Chapter III: Part 3

He joined all the rope together--that which he had last found to that which had been used in the deliverance of Newton--and fastening one end of the cord round his body, he slowly and cautiously lowered himself until he began to feel the scorching flames about his extremities.

The cord was not quite long enough!

Another awful sensation of approximate death overtook him; and he afterwards informed me that he knows not how he contrived to complete the work of his own deliverance.

In truth, however, as I afterwards learned from two of the bystanders, with, it seemed to them, wonderful regularity, although with extraordinary speed, he continued to lower himself right through a mass of belching flame. When he landed on the ground, it was seen that his coat-tails were ignited, and that his face was terribly scorched. He must have closed his eyes, or he would inevitably have been blinded.

Happily the fire had not consumed the wall nor the floor, and it was possible for three or four of the most daring spectators to rush forward, seize the now swooning and senseless man, and carry him off to a surgeon's hard by. Here he received immediate attention, and he was afterwards removed to an hotel, where he lay delirious for several days; but at length his reason was restored, his wounds dressed, and he was enabled to proceed to his residence in London. Under the skilful treatment of an eminent surgeon, he thoroughly recovered. Although a trace or two of the flames were indelibly marked upon his countenance, they were but faint or slight traces.

Nothing effectual could be done for the preservation of the building. The fire for some time pursued its devastating course altogether without let or hindrance. At length an engine from the town-hall arrived, and began to throw a feeble jet of water among the flames. It seemed, however, to produce not the slightest possible effect, and its operation looked very like a satire or mockery. The entire of the building was gutted; the whole of the stock, materials, &c., of the factory were consumed; the machinery was rendered useless, and not much less than 20,000_l._ damage was altogether perpetrated; but this included the injury to the old premises, which were insured by the landlord.

I cannot tell how it happened that very imperfect reports of this fire reached London, or were circulated in the newspapers of the district. Perhaps it was, as I have been told, because the local reporter was a man of inferior descriptive power, and unable to give didactic interest or picturesqueness to the narrative he wrote, without which, it is needless to inform the reader, no account of any thing is palatable to the reading public, and with which comparatively small matters can be made interesting, or even sensational. Perhaps it was because Mr. Newton's brother and co-partner did not want to invest the case with more importance than he could possibly help, and was indeed rather anxious that no more noise should be made about it than was inevitable. I have heard it stated that he knew the only representative of the local press in the town, and sought him out, or was sought out by him, and that he dictated or inspired the feeble and uninteresting narrative that was published of the event.

These circumstances or rumours are just of sufficient importance to the developments of the case I am about to describe to justify my stating them.

I should mention that Mr. Henry Newton, the other proprietor of the manufactory, was absent at Birmingham. He was indeed travelling on behalf of the firm of which he was a member, and knew nothing of the catastrophe until informed of it by a telegram, when he of course repaired homewards with all possible speed.

The cause of this fire was never certainly ascertained; but a likely hypothesis, which a jury might believe, was that it arose out of the negligence of the gas-fitters. These men went to dinner at the same time as the ordinary work-people of the factory; and on doing so, stopped by a wooden plug one end of a gas-pipe that was connected to the metre, and enveloped an unfinished joint, also near to the metre, in white lead and tow. The gas at this time was not turned on at the metre, or so it was thought; and the most mysterious feature of the case is, how it was afterwards turned on. This point, however, could not be cleared up, and the _onus_ of so doing did not, of course, rest upon the insured.

In due course a claim was made upon the company. It was investigated; and although suspicions were entertained in the neighbourhood of the Mansion House, where their office was situate, that the calamity was the work of an incendiary, the fact could not be proved, and the amount of the insurance was ultimately paid.

Messrs. Newton contended that the sum they obtained from the fire-office was insufficient to cover the value of their machinery, stock, fixtures, &c. They further alleged that they had sustained considerable loss by the suspension of their trade, and they accordingly brought an action against the gas company who supplied the town, and who had undertaken to lay the pipes in the premises.

This action was defended up to the day of trial, and stood high on the special-jury list at Guildhall one morning. The cause immediately preceding it had nearly terminated. The judge was summing up in that cause. A rather numerous body of spectators (among whom I might have been seen) were awaiting, with various degrees of interest, the case of "Newton _v._ the H---- Gas Company."

At this stage of the case, a consultation across the bar took place between Sergeant Bustle and Mr. Quicke, Q.C., the principal learned counsel or "leaders" for the plaintiff and for the defendant, which ended in their suggesting to his Lordship (Mr. Baron Snapwell) that an arrangement might probably be effected between the parties, if his Lordship would kindly permit the case to stand over until to-morrow. His Lordship, with a show of reluctance, but I believe with perfect willingness to get rid of a long and intricate case, consented to the request, and all I have further to tell the reader about it is, that the anticipations of these learned gentlemen were realised.

A compromise was effected. Messrs. Newton Brothers obtained a rather liberal sum by way of further compensation for their injuries and loss through the conflagration.

