Dr. Sam Johnson, Detector

by Lillian de la Torre

  “And ask them for the heiress of Lothian?” I suggested.

  “Why, you read them aright after all,” acknowledged Dr. Johnson. “But we cannot leave them here. I’ll carry the fine gentleman with the foul tongue to the lean-to, and do you and Ritter transport his accomplice to the bathing-shed. ’Tis damp, but sturdy, and will keep him close till time to depart.”

  So it was done. I returned to our chamber bursting with curiosity to question my astute friend about the events of the night. What was my disappointment, then, to find him already asleep in his bed, and beside him, shorn and washed, albeit somewhat sketchily, and attired in a ruffled shirt much too large for him, Monboddo’s erstwhile wild boy. I was forced to blow out my candle and retire unsatisfied.

  When I awoke the morning sun was streaming through the casement. I looked across at the bed opposite. It was empty. Dr. Johnson had arisen, and to my surprise very betimes, for the sun was only just above the horizon; and he had taken the now civilized wild boy with him.

  I made haste to rise in my turn, and followed him down. As I entered the kitchen, what a sight met my eyes! There sat the wild boy at the breakfast table on a sturdy chair, supported for the increase of altitude by a heavy copy of Foxe’s Martyrs. He was still swathed in the amplitude of my learned friend’s ruffled shirt. A session at the pump had left him glistening with cleanliness and washed away the dark stain which his accomplices had applied. His dark hair had been unskilfully shortened, and stood up in wet spikes all over his small head. A plate before him was piled with viands, and he was plying knife and fork, though not elegantly, yet with assurance.

  My learned friend sat beside him, eating oat cakes, and drinking tea. Opposite him the little Scotch philosopher was neglecting his chocolate to watch fascinated his small guest’s gastronomick feats. Somewhere Dr. Johnson had found the remains of last night’s mutton; he was plying his small friend with collops as fast as he could eat them. The radicivorous Lord of Session was mute with disapproval.

  I took my place and opened my mouth to give expression to the questions which were thronging there; but Dr. Johnson imperiously signed for silence, and bestowed another gobbet on the now civilized wild boy.

  At last the boy heaved a sigh of pure repletion, and pushed back Foxe’s Martyrs. Dr. Johnson set down his fifth cup of tea (for it is slander to allege, as did Mrs. Blacklock in Edinburgh, that the great man was accustomed to consume twenty-two cups to his breakfast).

  “Now, my dear sir,” cried Lord Monboddo, “pray lay aside this air of mystery and reveal to me how you have achieved the civilization of this young savage in the space of twenty-four hours. This is certainly a notable achievement, and one which I am eager to communicate to my friend M. Condamine.”

  “Sir,” replied Dr. Johnson gravely, “you owe it to the address of this young savage, as you call him, that the danger is passed that your hoard of gold may be rifled—”

  “Pshaw, a trifle,” ejaculated Monboddo.

  “And your chymical researches brought to naught.”

  “How!” cried Monboddo. “Who are these miscreants? They shall be punished!”

  “They shall indeed,” promised Dr. Johnson. “With the help of Mr. Boswell and the man Ritter we have laid them by the heels, and I propose to transport them to Aberdeen with the luggage in our chaise; for they are clearly London cullies, and none of your homegrown product.”

  “Sir,” cried the little philosopher, “I am indebted to you. Pray disclose how you came to uncover the plot against me.”

  “My Lord,” replied my friend, “’twas this worthy boy who disclosed the plot to me; he has served you well, and I recommend him to your protection.”

  “He shall be protected,” promised Lord Monboddo. “I’ll educate him myself; I’ll make him a lawyer.”

  The wild boy slipped down from Foxe’s Martyrs, and leaned shyly against Monboddo’s chair. The benevolent little Scotchman patted the thin shoulder.

  “There’s a good boy,” he said. “Pray, Dr. Johnson, does he understand me?”

  “Perfectly, my Lord; if you do not address him in too philosophical a strain.”

  “I marvel how you attained such a result, sir.”

  “You must understand, my Lord, that your wild boy is a creature uniquely wild, not at all to be compared to Peter or to Memmie Le Blanc, being wilder than either and yet sharper. By little and little as he gains confidence he will speak to you; but you are by no means to question him about whence he came, but rather erase it from his memory. I adjure you to feed him well, and not confine his diet to the vegetable kind, for you have seen that out of instinct he chose the joint.”

