Chapter V: Part 5

"Well, John Shufflebotham," I was the first to say, "I suppose you have come for the other half of your note?"

The patriotic barber, who had sold his vote and influence, looked a little sheepish and timid.

I said, "It is all right. These gentlemen are the lawyers; they know all about every thing connected with the election, and they are of course in our secret."

"They know what I want, then?"

"Yes, here it is," I observed, handing over to him the other half of the note which he sought; but as I did so, I said, "It is of no use to you. It is a Bank-of-Elegance note, which another man of your trade in B---- gives away in the street."

Whether Shufflebotham had examined the first half of his note, I cannot say; but I had caused the print to be divided in such a way (to guard against accidents) that he would see the words "Bank of E," and no more of the title of the establishment from which it purported to have been issued, and he was too illiterate or inexperienced in bank-notes to discover that the paper itself was not of the kind made for the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street.

The patriotic barber was thunderstruck. He was speechless for a moment or two with disappointment and mortification. When he had partly recovered himself, he stamped once, and swore in about two sentences that we were plunderers, and that he would have us prosecuted for circulating bad money. Our attorney thought this a good joke. It was one of a sort that he could appreciate; so drawing upon his imagination for his law, by way of retort Mr. Yellowly informed Mr. Shufflebotham that he had been treated as he deserved, that he had "better keep a quiet tongue in his head," that, at all events, he must behave himself in that room, or he would be kicked out by one of our roughs in close attendance, and that he might also get transported for bribery.

The barber gnashed his teeth, and went away not rejoicing. I believe he has voted twice for the Tories since that day, without fee or reward--unless vengeance upon his Liberal betrayers was his motive and his compensation.

A ROMANCE OF SOCIAL LIFE.

About four years ago there lived, in the neighbourhood of Kentish Town, a wedded couple of the name of Green.

Mr. Green was a merchant, carrying on business in the City in co-partnership with a German gentleman; and in the enjoyment of a good income from "a house" at the head of which it was his pride to stand.

The couple had not been long united in the holy bonds of matrimony. When he married, he considered himself fortunate in obtaining for his partner a pretty little brunette of a woman, somewhere about thirty years of age, and of no mean accomplishments. With this lady for his wife, Mr. Green lived for a period of three years in an easy and comfortable, not to say happy or blissful, state. The couple had no children; but with that exception they had all the ingredients which should contribute to the material and social happiness of human beings.

The disparity in age between Mr. and Mrs. Green was perhaps a circumstance that contributed to limit the sources of affection; but, as every body said, they jogged along very cheerily, and the serenity and calmness of their lives made them the objects of a good deal of envy.

Mrs. Green had been the daughter of a confidential clerk to her husband. She had lost her mother early in life, and her father died when she was but eighteen years of age. His salary in the house of Messrs. Green and Schnackwether had been, for a long period prior to his death, very liberal, and he might, with reasonable economy, have saved a few hundreds of pounds out of it if he had been so inclined. He ought, certainly, to have left some provision behind him in the shape of a life assurance, but he did not. He lived entirely up to, or somewhat beyond, his means. Miss Thomson, his daughter, was consequently obliged to earn her subsequent livelihood, which she did as a daily governess. Her experience in this vocation was not, I dare say, much unlike the experience of other young women in that position, of which the reader will have a tolerably accurate notion, and therefore I will abstain from describing it. It may be enough to say, that it was a cheerless, hard, and mortifying experience. She confessed that rebuffs and petty insults shut up, and the wearing influence of consecutive labour dried up, the wells of female emotion, gave a certain piquancy or sharpness to her thoughts, rendered her, indeed, distrustful of the world, and cynical, if not calculating and selfish.

During her girlhood, while her father lived, and after his death, but before her marriage, Mrs. Green had received many kindnesses from her late parent's master. He was attached to his clerk Thomson by that sort of attachment, and to that extent, which long and faithful service begets in the mind of an employer.

To do the father of Mrs. Green simple justice, it must be stated that he had never robbed; peculated, or been in the slightest degree unfaithful to the house he served, or its members.

Just before he died, the clerk received a promise from his master, Mr. Green, that little Helen should want for nothing as long as she lived, which promise was kept during her subsequent spinstership by inquiries, every quarter, with methodical exactness, how she was getting on, and what she wanted; answers to which questions were frankly given by her on all occasions, and betrayed to the merchant some requirement on her part every three months. It would now be a dress or a bonnet; it would on another occasion be the means of paying a quarter's rent of her apartments; it would again be something else. The article itself, or a cheque for its purchase or satisfaction, was uniformly forthcoming.

In this way a communication had been always maintained from the day of Thomson's death to the day of Miss Thomson's marriage between the young woman and her subsequent husband.