Another extraordinary and suspicious circumstance was the death shortly afterwards of Mr. Paterson, the late proprietor of this establishment, to whom Newton Brothers were indebted in a considerable sum. This happened about four months after the fire, and under these circumstances. He was living in the town, not having yet determined into what fresh business he would embark, and not, it is believed, having received all the consideration he had bargained for from the firm to whom he had transferred his business.

The Newtons and Mr. Paterson had been passing an evening at the Dove Hotel, and had taken rather more brandy-and-water than any rational idea of temperance would sanction. Mr. Paterson left the Dove before the Newtons.

His way lay across a canal, and in the morning he was found drowned. He had tumbled, as it appeared, somehow over the low parapet into the water. The Newtons left the house after him, and found their way home to their beds in safety. A coroner's inquest sat upon the body of the deceased, and returned an open verdict of "Found drowned." Some people in the town and neighbourhood, among whom were the Newtons, professed much grief at the calamity. The new firm said, indeed, it appeared as if the place and all connected with it were under a spell or a brand. They declared that it seemed as if Providence had resolved nothing should prosper in connexion with this particular manufactory. How, or for what reason, they could not tell; but here was the death, it might be by accident, or it might be by suicide, in a state of drunkenness, of their predecessor, not long after they had lost every thing (as they in the freedom of their language said they had) through a fire on the premises.

The insurance company heard of the death of Mr. Paterson, and the secretary got it into his head that the Newtons were incendiaries and murderers--that they had killed this man for some evil reason best known to themselves. He consulted the solicitors of the company, and they employed me to sift the mystery, and, if it turned out that the secretary's suspicions were justifiable, to spare no trouble or expense in obtaining evidence upon which to prosecute the alleged miscreants.

I went down secretly, and investigated all the circumstances as far as I could. I collected a variety of little scraps of fact, which left no doubt in my mind that the secretary was right. I came, indeed, to the conclusion that these Newtons were the vilest wretches who had for a long time been permitted to escape the hangman. Yet, frankly let me say, I could not gather enough information on which to rest an indictment with the likelihood of securing a conviction.

I need hardly point out to the reader how very complete my evidence must have been before I could have recommended the company to incur the risk of a prosecution. If, for instance, they failed in conclusively establishing the guilt of the insurers, the institution would be irreparably damaged in public estimation. Popular opinion, and newspaper commentators, would say the company set up this odious defence in order to escape payment of a just claim. The accused would be elevated into the ranks of martyrdom. The company would have to pay all that was demanded from them, with costs, and they might almost as well afterwards give up business, or set the lawyers to work to liquidate the affairs of their institution in Chancery. So that after laying my statement in detail before the solicitors of the company (who paid me handsomely for my services), they drew up a report with their comments and opinions upon my facts; the matter was considered by the board of directors, and there for the time it dropped.

It was not exactly dropped either. I was employed to keep my eye upon the Newtons without intermission for a couple of years, if I felt it necessary to prolong the scrutiny so far--which instructions I had no unwillingness to obey.

Through the medium of several of my assistants, who were changed from time to time, the subsequent career of these persons was noted down with a degree of accuracy which afterwards proved very useful to the interests of metropolitan insurance companies in particular, and to the interests of society and the cause of justice in general.

Among the persons in the town where the dismantled factory was situate whose acquaintance I made, and whose confidence I thought I had gained, was the widow of the drowned late proprietor. She grieved over the premature loss of her husband, but had no apparent suspicion, or at least disclosed to me no suspicion, that he had met his death by foul play. I, among other expedients, condoled with her, discoursed about the lamentable effects of intoxication, eulogised the memory of her husband, lightly and softly touching the subject of that peculiar weakness for the bottle which had led to his untimely death. But none of these conversations elicited from her any suggestion that he had been murdered by the Newtons.

Not long after the money had been paid I discovered that, clever as I thought I had been, I had been outwitted; but not by the Newtons, about whom let there be no further mystery with the reader. They were what the secretary had thought, and what I had become convinced--they were vile wretches, fit for the hangman, and rotten-ripe for the gallows. I had been outwitted by a woman's ingenuity. No one suspected me or my mission in the town (as it afterwards turned out) except the widow Paterson. She had somehow got to know my name and real character, and had been fencing with me or humbugging me, and was prepared, when occasion or opportunity arose, to use me. At the risk of losing some of my _prestige_ with the reader, I am frank enough to fairly admit this.

Shortly after Messrs. Newton Brothers had received the reward of their villany from the fears of the insurance company, and, so to speak, through the broken links in the evidence of their rascality and scoundrelism, an anonymous letter was received by me, the substance of which I may communicate to the reader. It was a statement in effect that the insurance company had been robbed by the Newtons, who had set fire to their own factory in order to achieve their ends; and that the writer was, under proper guarantees, disposed to put me on the track of a successful investigation into the mystery of the crime. The writer required that I should answer the letter, in the first place, by an advertisement in the second column of the _Times_, on the morning of the third day after receipt of the letter. The form of that advertisement was given me, which I was only to insert if I consented to the terms, could give the required guarantees, and was prepared to follow up the clue to be communicated to me.

