._

Shortly after this another letter was received by the office, in which the writer stated that 4500_l._ would, he found, not cover the value of all his improvements, machinery, and stock-in-trade, so that he proposed to still further increase the insurance to 6000_l._

As this was an unusually heavy risk on a country policy, and as the premises were only about thirty miles from town, the board determined that the surveyor for the office should go down and report upon the case before the last proposal was accepted.

Mr. Phillimore, the surveyor, accordingly went down. He arrived about eleven o'clock in the forenoon, and was very politely received by the firm--Newton Brothers--who showed him over the premises, which he examined with his usual critical minuteness, and was subsequently invited up-stairs into the manager's residence on the works, where he consented to partake of a glass of sherry and a sandwich while he awaited a return train to Town.

It was now a few minutes after one o'clock, and the people employed in the manufactory had all quitted the premises for dinner.

The younger member of the firm, Mr. Albert Newton, left the room for the sherry, returned in a few minutes, and had been chatting with the surveyor about half or three-quarters of an hour, when the workpeople began to return.

Before many of the hands had arrived, a cry of "Fire!" was raised. It was discovered that a portion of the old building, which adjoined the new, was in a blaze, and that a large quantity of straw hats and bonnets had been ignited. With immense rapidity the flames extended up the sides of the warehouse, in which there was, it appeared, stored a large quantity of manufactured goods. Appearances were, however, a little deceptive in this respect. The stock had been so distributed in racks (it might have been for convenience of classification) that the bulk appeared greater than it really was. Perhaps this circumstance, however, rather aided than retarded the progress of devastation; for the flames diffused themselves with more ease through the interstices or spaces in which the parcels were stored, than might have been possible had they been more densely packed.

A confusion and panic seized the few persons in the lower part of the building, and terror paralysed their efforts for a while. Moreover, they did not know that any persons were in the rooms above; and, if they paused in their alarm to consider at all about this matter, they probably thought that they alone, and the new arrivals from dinner, were the only persons within scope of the fire. They accordingly rushed out into the town, and, with commendable prudence--that is, as soon as calmness and reason were restored--sought to procure assistance in quenching the flames. The rest of the work-people, as they arrived, either went off on similar errands, or clustered round the outside of the building.

Meanwhile the devouring element pursued its unchecked course, and spreading with the rapidity already indicated, it soon enveloped the whole of the ground-floor. The flames had, indeed, begun to consume the staircase, and had singed the rafters, before notice of their peril reached the few occupants of the upper story.

Mr. Newton and the surveyor of the office were first alarmed by a subdued murmur or buzz produced by the conversation of the mass of people who were below looking on at the spectacle.

The attitude and conduct of the crowd was afterwards the subject of much inquiry and no little suspicion, but there really was no ground for either doubt or astonishment. If the fire had broken out at night, there is every reason to believe that the natural tones of alarm would have taken a louder form of demonstration. If such a fire had broken out in London, where persons are customarily to be found at all times on every floor of a large warehouse, and where the comparative familiarity of people with such incidents leads them to take wiser steps than provincials, the shout of "Fire! fire!" would probably have been at once raised even in broad daylight. But that people unaccustomed to such things, paralysed by terror to a large extent, and in a still greater degree stupefied by wonderment, made no shouts loud enough to arrest the conversation of the endangered little party above, is not, it appears to me, very remarkable.

The sounds which first greeted the ears of Mr. Albert Newton and his guest caused them to listen, and simultaneously one man in the mob (for a mob had by this time formed) did shout "Fire!" A smell of singed material also greeted the nostrils of the little party.

It is needless to say, that these persons immediately rushed to the window with the view of ascertaining what was the matter, and determining the course to be pursued if, as they had already almost ascertained, their own lives were in jeopardy.

The appearance of Mr. Albert Newton at the window elicited a shriek from the women and girls, and a corresponding cry of alarm from the men below.

"My God!" exclaimed Mr. Albert Newton, "our place is on fire."

As he spoke, the flames burst through the lower windows in a dense mass; and although the part of the building in which the manufacturer and his guest were standing was considerably to the east of that part on which the fire had taken its principal hold, there was sufficient palpable cause of danger to whiten the cheeks of both men, and to cause the proprietor--who had, of course, far less experience in such matters than the surveyor, Mr. Phillimore--to betray a degree of confusion which gave that worthy gentleman perhaps more anxiety than the fire alone could have done.

With a degree of calmness and self-possession worthy of the crisis, Mr. Phillimore asked Mr. Newton what means of escape they had, and implored him to be calm, as it might need all their self-possession as well as their courage to extricate themselves.