The courtship of the merchant was very prosaic. How long he had made up his mind that little Helen should be his wife, or at least have the chance of becoming his wife, is more than I can tell; but certain it is, that on one quarter-day--I mean her quarter-day--she received a note, in which she was invited to the house of the merchant. He said in this letter of invitation that he was very anxious to know how she was getting on, and what her prospects were; in fact, he said he was anxious to redeem the promise he had given to her dying father by the inquiries he had to make, and the intention he had formed of providing, if he could, for her welfare as long as she lived,

The last sentence was the only clue offered to the design of her benefactor. That clue was enough. It showed to her acute and reflecting mind what she might expect from the merchant, and she was thereby enabled to survey at her leisure, before the appointed interview, the prospect laid open to her. She balanced in her own mind all the apparent advantages and all the disadvantages of becoming Mrs. Green.

She had no very high respect for Mr. Green's character,--yet she had no aversion to him. He was, indeed, one of those easy-going, even-natured men, who neither arouse affection nor excite the opposite of love. He was by no means the ideal which she had formed of a husband. Yet how could she, who had been a poor daily governess all her life, release her ambition in this respect? She had indulged the hope, as I dare say most young women have hoped, to marry a man handsome, educated, and of gentlemanly training--with a fortune. She would have been satisfied with a man of good standing or prospects in either one of the liberal professions--the army, navy, the law, or even the church. But a dispassionate consideration of Mr. Green's letter drove away all the phantasms of such ambition. She came, by a process of the severest reasoning, to the conclusion, in the first place, that, if she rejected the merchant's intended proposal, she might offend him. That was not, after all, so very serious a matter, as she was not very largely dependent upon his bounty; yet she could hardly afford to lose a friend. This conclusion led her to survey the bright side of Mr. Green's intended proposal. She would certainly, as Mrs. Green, be mistress of a liberal establishment. His years denied the reasonable prospect of her ever having a child. Yet this young woman, hardened by experience, saw a compensation for that denial of a true woman's hope in the freedom from a mother's cares and troubles. It was something to get rid of the drudgery of toil, and escape the snubbing and rebuffs of her present vocation. "Yes," at length she said to herself, in forming her resolution, "I might do worse than become Mrs. Green."

There was only one small difficulty--there was a prior attachment. "Well," she said to herself, "I shall have to get rid of Edward. That is not so very difficult either. I do not think he would break his heart about it. I know I should not break mine if he were to throw me off. I do not believe in broken hearts. He cannot bring an action against me for breach of promise of marriage. That is a pleasant thing to know. I heard Mr. Jones, who is a lawyer, telling his wife at the tea-table only the other evening, that a gentleman never got any good by that, and I think he said a farthing was about the price a gentleman's damages would always be assessed at. Well, I could pay that sum without much injury to my own purse; and if any proceedings should be brought against my husband after I have married him. I suppose he would be responsible for them, among my other obligations, but I would pay that sum out of my pin-money."

Miss Thomson agreed within herself to become Mrs. Green, and had so far realised this speculation in the lottery of life, that she began to sketch her future home, make arrangements for her bridal trousseau, &c., within ten minutes after forming her resolution.

Miss Thomson's anticipations were correct. Her benefactor told her he had noticed she had been a very hard-working girl. The way she had striven to keep herself as a lady out of her own earnings, with such little assistance as he had felt bound to render her, reflected the highest possible credit upon her. He had noticed her conduct--he might say with admiration. He had never beheld such a combination of all the virtues which make up a good woman as he had seen in her. Now, he hoped he should not frighten or startle her by a communication that he was going to make. He had been living a lonely life, she was aware. He was not married. She knew he had no sister who could manage his household, and secure him those attentions and comforts in which he thought he might reasonably indulge after having been, he might say, a very successful man in trade.

During his speech Mr. Green stammered a little, and betrayed an unusual hesitation. At this point he had greater difficulty in articulation.

However, he proceeded to say that his admiration for her, and his belief in her virtues, and the other circumstances he had mentioned, had led him to offer her his hand and his heart.

The lady behaved as all ladies can, and I believe do, in such circumstances.

She delivered a very nice speech, which had been many times rehearsed in her bedchamber, and on the pavement as she trudged to and from the house of Mr. Jones, which, as a daily governess, she was in the habit of traversing, and at other times and places. Gratitude was a word that thickly interlarded her periods. She said that she did not know how to accept the proposal he made her, and, after a skilful pause or two, having come to the conclusion that there was no danger in a little delay (and, aside with the reader let me add, become convinced that there was no prospect of his withdrawing the offer), she craved time to consider his most noble proposal--not on her own account, because, if she was a selfish thing, he would see that she must at once say yes--but because she scarcely felt equal to the position, and because the prospect of such an elevation dazzled and bewildered her little brain.

This was the sum and substance of Miss Thomson's speech.

The reader has already been informed that Mr. Green and Miss Thomson were married, and his imagination will supply the links in the narrative between the last interview and the realisation of that event.

During the almost monotonous life Mr. and Mrs. Green lived, there would of course occasionally arise small vexations. Not that they quarrelled. Nothing of that sort marred their happiness.