I saw the solicitors of the company, and with them saw the secretary, when it was arranged that I should accept the terms, see the writer, give the guarantee, and follow up the investigation as it might seem to me expedient, drawing from the company such expenses and remuneration as I might think necessary to incur. After the advertisement, and one or two preliminary letters, I met the writer of the first letter at an appointed place. The writer of that letter was the widow Paterson. She was a remarkable woman, that Mrs. Paterson; by no means handsome or beautiful, yet by no means decidedly the reverse of either. She was not masculine, and she had certainly none of the delicacies of her sex. She was an unscrupulous, designing, wicked woman, cherishing and respecting her own comfort and material welfare more than any thing else. I believe she was sorry to lose her husband, but anxious to make the best use of her misfortune, and chiefly disappointed when she ascertained that his loss also involved the loss of money due to him which she expected to have had the enjoyment of in connexion with him.

When we met we were a little embarrassed. She was startled by the success of her former _ruse_ and concealment. I was disconcerted, if not somewhat humbled, by the then evident truth that I had been all along known to her while I had been, as I thought, pumping her. This embarrassment, however, soon yielded to business. She gave me an insight into a plot of which I had hitherto not had a complete idea.

She could not positively assert that her husband had been murdered. On that head she had her suspicions, as others had. All she could say distinctly was, that the Newtons had burned down their house. The fact was, that her husband had been embarrassed. The Newtons had seen this, and proposed to him an elaborate scheme for defrauding the insurance company. The same means would also enable him to get time from his creditors, who might afterwards be arranged with, or "satisfied" by a bankruptcy, as thereafter should seem desirable. Meanwhile the Newtons and he were to take parts in the great scheme of fraud. They settled between them the extension of the premises and the burning of the manufactory, the claim upon the company, and the division of the spoil. All these arrangements had been carried out, as the reader is aware, except the last part of the programme, which was the subject of another fraud, illustrating a truth I have so frequently insisted upon--that there is no honour among thieves.

Newtons might or might not have overtaken Paterson after he left the Dove, who, being drunk, could not walk towards his home very quickly. They might or might not have pitched him over the canal-bridge into the water; but it was clear that they conceived his death gave an opportunity for cheating him, or rather his widow, out of his share of the proceeds of their joint crime. Mrs. Paterson was in her husband's confidence about the destruction of his premises. This was a little circumstance the Newtons were unacquainted with. On the other hand, Paterson had often told them that he did not let his wife know every thing, and had so frequently spoken in disrespectful terms of the gentle sex (especially on the score of speech or intrigue), that he led them to believe his wife knew nothing about the conspiracy; but in point of fact she had been informed all about it. She had held her peace, since Paterson's death, to see how Messrs. Newton would behave when they got the insurance money, secretly having resolved all the while that if they played her false, or did not hand over to her what she considered her fair share, or what it was arranged her husband should have, she would "let the cat out of the bag," and assist the officers of justice in raising that firm to the level of a platform outside the county gaol, where Mr. Jack Ketch had previously been known to perform in a few dismal tragedies. When the Newtons got the money she boldly made her demand upon them. They affected to be indignant, and they menaced her with a criminal information for slander, which raised her fears a little, for she did not clearly see how she was to establish her case against them. She was lawyer enough to know that in any criminal proceedings against her, her mouth would be shut, by the forms of that branch of English jurisprudence. It required not much self-possession on her part to hold her tongue a while longer, to simulate, if not satisfaction, at least resignation, at the loss of her share of the plunder. She however determined to place herself in communication with me, in the full reliance that I could with her aid, overtake the villains, who had not been true to their compact of rascality, and get them punished, as they deserved to be, if not for their original crimes, for their want of honour to the confederate.

I listened to her story, and noted all the circumstances she could relate. I made another report, that went through the same ordeal or ceremonial which my former report was submitted to, and with about the like result. This woman's evidence was tainted. She did not indeed want to be brought forward. She trembled under the fear of being murdered by some other confederates of the Newtons, if she were the ostensible and avowed agent of their punishment. She wanted "the thing done without using her." It appeared to me, and to the other adviser of the insurance company, that with her evidence a prosecution of the Newtons was not a perfectly safe experiment; and that without such support an indictment was an exceedingly dangerous expedient for the company.

It is needless to observe that the disclosures of this woman rendered the fact of the Newtons' crime doubly certain to _us_; but all that could still be done was to watch and wait another opportunity for bringing these wretches to justice.