  “He shall be carnivorous, Dr. Johnson.”

  “Then, sir,” said Dr. Johnson, “as I perceive our chaise is at the door with the brave Ritter in attendance, we will take our leave.”

  “Sir,” replied Lord Monboddo, “I’m like the Romans, ‘happy to come, happy to depart’.”

  We parted with great kindness. Stowed out of sight, the pale-faced man could be heard cursing steadily in his well-modulated, cultivated voice; but his words were muffled. As we sat in the chaise ready to depart, the former wild boy leaped from Monboddo’s side, swarmed up the side of the chaise, and clung about Dr. Johnson’s neck, whispering farewells in his ear.

  “Have no fear,” said Dr. Johnson to him kindly, “obey good Lord Monboddo in all things, and all will be well.”

  The boy nodded his touselled head, and ran back to cling to the skirts of the little Scotchman’s coat, as the chaise rolled out of the door-yard.

  As we rolled swiftly along on the highway to Aberdeen, the cursing of the white-faced man died away to sulky silence; which Dr. Johnson suddenly broke with a great shout of laughter, giving himself up to it, rolling his great frame from side to side as he bellowed out his mirth.

  “Ho, ho, Bozzy,” cried he, “did you mark the face on the little philosopher when his wild boy chose the good roast mutton? I’ll warrant you that will stop his cant about alimentary balance. Ho, ho, the brave wild boy!”

  “Sir,” said I severely, “in my judgement Lord Monboddo has been abused. Trust me, you knew when you tried him with the mutton and turnips that the boy was no wild boy.”

  Dr. Johnson stopped laughing and looked at me.

  “That is so,” he said, “but how did you know?”

  “’Tis clear,” I replied, “that you proposed a Torquemada’s trick on the wild boy only to learn from his behaviour whether he understood what you said or no. He betrayed himself, and subsequently you were able to force from him a confession of his part in the plot.”

  “Bravo, Bozzy,” cried Dr. Johnson. “But, indeed, the lad had no stomach for the scheam, and played his part only out of fear. I had only to promise him protection, and he was quite ready to admit the robbers into the trap in which we took them.”

  BOSWELL: “How could he admit them into a house so closely locked and barred?”

  JOHNSON: “With the keys.”

  BOSWELL: “Surely he could not hope that Lord Monboddo would let him come at the keys.”

  JOHNSON: “He had not been an hour in the house when he adroitly slipped them from our friend’s pocket before our eyes.”

  BOSWELL: “Yet though he came by them, how could he keep them? He could hardly conceal them about him.”

  “Why,” said my learned friend, laughing, “you saw him conceal them.”

  “I did?”

  “And you saw me recover them; though your haste to think me gone quite mad prevented you from asking what I meant by the nuts in this tree.”

  “Over the door!” I cried in a burst of enlightenment.

  “Just so,” replied Dr. Johnson, nodding vigorously. “I recovered them, and frustrated any attempt that night. When the next day I found the lad ready to fall in with my scheam to entrap the miscreants, I restored the front door key long enough for him to use it.”

  “What foreign tongue,” I enquired curiously, “does the boy spe
ak?”

  “That is no foreign tongue,” replied my widely-learned friend, “but thieves’ cant, very common in London and the country over. Nor does the boy speak any more than he has picked up from his criminal companions in this adventure.”

  “I marvel where they found a boy so agile and apt for the part,” said I.

  “Nothing is easier,” replied Dr. Johnson. “I will go into Edinburgh and buy you twenty such.”

  “Twenty wild boys?” I demanded incredulously.

  “Twenty chimney-sweeps,” replied Dr. Johnson.

  “What will Monboddo do with a chimney-sweep?” mused I.

  “Educate him,” replied Dr. Johnson. “’Tis a sharp lad, and will do well at the law. I would have sent him back to Edinburgh, but the lad had taken a prodigious fancy to Monboddo. ’Twill amuse the little philosopher; and sure an Edinburgh street urchin is wild enough boy for anybody, and will vastly interest M. Condamine.”

  “I cannot think,” I confessed, “how you smoaked the imposture in the first place.”