The vexations I speak of were of the most simple and ordinary kind. A friend promised to come and dine with them, and did not keep that promise. The tradesmen were not punctual in the delivery of their goods. The wine-merchant occasionally deceived Mr. Green, which caused him annoyance. The dressmaker or the milliner was not so exact as he or she ought perhaps to have been in executing Mrs. Green's orders. And those sort of things annoyed the one or the other of them.

Another annoyance in this house arose from--what Mr. Henry Mayhew has entitled the greatest plague in life--a bad servant. They had one or two bad servants, and on several occasions Mrs. Green made the observation, not, I think, quite unique--a sort of remark, on the other hand, which had been made by other ladies, and I believe will be again--that it was impossible to get a good servant.

However, one good servant was at last obtained. She was a young woman about twenty-four or twenty-five years of age. She was, to say the least about her merits, somewhat pretty. I have heard her described as beautiful. When I last saw her, I thought her exceedingly beautiful. She was, moreover, by no means an illiterate girl. She had received a fair amount of education--a much better education than girls in her station usually receive.

In consequence of the superior manners of this girl she was admitted to a considerable share of the confidence and respect of both her master and her mistress, and was allowed an amount of discretion in the arrangements of the household which is not usually given or permitted in such cases. Mrs. Green contemplated, with her husband's approval, the extension of their establishment by the engagement of a third servant, and elevating this young woman to the position of a recognised companion to the lady.

Some time after this notion had been formed, there was discovered a new series of annoyances in the house of Mr. Green. A number of portable articles of value were missed. How they went appeared one of the greatest of all possible human mysteries. Discovery seemed impossible, and the irritation of the husband was excessive. His wife, moreover, inveighed in the bitterest terms against the undetected thief.

It was agreed between Mr. and Mrs. Green to lay all sorts of traps. They did so, but did not succeed in fixing any body with the crime.

The reader will imagine how such an affair operated. Not only did suspicion begin with the lowest and end with the highest of the three servants in the household, but it embraced every one of the few friends who came to see Mr. or Mrs. Green; and in the failure to discover the delinquent, or get the foundation for a rational and decided suspicion, even supernatural agencies were beginning to be hinted at by the wife. She, however, always prefaced her hints of this kind to her husband as women do their ideas of that sort, by a declaration that she was not superstitious, but if she was, &c. &c.

At length the loss of a gold watch, which Mr. Green had presented to his wife on her marriage, with a gold chain, drove that man pretty near the boundary of madness. When he first heard of it, he was frantic. He raved and he cursed, uttering language such as his wife had never heard from his lips before against some person or persons unknown, and vowing the direst vengeance against the offender. He declared that if he or she were his own brother or sister (which obviously could not be, as he had no brother or sister), he would transport him or hang him or her. And he also said that the worst feature of the case was the total impossibility in tracing the thief. He did not like to be beaten in that manner. It was so deuced aggravating not to know what had become of the things; that is, who had stolen them. It was such a hard thing to be suspecting all the servants and their friends. Was he to dismiss all the servants? If so, how did he know that he should then get rid of the thief? Was he to banish all his friends from his house? How did he know that it was some pretended friend that was robbing them? He finished in mutterings, which, although not capable of being accurately embalmed in printer's ink, may be safely interpreted as imprecations and direful threats.

In this mode his conversation with his wife one evening rambled; and at the conclusion of his incoherent ejaculations, he started to his feet as if he had made a grand discovery. "By G--, it must be somebody in the house. It must be one of the servants. It must be that girl you have so fondled and caressed. The ungrateful wretch! If I find it out to be her, and I must find it out, I will have her arrested, prosecuted, transported."

His wife was terrified. The idea of prosecuting this poor girl, whose life in many respects resembled her own,--the chief point of difference being, in fact, that she had not been able to catch a merchant husband,--told on Mrs. Green's sympathies. Yet, as she said to her husband--if he were right--it was horrid ingratitude in that girl to rob them so--if she had done it.

"But suppose," suggested the wife, "we should be mistaken, how cruel will be the suspicions we have engendered!"

"Cruel!" exclaimed the husband; "yes, if we are mistaken. But how can we be mistaken?"

He ran through the circumstances under which several articles of value had been lost, to show that no friend or acquaintance could have robbed them.

Burglary was impossible, because of the frequency, the width of time and occasion, and the comparative smallness, of the plunder.

It must, at all events, be one or other of the servants; and he felt it to be his duty to investigate the matter thoroughly. He was determined to do this. It was a duty they owed to themselves, and the other servants, and all their friends, and to the world, that this thief should be detected.

Mrs. Green said she could not bring her mind to a prosecution. She said that, at all events, the most she would do was to turn away either of the servants who was discovered. The case was certainly very bad, and the thief deserved all he or she got.