The explanations which I had from Mrs. Paterson were to the effect that, although her husband was pecuniarily embarrassed at the time when he sold the business, a large portion of the money owing was money that he held as trustee, and which, being in the funds, railway stocks &c., he had the exclusive management of, having taken all the securities several years ago out of the hands of the lawyers concerned in the trust. There was no one to check his malversation, and by the simple expedient of keeping the interest paid, he escaped detection. At length, finding that the affair was getting beyond his control, the means of his permanently concealing it being rendered more and more difficult by its magnitude, and the fact that losses in trade, perhaps the interest upon the lost capital, swelled up an awful total, he took the Newtons into his confidence, and the set devised a scheme for colourably selling his stock-in-trade, fixtures, good-will, &c., &c., for extending the premises, and so forth, and burning the place down, so as to realise a large sum in ready money--considerably more than the value of the things insured. By these means he hoped to retrieve his position as trustee, and put a tidy sum of money in his own pocket--his confederates, the Newtons, of course also profiting somewhat largely.

Paterson was a peculiar and self-reliant man. Moreover, he could not rely upon getting any solicitor to enter into such a confederacy. It is absolutely certain that if he could induce any one in the legal profession to join in such a villanous compact, he would have been the very lowest among low attorneys. He would in all probability have known sufficiently well how to screen himself, and also how to swallow and retain the lion's share of the plunder. All these things were evident to Mr. Paterson, so he kept the bills of exchange which the Newtons had given him in his own hands, and dreading burglary, or the fraudulent and surreptitious removal of them from the apartments he now occupied during his absence, if an opportunity of any kind were furnished, he usually carried these documents about with him in his pocket-book when he left home. This was, of course, a dangerous plan, and one that any honest man in an ordinary position would not adopt; but perhaps, after all, it was the safest for such a man as Paterson in the position he then stood.

The Newtons knew of Paterson's fraudulent trusteeship. They were sufficiently in his confidence to have obtained nearly all the information which enabled them to keep him at arm's length. And of course Paterson also knew of the exaggerated claim which had been presented to the insurance company, based upon inventories and papers supplied to them by him on the transfer of the business. It is hard to say that either was more deeply implicated in the villany than the other; although it is clear that Paterson, who stood behind the scenes and was screened from observation by the prominent defrauders, was, in reality at least, as deep, and perhaps more deeply, involved in the swindle and arson than either of the Newtons. The situation of the parties towards each other was not very unlike that thieves ordinarily stand in. One had reason to fear the other, and there was in consequence mutual jealousy, distrust, and apprehension.

After leaving the Dove, I had no doubt that the Newtons hastened in the direction that Paterson had, go homewards, and succeeded in overtaking him; that, being partially intoxicated he was easily grasped and held by his whilom confederates, one of whom probably held his hand over the victim's mouth while the other hastily seized his pocket-book, removed from it the acceptances which had been given him on the transfer of the business, &c., after which he was pitched into the water. When taken from the canal and searched, a pocket-book was found upon the person of the murdered incendiary, and in it all the papers that he was known to carry except the acceptances, which were, to the mind of Mrs. Paterson, painfully conspicuous by their absence.

I have explained that the Newtons did not know that Mrs. Paterson was in her husband's confidence; that they imagined she was not; and that he, with a desire for counter-check which distinguishes the suspicious, taught them so to believe. He would frequently say, when Mrs. Paterson's name transpired in their conversations prior and subsequently to the fire, that "he never trusted a woman with a secret of any importance, as she was sure to blab or peach," &c. As I have said, however, he was all the while disclosing to her the conspiracy and plot. She was thoroughly informed of every circumstance, and knew all about their proceedings from first to last as well as either of the Newtons did.

After her husband's death, in her emergency, before seeking me she consulted those well-known criminal lawyers, Messrs. Levy Levy, Brothers, and Sons, who (except when they attend a police-court, and think a demonstration requisite for the vindication of their skill to the newspaper-reading World, as an advertisement for business in the same line) conceive that the Carlylese or Chinese motto about silence embodies the prime wisdom or the highest sagacity. They recommended Mrs. Paterson to wait and hold her tongue--for the present. She did this until she knew that the money had been paid by the insurance company, of which circumstance she then informed her clever Mosaic attorneys. They, upon hearing this circumstance from their client, wisely and shrewdly, perhaps, told her the time had now arrived for action, that they were the people to act, and that she had better leave herself in their hands. To this she readily consented; for, as I have said, the Newtons inspired her with awe. If she had not been sensible that she had an advantage in her knowledge of them, and that they at the present moment had no conception she was aware of their villany, she would have trembled lest, as the greed of the brothers led them to the murder of her husband in order to prevent further disclosures, they would murder her.