  “Why, sir,” replied Dr. Johnson, “yonder lout who did the talking had no sooner opened his mouth than he was out with a whooping great lie. We caught him, says he, in a tree eating nuts—nuts in August! And as to catching him in a tree, pray whoever heard tell of a tree in Scotland?”

  The Manifestations in Mincing Lane

  “Sir,” said Dr. Johnson, “the manifestations of the Cock Lane Ghost were a nine-days’ wonder; and so may this be.”

  He gave me the letter that he had been reading. The boy who had brought it waited stolidly by the door.

  Writ in a sprawling hand on a yellowing scrap of old laid paper, I read:

  SIR,

  One who was an admiring Spectator, when Dr. Johnson interviewed the Cock Lane Ghost, makes bold, to recommend to his Consideration the Plight of Mr. Gudgeon, the worthy Sexton of All Hallows Staining. Mr. Gudgeon’s Daughter, an estimable and pious young Lady, has suffered considerable Distress of Mind, in Consequence of the Activities of such a rapping Spirit as infested Cock Lane. Mr. Gudgeon would take it very kindly if Dr. Johnson would look into the Matter; as would also,

  Sir,

  Your obliged humble Servant,

  illegible scrawl

  I looked up from the paper.

  “Is this a jest?” I enquired.

  “Not so,” replied Dr. Johnson. “My illegible friend is the Rector of All Hallows Staining, a most respectable man. If he says Scratching Fanny is walking again, ’tis so.”

  We were sitting together, as we so often did, over our wonted table at the Mitre Tavern. The business of dining was happily over, and we were taking our ease in the smoky wainscotted room. ’Twas in the autumn of 1769. My distinguished friend was then in the full plenitude of his powers, and I longed to see his giant intellect grapple with those problems of the other world which held so powerful a fascination for his philosophical spirit of enquiry, as for my more volatile curiosity.

  I glanced at the sleepy-looking boy, waiting for his answer, and read off the reverend Rector’s postscriptum.

  “P. S. Mr. Gudgeon resides in Mincing Lane by Clothworkers’ Hall.”

  “Come, then,” I cried eagerly, “let us call on the good sexton in Mincing Lane.”

  “I am very well where I am,” returned my learned friend lazily.

  “Parson bade me say,” said the stolid boy, “Miss did see a napparition last night a-floating in the air. So Gudgeon says, he bade me say.”

  “An apparition!” cried my curious friend, rising. “Floating in the air! Why, this is an improvement over Cock Lane!”

  I seized the moment.

  “Run, boy,” I said, “and say that we will come down to Mincing Lane directly.”

  My learned friend surveyed the house in Mincing Lane, a beetling dark half-timbered old place, perhaps a couple of centuries old.

  “This is a most proper site,” said he, “for a haunting. I’ll lay a little the old place has a history.”

  “It may be,” said I; “but do you then credit the reverend gentleman’s story?”

  “Sir,” replied Dr. Johnson, “I credit that the young woman believes in her apparitions; and I hold that in just such a house an hysterical miss may most likely give way to her fancies.”

  He rapped smartly on the nearest door. The door was opened a crack, and a lowering, bottle-nosed, pock-scarred visage peered at us through the aperture.

  “Mr. Gudgeon?” enquired Dr. Johnson affably.

  A red-rimmed eye blinked suspiciously. The bald red head jerked.

  “Next door,” said the surly creature, to my surprize in accents of breeding.

  “Pray excuse a stranger,” began Dr. Johnson courteously, but his polite inclination was met by the slamming of the door.

  We then perceived that the broad dark front of the old dwelling presented to the street two similar doors, side by side, and we hastened to announce our arrival by a sounding summons at the second door. This time the door was set wide for us, and we were greeted by a broad motherly woman in a brown stuff gown. About her feet clung a pair of babies in leading strings, a sulky little boy and a most exquisite Fragonard of a little girl. In the sunlight their hair gleamed like spun raw silk, the woman’s like tow. The woman identified herself as Mrs. Gudgeon. She was contemptuous when we disclosed our errand.