The husband reserved his decision. Perhaps, if the wretch confessed, he might be disposed to listen to her appeal for mercy. If that girl (for he persisted it must be her) dared to belie the evidence which must be got against her, he would have no compunction in hanging her.

With that kind of rashness or folly which men under such circumstances commit, he turned to his wife, and most unreasonably said to her, "Now, Helen, my dear, you must find out the thief for me. I know it must be that girl. Now, find her out."

Among the little trinkets Mrs. Green possessed were a bracelet and a locket, neither ofwhich had hitherto been missed.

Both of them had been seen by her and her husband within two days before the present conversation. She missed them, as she afterwards explained, the day following this conversation. It was very strange that they should have disappeared just at that time. For her part, she would, if she could, screen the culprit; but her husband's mandate left her no discretion. She was to find out the thief. What to do she did not know. She thought of searching the girl's boxes--or of having them searched by a policeman. No, she would not do that. She hoped that her husband would not prosecute. She therefore contented herself by communicating this further loss to Mr. Green, and explaining to him the reasons which had stayed her in the extreme means of discovery.

Mr. Green, on his return home, was uneasy and excited. Something had seemingly crossed him in the City. I believe an advice his house received that morning told the firm of the bankruptcy of a Hamburg correspondent. This fact had soured the merchant's temper, and inflamed his desire for vengeance.

When his wife communicated her suspicions, he at once insisted upon a search of the girl and of her trunks.

Just at this moment, or before the resolution was carried out, a friend dropped in to see them. He observed a gloom on the countenance of the merchant, and began to rally him. The visitor wanted to know whether the firm of Green and Schnackwether were going to appear in next Tuesday's _Gazette_, and what the devil was the matter with him. He did not care to avow his loss in the City, and found an adequate explanation in his losses at home.

This friend suggested that examining the trunks was perhaps not an unwise thing; but he also joined in the wife's appeal for mercy, said that he thought the better plan would be to send the girl off to her friends, if she had any, and that he would not advise the expense and trouble of a prosecution.

The merchant, however, fully explained his reasons for not acceding to the last suggestion, and resolved upon the search.

The three servants were called into the room which Mr. Green denominated his library, and, in the presence of his friend and his wife, they were catechised. They all stoutly denied the crime. They all shed tears, and sobbed, and demanded an investigation. They each resented the suspicion as cruel and unjust. A boy engaged as page and kitchen-assistant was defiant, and hinted vaguely that his father and mother would not stand it; that Mr. Green would hear about it; and that he would not stay in the house another moment after his boxes were searched--which they might be at once.

The search began with the boxes of the young male servant, and nothing was traced in them.

The trunks of the favoured young woman of superior beauty and accomplishments were next searched. In one of them was found one of these trinkets and a duplicate of the other.

Mr. Green's rage knew no bounds. In vain the girl protested her innocence, and declared it was the wicked device of some wretch for her destruction, or horrid conspiracy by some dreadful enemy to blast her reputation and dishonour her poor parents, which planted the evidence against her.

The merchant told her that if she confessed her crime he might forgive her. She would not admit a crime that, she said, she had not committed.

Mrs. Green remonstrated with the girl about her obstinacy, and advised her that it would be better to confess an offence which was so fairly brought home to her, and against the evidence of which it was impossible for a single moment to contend. The girl threw herself upon her mistress's sympathy, hoping that _she_ at least could not think her guilty of the crime attributed to her, although appearances were so much against her.

At last, under the cross-fire from these accusers, the young woman, who still refused to confess, dropped into a chair, and, in tones of agony, implored God to witness that she had never taken a thing that did not belong to her from any human being.

Mr. Green said this was more than he could stand. Such frightful hypocrisy, such horrid cant, such blasphemy, was the grossest outrage upon Heaven he had ever beheld. He told the boy to fetch a policeman, which service the lad rendered with alacrity. The already-convicted thief was given into the custody of the officer, taken to the station-house, and locked up.

The next day at the police-court the evidence of these facts was laid before the magistrate. The pawnbroker who had taken in the pledge was not able to identify the prisoner as the female who had pawned the article; but said that she was about the height, age, and appearance of the prisoner, although he would not swear to her. It was pledged, he said, about the hour of twelve in the morning; and Mrs. Green being called upon to give evidence as to the movements of her servant, with a view of confirming or breaking down the pawnbroker's suspicion--as the case might be--was obliged to say that Eliza had been out on an errand for her mistress between eleven and twelve o'clock on the day referred to.

The scene in that police-court was one of the most painful things ever witnessed. The prisoner had no professional assistance. No expert attorney was there to help or mar her defence. All she did, and all she said, was a repetition of what she had told her mistress and master and their friend the night before. She protested that she was as innocent as an unborn child; that her hands had been trained by parents (whose memory she revered, and who tenderly loved her) to honest industry; and that she had no more perpetrated these thefts than the worthy magistrate. She appealed to her mistress to bear evidence of her general character. (Mr. Green was not in court.) Her mistress gave her a general good character, and expressed the grief of herself and her husband at the discovery in the servant's boxes.