The action of her attorneys was not a very remarkable or, I think, skilful performance. One thing to be said is, these gentlemen have an enormous amount of very lucrative business, and it does not, I believe, pay them to bestow much thought upon any thing. For instance, when some wholesale forger, some coiner in an extensive way of business, some pivot of pick-pocketing or burglary, or the member of any gang, is arrested, he sends immediately for Messrs. Levy Levy, Brothers, and Sons, and, to secure their best services, makes them a large payment. They hear what he has got to say. They attend the police-court, bully the witnesses for the prosecution, make every conceivable statement about their client's respectability within the limits that evidence will permit; and although, almost as a matter of course in these cases, the criminal gets sent for trial, he goes away to the House of Detention rejoicing in the confident belief that he has got, at all events, the best criminal lawyers in the country to defend him. When he comes up for trial, out of the hundred or two hundred pounds or more which Messrs. Levy Levy and family have extracted from the prisoner, his relatives, his connexions, or his gang, these attorneys give a brief or a couple of briefs to counsel, which contain little if any thing more than copies of the depositions taken before the magistrates, and on the back of those briefs are severally indorsed, "Mr. Noxious Sound, 10 guineas;" and "Mr. Modest Emptypurse, 2 guineas." The leader of these two gentlemen perhaps tries to pick a hole in the indictment, which has for several years past been not very serviceable to prisoners, because if the hole is but a small one, and unless the bench can be satisfied that the indictment, as it stands, describes a different offence to that which a prisoner has been arrested upon, or has come prepared to meet, it is amended in court so as to cure the defect which Mr. Noxious Sound's not miraculous penetration has discovered. Or Mr. Sound may raise what thieves call a "pint of law" for the Court of Criminal Appeal, about which it is needless to say any thing, except that the case then easily glides from the lower to higher tribunal and that in its course Messrs. Levy Levy and kindred get another considerable lump of money out of it. While they thus realise enormous incomes by a process so facile, and one which involves no responsibility and taxes no intellect--a thing, by the way, nearly impossible, for the Levys have not much of the latter article among the lot of them--they are not disposed, even under what would to the ordinary solicitor be a temptation of liberal costs, to take a vast deal of trouble, or, as one of them would observe, "put themselves far out of the way."

Messrs. Levy Levy and family wrote to Messrs. Newton Brothers a letter, which stated that they had been called upon and consulted by a client on a matter in which they (Messrs. Newton Brothers) were concerned; and that they (Messrs. Levy Levy and kindred) would be glad to see them (Messrs. Newton Brothers).

Mr. Albert Newton received this letter and opened it. When he communicated it to his brother, that gentleman elegantly observed that he thought he "smelt a rat;" but I do not think he exactly comprehended who the rat was, or its location. However, the firm also thought it desirable to consult attorneys. Newtons would have gone to Messrs. Levy Levy and family; but as the professional services of these renowned pettifoggers were forestalled, Newton Brothers put themselves into communication with another Levy, who is an attorney, and may or may not be, for any thing I know, a kinsman of the members of the great Old Bailey house. He called upon Messrs. Levy Levy and family, and the result was, that Mrs. Paterson, when she next waited upon them, was told it was "an ugly affair," and that they "did not see how to move in it without peril." They talked to her in the language of professional wisdom--and slang. They said something about stinks that were stirred smelling all the more because of the operation, and used other unequally sage observations. The widow was not broken-hearted, but certainly crest-fallen, and eminently, although silently, indignant.

Mrs. Paterson vowed vengeance, although the inarticulate form of her protestations saved their being registered any where to her disadvantage. She now determined to take her own course in bringing down upon the heads of her husband's confederates in the swindle and in the arson, and her husband's murderers, the vengeance of the law. She was ultimately led by this amiable turn of reflection to communicate with me, and the reader has already been told the immediate result.

Popular belief, I am sorry to say, in the town where the bonnet-factory had stood, was largely tinged with prejudice or superstition, which materially assisted Newtons' future plans. Paterson's breach of trust became known; his losses in trade also became generally known. The fire having broken out so soon after the transfer of the business had been effected, and the suicide--as it was said--of the late proprietor, all confirmed the mass of the people there in the Newtonian belief that a spell, or witchery, or fatal influence of some kind, hung over the establishment. Newtons' professions of faith of the same kind did not, therefore, appear remarkable. A few people wondered, but nobody except the insurance office suspected the reason why the firm determined not to resume business there. They were content to pay such debts as they had contracted in the neighbourhood, to display a little kindness to a few of the workpeople in the bitterest distress; and having thus obtained a very pleasant reputation, they quitted the neighbourhood for London, intending, as they said, to embark in some other line of enterprise.

I kept close watch upon the culprits, and knew all their movements; but still I could not, for a long time, bring any thing home to them with sufficient precision to warrant a prosecution by the insurance company. Among the things I did, however, discover, was an abundant series of links in a chain of evidence which, some day, I felt certain I could attach at its extremity to a great crime; and although my employers were, I think, getting a little impatient, as I also think I was myself, I never doubted that the result would be, if not the hanging of the Newtons, their certain condemnation to the bulks or a convict prison for the term of their natural lives.

I also ascertained that these villains were mixed up with, in divers ways, a gang who for many years past, and for some years after the date of this narrative, played a prominent part in, or were at the root of, all the great crimes of London, and many of those in the provinces. The Newtons appeared to have a special department of the criminal business allotted to or taken up by them. Although they had been concerned in a forgery or two, in a railway "plant," and a burglary on a grand scale, yet their preference was to get up fires. They had been concerned as subordinates and screened performers in a large incendiary fire at Whitechapel, in another at Manchester, and, I also believe, one in Liverpool.