  “Mally? The silly chit has a touch of the mother, naught else, believe me. I’d take the besom to her, were she mine. Lying in her bed the live-long day, and the best bed in the house she must have, too, and never lifting a finger to the housework, because, forsooth, she sees things! Sulky and pouty as she’s been these three weeks past, since we sent off young George Tucker the carpenter’s boy—mark me, ’tis all one of her tricks. Sir, if you’re a clergyman or one of them learned doctors you’ll be doing your Christian duty if you bring down the hussy’s pride a little and make her see reason. Spectres indeed! I’m fair disgusted with her fits and her folly. Ah, well, thank God she’s none of mine! The first Mrs. Gudgeon was a fool, and Gudgeon’s no better. This way, sir.”

  Sweeping the two babes before her, the muttering woman led us up a narrow pair of stairs and past a closed door to where another heavy dark doorway led into the back room of the old house. Without knocking, the woman burst through the door and abruptly addressed a figure half hidden in the curtains of a massive bed.

  “Come, then, Mally, leave off your snivelling and attend, for here’s Dr. Johnson come to show you your duty and do you good.—No, precious, wait for Mother in the passage, your sister Mally’s a bad girl and not fitten to be spoke to.—Mally! Did you hear me?”

  The girl on the bed lifted her long dark lashes from her white cheeks for a flash of time, then veiled her eyes again. She was no more than fifteen, slim and undeveloped, with a round pale childish face and a small colourless mouth. She lay on the pillow in a cloud of soft dark hair.

  As we gazed at the expressionless face, a long lank figure unfolded itself from a low chair on the other side of the bed. This was Gudgeon, the sexton of the old church of All Hallows Staining. The man was all run to bone. His dangling hands were enormous. His stooped and cadaverous figure towered above the sturdy height of my learned friend. His long bony countenance surmounted a great knob of an Adam’s apple, and was crowned with lanky unkempt locks of long dusty black hair.

  “Let the lass be,” he said in a rumbling bass.

  “Let her give over her sojering, then,” said his wife pettishly, and flounced out of the room.

  I looked about the gloomy chamber. It was panelled in walnut, and had been fine in its day. The little thick leaded panes of the window gave upon a wide court and thence on the churchyard of All Hallows Staining; but only a trickle of dusty light came through. The room was sparsely furnished with a flimsy chest and a chair or two, and dominated by the great brass-bound bedstead sailing like a barge on the worn bare floor, canopied meanly in scanty homespun curtains.

  “Your servant, Dr. Johnson,” said
Gudgeon. “I’m grateful to you, sir, for coming, for I’m concerned for my girl.” His bony hand smoothed the coverlet gently.

  “Why, sir,” returned Dr. Johnson kindly, “if Mally’s a good girl and says her prayers with attention, I’m sure she has naught to fear, she’ll have no more dreams.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the girl Mally meekly. “Please, sir, they wasn’t dreams.”

  “Of course they were, my child,” Dr. Johnson assured her. “You are to tell me, my dear, what have you been dreaming?”

  The child’s lip quivered. Gudgeon began the story for her.

  “’Tis now two nights gone,” he said, “that my girl woke us all with screaming and crying, and when we came to her she swore that she’d heard the spirits rapping at her bed head and moaning and mumbling and trying to tell her something. She was fair beside herself, screaming and crying that she’d lie in that room no more.”

  “Now I find,” said Dr. Johnson, “that the child has sense. Let her lie elsewhere and she’ll lie in peace.”

  “’Tis not so easy done, sir,” rejoined Gudgeon. “Our gear is but scant, and there’s no bed for Mally but this one.”

  “Let it be moved, then.”

  “’Tis fixed where it is, and so we found it when we moved here last year. The little tykes lie with us in front, and my sister on a pallet by the kitchen fire. No, sir, Mally must still lie here and conquer her dreams.”

  “Well, sir, and so Mally lay in this chamber again last night.”

  “Ay, and ’twas worse than before. Last night she saw It.”

  “What did you see, my dear?”

  The child’s eyelids flickered up.

  “It was in the air,” she said. “The wall melted, and It was in the air.”

  “What was in the air?”

  “It held a corpse-candle before It,” whispered Mally. “It was in Its shroud, and I could see Its face all white, all but the finger-marks. There was a screech, and I opened my eyes, and there It was in the air.”

  “Then what did It do?” asked Dr. Johnson gently.

  “Then It came down and walked on the floor, and It bent over me.” The small voice died dry in the child’s throat. The frightened eyes closed.