The magistrate put a question or two to the mistress, who seemed to betray an idea that one of the other servants, or some friend, had been the thief; or that, at least, the accused had not been, although she did not say as much in distinct terms.

The tone and manner of the girl had evidently impressed the magistrate with the belief that she was not in her proper place when in that dock before him as a criminal. He, however, remarked that the case was one of very grave suspicion, and that he should remand her for a week, in order that inquiries might be made, with a view to getting further evidence upon the case.

The accused had looked forward to her appearance in court as the ordeal which would establish her innocence. She had never doubted for a moment that a police magistrate would unravel the mystery, and turn the tide of false suspicion from her. When she heard the last words fall from the lips of the presiding justice, and ascertained that she was to be sent back to something like the loathsome cell she had passed the previous night in, her spirits gave way. She uttered one heart-rending shriek, swooned, and was carried down from the dock--senseless.

Mrs. Green narrated circumstantially to Mr. Green what had taken place in court that afternoon, with a minute exactness, as he sipped his wine after dinner. As she did so, I believe he half repented the prosecution of this poor girl, although not a shadow of a doubt rested upon his mind as to her guilt. He said he thought it was a pity she had not confessed. As the hours rolled on, and bedtime approached, and he was about entering the solemnity of night--when, I am inclined to think, men's better thoughts usually gain the ascendency (that is, unless the thinker be _intent_ on the perpetration of crime)--he confessed that he did not know what to do; that he thought the poor girl ought to have an attorney employed for her; and that he would see his lawyer about it in the morning.

Next morning after having perused his letters, Mr. Green went to consult Mr. Scrowle, his private solicitor, about the engagement of some other attorney for the defence of the girl. Mr. Scrowle, however, put rather a new complexion on the affair. When he heard the previous good character of the accused; when he was informed of her solemn protestations of innocence in the house; when it transpired that the boy had run for a policeman with such pleasant, not to say indecent, haste; and was told that the magistrate was impressed by the girl's declaration of innocence,--Mr. Scrowle suggested to his client, Mr. Green, that his servant had possibly been the victim of what is called by thieves a "plant;" that one of the servants (perhaps that boy) might have been the thief, and might have placed the things in the girl's box for the purpose of directing suspicion upon her. Mr. Green did not think it likely that his attorney was correct, because of the difficulty the boy would have in getting at the room from which the trinkets were taken; but his lawyer, in reply, said he did not think much of such an argument, because thieves found opportunities of getting what they wanted under the most adverse or difficult circumstances. The attorney then suggested that Mr. Green might possibly get into trouble over the matter himself.

Many reasons, but particularly the last reason, inclined Mr. Scrowle to endorse the suggestion of his client, that the girl should be provided with legal assistance, procured at the cost of the prosecutor; and, when this point had been settled, Mr. Green told his lawyer he thought that, after all, the girl had been punished enough, and that he should not have any objection whatever to letting her off, if it could be arranged, although she was an ungrateful and an obstinate minx for not confessing.

Mr. Green, who was a somewhat careful, not to say a penurious man, with great reluctance consented to give his solicitor authority to take what steps he might deem necessary,--either to pursue or to withdraw from the prosecution, to defend the girl, to unravel the mystery of the case, and to arrange it if possible, or thought that step expedient.

Mr. Green's solicitor, at this stage of the business, sent for me. I got leave to accompany the attorney who was employed for the defence (acting in the capacity of his clerk) to the house of detention, where we had an interview with the poor girl. It was one of the most painful scenes I have ever gone through. She had completely fascinated the matron and the female warders, who, accustomed to deal uniformly with crime, were slow to believe in any theory of a prisoner's innocence; yet they believed this girl perfectly innocent; and relying upon my experience of human nature, I almost immediately wrote her down as innocent.

It was evident to me, as I told her legal adviser, that a "plant" had been made upon her.

When he came out of the gaol, like a blackguard as he was, he said to me, "You must not let the case go off at the next examination, because both you and I ought to have some costs out of it." With difficulty I was prevented grasping the fellow by the throat. I did, however, suppress my loathing and indignation, and played the hypocrite with him sufficiently to suggest that it would be a good thing if we could get her off at once. There would be more credit attaching to us, I argued, than if the magistrate should commit the girl at the next examination for trial, and some ranting barrister of the Old-Bailey school got her off, and obtained all the merit. As to costs, I suggested that most likely some arrangement could be made for a fixed sum, so that he might earn as much by a successful defence at the next magistrates' meeting as at the sessions. These arguments had their weight with the attorney, and he soon coincided with me in thinking that we had better bring the case to as speedy a termination as we could.

At the suggestion of Mr. Green's own private attorney, I took a note of introduction to him at his house, with a view of consulting him directly on the facts of this case.