After about sixteen months' waiting and watching--during which time the Newtons had made one or two pleasure-trips to the Continent, had resided at various parts of the metropolis in superior furnished apartments, and had patronised tailors extensively for various costumes--I ascertained that they had resolved to re-commence business.

One of them, Mr. Henry Newton, went into the west of England, to the town of B----, and took a large house and shop there, which he opened as a music-seller's and a pianoforte warehouse. Next door to the goodly and capacious premises which Mr. Henry Newton had taken, was a small, dwarfed, and not by any means pretty building. This had been not long before to let, but had found a tenant about a month or six weeks before Mr. Newton took the adjacent more pretentious structure. The small house was opened, in a humble way of business, by an old man and woman. The old folk sold lollipops, fruit, children's books, &c. Newton complained to the agent of the low character of this business, and went so far as to negotiate with the small shopkeeper for the surrender of his tenancy in the premises; but the negotiation broke off, in consequence of the small shopkeeper demanding what Mr. Newton thought any thing but a small price for his interest in the hovel. Mr. Newton declared that he had an unconquerable objection, on principle, to being swindled or robbed in that way. Rather than submit to the small shopkeeper's gross extortion, he said he would put up with the nuisance, although it would interfere with the respectable business he intended to carry on.

I ought to explain, that Mr. Newton did not appear in the town under the name of Newton. He set up there as "Keeling and Co., wholesale pianoforte manufacturers, dealers, and merchants." His establishment was called the "Temple of the Muses," and a very pretty affair it was.

Mr. Albert Newton remained in London. He started, under the title of "Cross and Co.," as "general commission-agent, importer, and merchants," near Tower Hill, and soon found himself engaged in rather extensive operations at home and abroad. He also served as a reference for his brother, Mr. Keeling.

Mr. Keeling had not opened his premises long when he slightly intimated his intention to insure the "Temple of the Muses." Several of the local agents of insurance companies left at his premises circulars and prospectuses, inviting him thereby to insure his life or his chattels, or both. He had interviews with two or three of the agents about terms, and was critical in comparing the different rates of their offices, the dates of their foundation, the respectability of their management, and all such other things as a prudent insurer would like to be well informed about. The upshot or result was, that he effected an insurance through the local agent of one of the oldest London offices (the title of which need not for the present be mentioned), although it cost him a trifle more than was asked by the agent of a modern office, because he had no belief, he said, in "mushroom concerns." The agent, who profited by it, considered this decision a token of Mr. Keeling's sound practical judgment.

Several pianos arrived, some large parcels of music, and other goods, which were duly taken from the railway station to the "Temple of the Muses," by the railway servants, whose fatigue was usually lightened by a trifling _douceur_ from Messrs. Keeling and Co.

Messrs. Keeling's men, an assistant and a porter, were brought by them from London. The principal had been heard to say that nobody but London men could understand his way of business; and that although he liked the people of B---- very well (especially the better classes), he could not put up with the trade assistants to be got in that town.

Shortly after the "Temple of the Muses" was opened, the proprietor was scandalised by a little stall having been put outside the next house or hovel, with ginger-beer and other trifling articles of refreshment upon it for sale, which, indeed, seemed to be displayed with a sort of vulgar ostentation by the proprietor, as Keeling said, as a sort of means to annoy him, until he gave a fancy price in order to get rid of the fellow. In this, however, the small shopkeeper was not successful. Although Mr. Keeling's indignation and disgust were intense, he would not buy off the nuisance at the price demanded. He talked of going to law with the old man, and consulted the leading solicitor in the town about an action or an indictment; but was advised that the annoyance was insufficient to give him the remedy he sought.

No business seemed to be done by Keeling and Co. A few pieces of music were sold. A good many people called to see the pianos; but the prices asked for them somewhat alarmed the customers. Mr. Keeling occasionally got disgusted, and assured his visitors he could not sell such articles as he had to sell at the prices they were expected to be sold for, although he knew that common trashy things could be supplied at those figures.

One day there was a sale in London of the stock of a pianoforte manufacturer advertised in the daily papers. It announced an auction at some future day, unless the whole stock were previously disposed of by private contract, together with the lease and good-will of the manufacturer's premises. Mr. Keeling received a telegram from Messrs. Cross, which ran thus: "See the _Times_. Advertisement, sale of Mr.----. Stock, good-will, &c."

Mr. Keeling, after receiving this telegram, was very anxious to see the _Times_, which arrived in due course about mid-day. He sent to the railway station two or three times, and ultimately went up himself, to get an early copy of the paper. On his way there he met an acquaintance or two (one was my assistant, although he little dreamt it), whom he told there was a splendid opportunity, he thought, for buying a large stock, and perhaps getting a first-class Town business, to which his country trade of the "Temple of the Muses" might be added with advantage. He thought he might also be able to get a stock of pianos, of rather lower quality than he now had, which the people of B---- might appreciate at the price he could offer them. After he had procured the _Times_, and taken care to explain to a few people the precise cause of his journey to London, he only awaited the arrival of the next up-train, and away he went to Town by it. He expected to be down the next day, but found this impossible, as he explained in a telegram to his assistant or shopman, but said that he would positively return on the day following.