"Shall we leap out of the window?" exclaimed the embarrassed man.

"No," was the firm reply.

"Do you think we can safely descend the staircase?"

"Let us try."

The party then descended one flight of stairs, but found a dense vapour issuing up the staircase,--an impassable difficulty.

"We are lost!" exclaimed Mr. Newton.

The surveyor's countenance betrayed intense anxiety as he apprehended that the terrified man's ejaculation involved an awful truth.

"Let us seek the roof. Have you any rope at hand?"

"Yes," returned Mr. Newton.

Silently and rapidly they flew rather than ran up the stairs, Newton leading the way to where a quantity of stout hempen rope, of a quarter of an inch diameter, was lying in a corner of a room devoted to empty packages and waste.

The surveyor's experienced eye measured the extent and capacity of this medium of escape with considerable accuracy, and saw that it would suffice for the purpose of liberating them, if they had the discretion to wisely use the means at their disposal.

Scarcely a word was exchanged between the two men. In almost total silence Mr. Phillimore drew out the first piece of rope and fastened it adroitly round the waist and under the arms of the proprietor of the establishment, and then fastened another length of the cord to the one which encircled his terrified companion. The third end was joined in the same manner.

"That will, I think, serve our purpose," were the first words uttered, and these were spoken by the surveyor.

Mr. Newton may be excused for the selfishness which allowed him to avail himself of this means of escape, without much thought about his saviour. Few men under the like circumstances would have acted otherwise than he did. It is only in such cases as a ship on fire at sea that heroism, which is ordinarily slow in its manifestations, rises to the height of that generosity which seeks the preservation of another rather than oneself. Trade does not, perhaps, tend to bring out the finest qualities of our nature. Domestic affections are the most rapid in generating a spirit of self-denial or self-sacrifice. Brother may yield the boon or privilege of life to his brother, the husband to his wife, or the mother to her child; but strangers, or casual acquaintances, are not given to the manifestation of those sublime virtues, self-abnegation and self-sacrifice.

Perhaps, however, Mr. Phillimore might not have parted with the first chance of extrication from the now rapidly consuming flames, if he had not been enabled, by professional sagacity and long training, to ascertain that his own best means of self-preservation really lie through the preservation, in the first instance, of his companion. He had a better chance of extrication when Mr. Newton had reached the cool earth below, than while he remained in the upper story dreading every moment that most horrible of all fates--death by fire. When the one man most liable to panic had been removed from peril, the other would have entire command, as he saw, of such agencies as were then within the equal control of both.

Mr. Phillimore converted one of the sashes into a sort of windlass, or made it at least serve the purpose of a pulley, and by a process that requires no description he lowered the frightened man to within a yard or two of the ground, the rope being not quite long enough to permit of his feet touching.

While dangling in this position, the crowd below shrieked and shouted, and were palsied and confused. One or two, however, had sufficient presence of mind to understand the crisis, and they instantly flew to a neighbouring builder's yard, from which a ladder was procured tall enough to reach the height at which Mr. Albert Newton was suspended.

The flames at this moment were just beginning to shed their vivid light through an adjacent window on the ground-floor at this angle of the building when the last means of escape arrived. It was the work of a moment to plant the ladder against the wall. One cool-headed fellow ascended the steps, placed his arm round the waist of his suspended and now almost lifeless master, disengaged him from the rope, and brought him down in safety amid the shouts of the crowd beneath.

Meanwhile second thoughts had entered the head of Mr. Phillimore, whose danger had been of course greatly increased during the space of time covered by the incidents I have just narrated. He ran about the floor in search of further rope, perceiving for the first time, perhaps, that he would require a greater length to effect his own deliverance. Happily, in a packing-case he discovered some other pieces of cord, not so reliable in quality as that which had completed a work of mercy in his hands; but of course he had to use such material as he could, and to trust the contingencies of its strength and tension. He had spliced the pieces of rope he last discovered, which were of short lengths and unequal thickness the one to the other, when his attention was again aroused by the voice of the crowd below, shouting to warn him that the flames were beginning to burst from every opening at the end of the building beneath his feet; while, it may be observed, the fire had also just begun to reach the third story at the end where it commenced.

Newton had before this been released, and the further extremity of the rope which had encircled his body had itself began to catch fire.

The coolness and discrimination of Mr. Phillimore began to desert him.

He told me that he became sensible of giddiness or approaching vertigo. By a strong effort of will he conquered the present most serious danger, and his judgment and prudence rose again with the extremity of his peril.