I was immediately shown into the library, where I found the merchant and his wife talking; and I was led into the drawing-room by Mr. Green, as I thought for the purpose of making a demonstration or producing an effect upon me.

We left Mrs. Green in the library. As Mr. Green, in the drawing-room, began to relate to me his conviction of the girl's guilt, my eye rested upon a splendid piano, the lid of which was closed, and, as I afterwards found, fastened, but jammed in which I thought I saw the corner of a note.

Here, I said to myself, is a clue. Something has been concealed in that piano for the purpose, I dare say, of removal to the pawnbroker's, or assayer's, hereafter. In imagination I dimly perceived, through the walnut-tree lid of the piano, something wrapped in that envelope of which a corner was palpably visible.

I did not venture to disclose my thoughts at once to Mr. Green. I did not know what effect any surprise might have upon him. I did not know that he might not spoil my game by some indiscretion on his part, if abruptly let into an explanation, &c. I let him talk, and I talked; but I thought also none the less.

Thus I mused as we chatted. Could that be a corner of an envelope, or was it a stray fragment of paper? It might or it might not be a clue. It might be nothing, after all, but an accidental bit of paper; or perhaps one of Mrs. Green's domestic accounts, laid there by her thoughtlessness.

No, it was a clue. It might not be a trinket. It might be a letter. I was perplexed and tantalised, and even, let me confess it, impatient to get that piano unlocked.

But Mr. Green might he seek to destroy the clue, in order to make good his consistency, if it led, as I had no doubt it would, in a contrary direction to that his suspicions had taken?

Towards the end of the interview we had this conversation: "Can you, sir, bear any sudden revelation touching this matter, which may, perhaps, show that you are wrong in your suspicions?" I asked.

"Sir," said Mr. Green, "I am an honest and upright man. I don't think I am wrong; but if you can show me that I am wrong, I am the man to confess so, and to make every reparation in my power."

"No doubt, sir; but you must pardon my caution. Gentlemen when surprised are not always so discreet as on ordinary occasions; and it must be an unpleasant thing to feel that you have been made a party to the punishment of an innocent person for a thief's crime."

Mr. Green had before this seriously looked at the possibility of its turning out that his servant had been injured by him. He had comforted himself by the notion that, as he had acted _bonâ fide_, no great blame could attach to him; and if such discovery were made, he had determined to pursue the honourable course of restoring the injured girl, as far as he could, to her place in society. He assured me again of that fact.

"Then," I continued, "you will place yourself entirely in my hands pending this investigation. I shall ask you to let me search this house from top to bottom, and in every nook and cranny."

Mr. Green scarcely liked that. I somewhat surprised him, and threw him for a moment in embarrassment.

"I hardly think that necessary," he said.

"I do," I said; "and you know I have had much experience. I am afraid that time enough has been already given for the destruction of some traces of guilt; but I am sure that every hour facilitates the destruction of others."

"As you will, then, sir," said the merchant.

"Then I will again ask you to fortify yourself against the discovery of any thing surprising; to act with reserve; and I would implore you not to get up a scene in my presence. If the lad or your other female servant should, as the result of my investigations, be hunted down this evening, I shall ask you to take no steps for his or her punishment, or until you have had time for reflection. In the mean time, I will take care of the proofs."

"Be it so, then, sir."

"I propose to begin the search in this room, as we are here."

"Yes, sir."

I stepped to the piano, and was about raising the lid, which, of course, did not open at my desire.

"Have you the key of this piano?"

"No; my wife has it. You had better ask Mrs. Green for it, sir."

He called his wife in.

"My dear," he said, "this gentleman is a private detective. I have told him that we are anxious for the fullest investigation, and shall be glad, indeed, if your servant in custody can be found innocent, although I feel that is totally impossible. Still he thinks he will be able to get some evidence that will divert suspicion from Eliza to one of the other servants."

"Well," observed Mrs. Green, "it is an unpleasant thing to have one's house pulled about in this way; but I suppose it cannot be avoided."

I nodded assent to the lady's speech.

"Will you let me have the key of this piano?" I inquired.

"The piano, sir!" she said falteringly. "That is my piano. What do you require the key of _that_ for?" And the colour came and went from her olive countenance, in a way that told me I had discovered the real thief in the merchant's wife.

A train of thought passed through my mind as rapidly as messages are conveyed by the harnessed lightning over house-tops, beneath the solid earth, or under the sea. This was a curious little instance of kleptomania. The poor wife's morbid secretiveness, acquisitiveness, or whatever a phrenologist might call "the organ," was in large excess. I pitied her. Could I here abandon the search, and leave the poor lady's crime a mystery, or an undetected fact? No; that would not do. She, at least, had permitted the servant, my client, to be accused. I knew the depth of woman's cunning. I know how tenaciously one will cling to the outward forms of respectability and of virtue. I know how horribly unscrupulous a criminal at bay, with the chance of setting the dogs of the law on the wrong scent, could be. To relax in my vigilance would be fatal to my innocent client, whose late mistress, the real thief, would forge other proofs of the guilt of the guiltless.