On the second night after Mr. Keeling's departure for London, about a quarter to twelve o'clock, there was a cry of fire in the town of B----. The little hovel had caught light in the rear, and it happened that this wretched place actually joined the "Temple of the Muses." A wooden outhouse behind the smaller structure also joined the back premises of the Temple, in which were stored packing-cases, straw, &c.

The flames soon demolished the straw-roofed lollipop-shop, and left nothing but a heap of ashes as a memorial of its devastation. The old man and his wife readily escaped, however, as the fire began at the back of the house, and they were not sound sleepers. Few old people, if we may believe the physiologists, do sleep soundly; so that to suspect the lollipop shopkeeper and his wife of incendiarism, on the ground of their escape, would be as absurd as it would be unjust. The old man was, moreover, not insured. What motive could he have to set his establishment on fire?

The "Temple of the Muses" fared not much better than the hovel. The walls and some of the cross-beams were left standing; but it was tolerably well gutted, and all the stock and furniture in it were consumed.

It unfortunately happened that the town of B---- had no appliances worth mentioning for the extinction of fire. It was worse off in this respect than the town in which Messrs. Newtons' straw-bonnet manufactory was situate. There was the town-engine at B----, but it was found impracticable to get that crazy instrument into working order. It was a long time before the door of the engine-house could be opened for want of the key. It was then found impossible to get the parts of the engine together. Half of the town might have been destroyed before it could be got ready for use. Some portions of the hose were missing; the hinges were all rusty, and the metal-work dirty and corroded. The engine was, in point of fact, a wreck of time, and in an advanced stage of decay. But for this it is likely that the "Temple of the Muses" would not have sustained so much damage as it did; but happily no lives were lost in either building.

Mr. Keeling being telegraphed for, rushed, with the rapidity of an express train, to the scene of what he called his misfortune, and met the condolences of every body there, not excepting his rivals and most jealous neighbours.

The only man who could not understand the affair, but whose suspicions, if he had any, took no definite shape, was the agent of the company, deputy-registrar of births, deaths, and marriages, parish-clerk, undertaker, coal-merchant, and commission-agent. This respectable old gentleman informed every body that there had been no house on fire in B---- for forty years. He had been agent for the insurance office thirty-four years himself; and, although he had taken in premiums not less than 10,000_l._, he had never been called upon under one of those cases for a shilling.

The poor old man seemed to think, or one might judge by his manner that he thought, a claim of 3000_l._, which Messrs. Keeling and Co., of the "Temple of the Muses," would have to present, would about ruin the office, and utterly destroy him as an agent. He was very anxious, therefore, to explain all about it; to show the care with which he had made an examination of the premises; to exhibit how unfortunate the contiguous position of the "Temple of the Muses" and the adjoining premises was; to demonstrate how little he could have expected that a fire would have broken out in that hovel; and how, if he had thought of such a thing, he must also have concluded that the "Temple of the Muses" would not have caught light before the flames could have been extinguished in the other building.

The agent made a special journey to London, in order to see the board; and he did see the secretary, in an interview at which I was present. It was suggested by me that it could not be helped, and that such things must happen. The secretary said, "Yes; he did not know but that a claim like that was, in the long-run, rather beneficial to the company than otherwise." The agent was consoled by the assurance that it might assist him in extending the operations of the company; that he might hope to make up the loss in new business; and that, indeed, he was entitled, when estimating the results of his own business with the company, to set off against this loss a larger amount, which he had during his thirty-four years' agency remitted them.

The poor old agent, who could be of no use to me in my investigations, went back to B----, and unconsciously did me a little service by trumpeting the statements of myself and the secretary as the settled conviction of the company that all was right, and that its intention was to pay the claim in the most handsome manner--all of which Mr. Keeling got to know, and was no doubt as much comforted thereby as the agent himself.

One party in B---- appeared likely to be over-looked--the old man and his wife who, previously to the fire, sold sweetmeats and fruit, &c. next door to the "Temple of the Muses." But the necessities of the venerable couple drove them before the public in a rather prominent shape. Handbills were printed in the town, and taken round by the old gentleman to the various shopkeepers and other inhabitants, in which hand-bill was set forth the melancholy accident which had burned his house down, destroyed his stock, and left him in beggary, as he was unfortunately not insured. A great deal of commisseration was excited in and beyond the town, and the poor couple got something like 100_l._ subscribed for them by voluntary contributions. A clergyman preached a sermon in the largest dissenting chapel of B---- on the old man's special behalf; and the reverend gentleman drew such a pathetic description of the poor people's sufferings and forlorn condition, that a very tidy sum was dropped into the plates at the chapel-door as the congregation left the sacred edifice.