Why did I reason to myself thus? Does not innocence tremble, and lose its self-possession under the remotest suspicion of an offence? Does not guilt, as a rule, maintain its self-possession, and look with a bold front upon the perils of its situation? Yes. Ordinarily I see in embarrassment an indication, not of guilt, but of innocence. But in Mrs. Green's case there was a firmness with the embarrassment; there was an expression which I cannot describe in words. There was a dread of me visible in the attempt to hide that fear. There was an indescribable _something_, which operated on my mind as moral evidence.

"I won't press for the key, madam, if you are unwilling to let me have it."

"I am unwilling only, sir, because I think it an impudent request."

"Madam," I replied, "no request can be impudent which is explained by the fact that I am collecting evidence to rescue innocence from ruin and shame."

"I shall not give you the key of my piano."

"Again, madam, I say I will not press you for it; but I will state, in the presence of your husband, that I think it necessary to know what is contained in that piece of furniture."

Mr. Green was thunderstruck, and bewildered to the verge of insanity. A light dawned upon his mind, of which I was then unconscious. He recollected, as he shortly after told me, that not a week before, having entered the drawing-room, in order to meet his wife, on his return from the City about half an hour before his usual time, he found her sitting by the piano. She heavily closed the lid of it as he opened the door.

It was a minute or two after this light dawned upon him before he recovered his self-possession enough to open his mouth.

His first silent inquiry then was how to save his own humiliation by covering his wife's disgrace; but this desire mingled with indignation and disgust that she, so well provided for--even to the matter of pin-money--should rob her own home. It was, he argued, criminal insanity. Yet he must dissemble, and baffle me if he could, he thought.

"I don't see what you want to open my wife's piano for, or why you can wish to inspect the piece of paper, if it be a piece of paper, you see, which I am not certain about."

"Mr. Green," I said solemnly, "I shall insist upon opening that piano. I shall break it open if the key is not given me. I have a trust reposed in me, than which nothing can be more solemn or stern. It is my habit, sir, to do my duty; and in the present case no earthly consideration of profit or reward would induce me to forego the slightest clue to the vindication of the woman whose fate, I may say, is in my hands."

The situation was a very awkward one for all parties.

I thought the better plan would be to take upon myself the first action, and thus relieve Mrs. Green from any further refusal to produce the key, by taking from my pocket a small instrument sufficiently powerful to break the lock. I did this, and neither husband nor wife ventured to resist me.

As I lifted the lid a letter became visible. Mrs. Green snatched at it, endeavouring to grasp it off the key-board of the instrument.

I had anticipated such an act on her part, and, as she felt the resistance of my right arm, I took it with my left hand.

"That is a letter of mine, sir."

"It may be, madam; but I must know the contents."

"Do you allow that?" she inquired of her husband.

"I am entitled," he said, "to my wife's letters. They are surely not your property, but mine."

"I have no dispute, sir, about the property in the letter; but its contents, I suspect, belong to an unfortunate young woman now lying in prison on a charge of which I take her to be as guiltless as you are."

"I don't know how you propose to make that out," said the wife.

"Nor do I, in frankness I may admit," was my rejoinder, "yet _know_; but I think this letter will help me to the solution of the whole mystery of the case."

Again it appeared to me that I must extricate the merchant and his wife from momentary difficulty by some action on my part.

"I shall," I said, "keep this letter until next Monday, when, if you insist upon it, it shall be handed over to the magistrate; but, in strictness, I must say I think I ought to read it at once, and, if I afterwards see fit, hand it over to the prisoner's attorney."

"I don't," said Mr. Green. "You must give it up to me."

His wife also vehemently claimed it.

"With all respect to you, sir, and to you, madam, I shall take the responsibility of detaining it."

The husband, who all this while had been a prey to intensely painful emotion, then desired his wife to leave us alone, saying that he would manage me; and, after considerable hesitation, she did so. As she left the room I thought I could distinctly trace, in the lines of that pretty countenance, the external signs of a mind racked with the agony of crime.

When she had left, I took a chair, and Mr. Green did the same.

"This letter, sir," I said, "may be an ordinary one, containing nothing that can affect the unfortunate prisoner's case; and if so I shall be perfectly prepared to hand it over to you at once; but I shall now ask, if you please, as a matter of courtesy, to permit me to read it."

"A letter of my wife's, sir!"

"Yes, a letter of your wife's; and I can promise you no secrecy about its contents until I know what they are. If these contents be not essential to the interests of the prisoner, and do not call for its use, whatever be the secret this letter embodies, no living soul will get the least idea of that secret from me. If, on the other hand, it will furnish a material link in the evidence of that unfortunate girl's innocence, no considerations, no regard to the position, circumstances, or happiness of you, will induce me to abstain from using it in a way to secure her liberation."

"I think you should let me read it first," said the husband, in terror.

"You must allow me to reverse the order of perusal. _I_ must read it first."

Mr. Green rose and paced the room. I sat musing, and observing him. At last he turned, and said,

"I know I can rely upon your judgment sir." He sat down beside me. I read the letter in tones loud enough for him to hear, but let no sentence or word of it pass through the keyhole of that drawing-room door.

We drew our chairs closer together as I read the letter. It was addressed to the merchant's wife, in the handwriting of the party with whom the prior attachment of her heart had been contracted,--from whom it had never been severed. She had in vain sought to wean her affections from him as soon as she received the proposal from her present husband; but it was useless. Cold, cynical, calculating, as she had been rendered by stern experience, there was yet in her breast sufficient of that element of human love to bind the attachment of her purer days. She did not muster courage for a long while to apprise the lover of her intended marriage. When she did so, he received it with what he called "philosophical resignation." He professed to resign her, and no doubt did resign her, to what he said and conceived would be "a more satisfactory marriage." It was, however, agreed between the lovers that their acquaintance should continue on the basis of friendship; but neither of them being led by high and lofty sentiment, being indeed both of a somewhat inferior nature, they were incapable of maintaining that cold relationship which even better minds might have found it no easy task to preserve in its frigid integrity. The attachment of friendship ripened into criminal love before the merchant took the lady to the altar. That criminal relationship continued after marriage. Misfortune fell upon the lover nearly as soon as good fortune was realised by the woman intended for his wife, who had become the wife of another. He applied to her to assist him with her purse. She did this with all she could obtain from her husband--saved from domestic outlay. The demands upon the wife from this source, however, increased with her freedom or desire to satisfy them. Money, easily and ill-gotten by the paramour from his mistress, was lightly spent. What had been asked for in the first instance in tones of humble supplication, was ere long demanded under threats of exposure.

The letter taken from the piano demanded the sum of 10_l._, in order that the writer might satisfy what he was pleased to call "a debt of honour" within three days. He must, he said, have the money, and he would have it. The wretch had the brutal audacity to say to this unfortunate woman in his power, "You have more to suffer by exposure than I have; and look out, if you don't let me have the money." This amount the wretched woman could not procure. She had about a week previously supplied him with a like sum, and his demands upon her had of late been so heavy that she had been in daily apprehension her husband would discover the malversation of the funds he had supplied her with to keep his house. Bills which she professed to have paid remained unsatisfied. Several hundreds of pounds had been diverted from their legitimate application. She had, therefore, on this occasion, as she had done on some other occasions when similarly situated, given him the material by which, through the pawnbroker, or in some such mode, he might raise the money he required for his unhallowed purposes; and be once more extracted, through his criminal hold over the mind, conscience, and body of the wife, the cash to expend in debauchery. The watch and chain, and some other trinkets, had been given by the wife to her paramour, and by him disposed of.

The effect which this letter produced upon the merchant may be more easily conceived than described. It is enough to say that this tolerably strong-minded man, who had so well played his part throughout the interview I have at such length described, here broke down, completely unnerved. He put himself under my guidance, and quitted the house with me that evening, leaving Mrs. Green therein--alone.

Mr. Green and I had a meeting on the following day at the office of his solicitor, to whom I handed a copy of the letter; and I also supplied a copy to the attorney for the prisoner. It was arranged between Mr. Green's solicitor and his client that a person should be sent up to take immediate possession of the house at Kentish Town, which he had evacuated on the previous night.

The man, on his arrival there, discovered that Mrs. Green had fled. She took her departure early that morning. She left no article behind that was easy of removal. A somewhat extensive wardrobe was packed in boxes. All the articles of jewelry, that were easily convertible into money, she also took. Mr. Green had, at my suggestion, left her ten cheques, drawn upon his private bankers, for 5_l._ each, and each post-dated seven days apart. These, of course, she took with her. She left no address behind her. She took neither of the servants for companionship. Whither she had gone to nobody knew, nor did I care.

There was a meeting between the solicitor for the prosecutor and the solicitor for the prisoner--in confidence, and without prejudice.

Communications were, under this shield, freely exchanged. The poor girl was told that an application would be made for her release, when next taken before the magistrate, under circumstances that would be afterwards explained to her. She was further informed that her master was confident of her innocence; that the guilty person had been traced, but would not be prosecuted. For the injury she had received at his hands, which he was sorry to confess was the consequence of his rash impulses, he asked her forgiveness, which she readily granted him.

At the next examination before the magistrate the prosecutor's solicitor, who appeared for the first time, said that the case had been investigated since the former meeting, and that he would ask his worship's permission to be allowed to withdraw from the prosecution. The magistrate at once turned to the prisoner's solicitor, asked whether he had any objection to that course, and received for reply that his client had no objection to her release without conditions.

The poor girl was accordingly liberated, and taken away under the care of a relative, in whose hands means were placed for her immediate comfortable provision. Mr. Green provided those means.