The old man did not, however, set up in business immediately, because the house or hovel was not at once rebuilt. The owner of the land formed a notion of erecting upon it a more elegant structure than the one which had been destroyed, and the former tenant could not tell whether he would be able to occupy the old site or not.

Messrs. Keeling and Co., of the "Temple of the Muses," complained very bitterly about the destruction of their premises and stock, just as they were on the threshold of deriving the advantage of their invested capital and labours over the dreary season. They made a formal complaint to the local authorities as to the construction of the building, and contended that if similar arrangements to those which prevailed in the metropolis had existed in B----, that is to say, if, for instance, proper party-walls had been erected between all the edifices in the town of B----, the "Temple of the Muses" would not have been ignited by the fire in the adjoining hovel. In fact, Mr. Keeling pretty extensively ventilated the grievance of his firm, although it never transpired who was represented by the "Co." He also, of course, commented with very legitimate warmth upon the wretched condition of the town fire-engine, and on the lack of means for extinguishing the flames before they had acquired a hold over the premises.

It is perhaps unnecessary to say that after this fire my inquiries were pursued with great vigilance, and that a careful watch was kept upon Mr. Keeling and upon Mr. Cross.

I advised the company to adopt a bold course; but the solicitors to whom this advice was directly given, in the first place, hesitated about endorsing it. The secretary of the company, whom I had reason to see on more than one occasion, for the purpose of examining the papers sent in by Messrs. Keeling and Co. when the assurance was effected, also shared the timidity of the company's legal advisers. Still I was told to pursue my investigations, and I did so.

A correspondence ensued between Mr. Keeling and the secretary of the company immediately after the fire. The secretary was rather wily, but Mr. Keeling was as acute. After some parleying, and the exchange of one or two letters, the secretary, in a fit of impatience, told Mr. Keeling that the company had their doubts about the _bonâ fides_ of his claim, and that he thought it was possible it might be resisted.

On receiving this intimation from the secretary, Mr. Keeling was indignant, and demanded an interview with the board of directors.

The garrulity of the old agent had given this man confidence. He thought he saw in that, and in other circumstances around him, enough to warrant him in a confident belief that his crime was unsuspected. Or he may have argued with himself that safety lay in a bold attitude and tone. So he adopted that kind of tone and attitude. He was informed, in reply to his demand, that he could not see the board, but that he might see the secretary on any day and hour he chose to appoint.

I should explain that this interview was part of my plan. The secretary was disposed to refuse to see the incendiary at all, but I overruled his objections to the meeting.

I had, previous to the appointment for this interview being made and kept, two or three very deliberate and somewhat anxious conferences with the solicitor and the secretary of the company. They were for adopting an exceedingly cautious policy. I was still for taking bold steps. I recommended the arrest of Mr. Keeling at once, suggesting, in support of that measure, that in all probability, if I did so, the other members of his gang would fly, and that evidence of guilt sufficient, at all events, to rebut any claim at common law for the insurance money, would be thus obtained. Indeed, I thought, in all probability, it would never be attempted to enforce the claim. This, I argued, would be the ultimate consequence, even should Mr. Keeling slip through the hands of the hangman or the convict-warder; but added, that I thought there was little doubt, if Mr. Cross, Mr. Keeling, and the old man and woman, the tenants of the hovel, were all arrested, I could get evidence enough to convict the lot--if in no other way, partially by the confession of one of the set. I added, for the instruction and enlightenment of my auditors and employers, and as the climax of my reasoning, that I never yet knew a case in which a gang or a lot of confederates in crime were seized, that there was not a perfect race between them in tendering Queen's evidence. I could not lead the convictions of the solicitor and secretary up to the point of my demonstration or argument, but they agreed to allow me a tolerably wide discretion in my personal conversation with Mr. Keeling at the interview.

One Monday morning, at eleven o'clock, Mr. Keeling walked into the insurance office. He certainly looked very unlike Mr. Henry Newton. The clean shaven face of the manufacturer near Dunstable was now ornamented by carefully trimmed hirsute appendages. The sober garb of the straw-bonnet manufacturer had given place to the swell costume of the proprietor of the "Temple of the Muses," who dressed, I may remark _en passant_, in good clothes. Some people might say he looked the gentleman, although to my eye he looked just what he was--a consummate, perfect type of arch-villany. He was cool and collected. I was at least as calm as he was on the outside, and I warrant much calmer inside.

After some little conversation between the secretary and the criminal, in which the former suggested that the items of the demand he was trying to recover were vague and uncertain, and stated that the company would require to investigate them, and that he thought they would be sure to contest the claim, and in which conversation Mr. Keeling used strong language about the disreputable character of those threats, and indeed said that he should bring his action at once, and that the company might do their best or their worst, and that he would do his best to show them up to the whole world and effect their ruin,--I thought it time to intervene.

I stepped forward, looked Mr. Keeling steadily in the face, and I saw his eye quail as I addressed him.