The Victorian Mystery Megapack: 27 Classic Mystery Tales

by Charles Dickens

  “That’s the story, sir.”

  II: THE ARTFUL TOUCH

  “One of the most beautiful things that ever was done, perhaps,” said Inspector Wield, emphasising the adjective, as preparing us to expect dexterity or ingenuity rather than strong interest, “was a move of Sergeant Witchem’s. It was a lovely idea!

  “Witchem and me were down at Epsom one Derby Day, waiting at the station for the Swell Mob. As I mentioned, when we were talking about these things before, we are ready at the station when there’s races, or an Agricultural Show, or a Chancellor sworn in for an university, or Jenny Lind, or anything of that sort; and as the Swell Mob come down, we send ’em back again by the next train. But some of the Swell Mob, on the occasion of this Derby that I refer to, so far kidded us as to hire a horse and shay; start away from London by Whitechapel, and miles round; come into Epsom from the opposite direction; and go to work, right and left, on the course, while we were waiting for ’em at the Rail. That, however, ain’t the point of what I’m going to tell you.

  “While Witchem and me were waiting at the station, there comes up one Mr. Tatt; a gentleman formerly in the public line, quite an amateur Detective in his way, and very much respected. ‘Halloa, Charley Wield,’ he says. ‘What are you doing here? On the look out for some of your old friends?’ ‘Yes, the old move, Mr. Tatt.’ ‘Come along,’ he says, ‘you and Witchem, and have a glass of sherry.’ ‘We can’t stir from the place,’ says I, ‘till the next train comes in; but after that, we will with pleasure.’ Mr. Tatt waits, and the train comes in, and then Witchem and me go off with him to the Hotel. Mr. Tatt he’s got up quite regardless of expense, for the occasion; and in his shirt-front there’s a beautiful diamond prop, cost him fifteen or twenty pound—a very handsome pin indeed. We drink our sherry at the bar, and have had our three or four glasses, when Witchem cries suddenly, ‘Look out, Mr. Wield! stand fast!’ and a dash is made into the place by the Swell Mob—four of ’em—that have come down as I tell you, and in a moment Mr. Tatt’s prop is gone! Witchem, he cuts ’em off at the door, I lay about me as hard as I can, Mr. Tatt shows fight like a good ’un, and there we are, all down together, heads and heels, knocking about on the floor of the bar—perhaps you never see such a scene of confusion! However, we stick to our men (Mr. Tatt being as good as any officer), and we take ’em all, and carry ’em off to the station.

  “The station’s full of people, who have been took on the course; and it’s a precious piece of work to get ’em secured. However, we do it at last, and we search ’em; but nothing’s found upon ’em, and they’re locked up; and a pretty state of heat we are in by that time, I assure you!

  “I was very blank over it, myself, to think that the prop had been passed away; and I said to Witchem, when we had set ’em to rights, and were cooling ourselves along with Mr. Tatt, ‘we don’t take much by this move, anyway, for nothing’s found upon ’em, and it’s only the braggadocia, (2) after all.’ ‘What do you mean, Mr. Wield?’ says Witchem. ‘Here’s the diamond pin!’ and in the palm of his hand there it was, safe and sound! ‘Why, in the name of wonder,’ says me and Mr. Tatt, in astonishment, ‘how did you come by that?’ ‘I’ll tell you how I come by it,’ says he. ‘I saw which of ’em took it; and when we were all down on the floor together, knocking about, I just gave him a little touch on the back of his hand, as I knew his pal would; and he thought it was his pal; and gave it me!’ It was beautiful, beau-ti-ful!

  “Even that was hardly the best of the case, for that chap was tried at the Quarter Sessions at Guildford. You know what Quarter Sessions are, sir. Well, if you’ll believe me, while them slow justices were looking over the Acts of Parliament, to see what they could do to him, I’m blowed if he didn’t cut out of the dock before their faces! He cut out of the dock, sir, then and there; swam across a river; and got up into a tree to dry himself. In the tree he was took—an old woman having seen him climb up—and Witchem’s artful touch transported him!”

  III: THE SOFA

  “What young men will do, sometimes, to ruin themselves and break their friends’ hearts,” said Sergeant Dornton, “it’s surprising! I had a case at Saint Blank’s Hospital which was of this sort. A bad case, indeed, with a bad end!

  “The Secretary, and the House-Surgeon, and the Treasurer, of Saint Blank’s Hospital, came to Scotland Yard to give information of numerous robberies having been committed on the students. The students could leave nothing in the pockets of their great-coats, while the great-coats were hanging at the hospital, but it was almost certain to be stolen. Property of various descriptions was constantly being lost; and the gentlemen were naturally uneasy about it, and anxious, for the credit of the institution, that the thief or thieves should be discovered. The case was entrusted to me, and I went to the hospital.

  “‘Now, gentlemen,’ said I, after we had talked it over; ‘I understand this property is usually lost from one room.’

  “Yes, they said. It was.

  “‘I should wish, if you please,’ said I, ‘to see the room.’

  “It was a good-sized bare room down-stairs, with a few tables and forms in it, and a row of pegs, all round, for hats and coats.

  “‘Next, gentlemen,’ said I, ‘do you suspect anybody?’

  “Yes, they said. They did suspect somebody. They were sorry to say, they suspected one of the porters.

  “‘I should like,’ said I, ‘to have that man pointed out to me, and to have a little time to look after him.’

  “He was pointed out, and I looked after him, and then I went back to the hospital, and said, ‘Now, gentlemen, it’s not the porter. He’s, unfortunately for himself, a little too fond of drink, but he’s nothing worse. My suspicion is, that these robberies are committed by one of the students; and if you’ll put me a sofa into that room where the pegs are—as there’s no closet—I think I shall be able to detect the thief. I wish the sofa, if you please, to be covered with chintz, or something of that sort, so that I may lie on my chest, underneath it, without being seen.’

  “The sofa was provided, and next day at eleven o’clock, before any of the students came, I went there, with those gentlemen, to get underneath it. It turned out to be one of those old-fashioned sofas with a great cross-beam at the bottom, that would have broken my back in no time if I could ever have got below it. We had quite a job to break all this away in the time; however, I fell to work, and they fell to work, and we broke it out, and made a clear place for me. I got under the sofa, lay down on my chest, took out my knife, and made a convenient hole in the chintz to look through. It was then settled between me and the gentlemen that when the students were all up in the wards, one of the gentlemen should come in, and hang up a great-coat on one of the pegs. And that that great-coat should have, in one of the pockets, a pocket-book containing marked money.

  “After I had been there some time, the students began to drop into the room, by ones, and twos, and threes, and to talk about all sorts of things, little thinking there was anybody under the sofa—and then to go up-stairs. At last there came in one who remained until he was alone in the room by himself. A tallish, good-looking young man of one or two and twenty, with a light whisker. He went to a particular hat-peg, took off a good hat that was hanging there, tried it on, hung his own hat in its place, and hung that hat on another peg, nearly opposite to me. I then felt quite certain that he was the thief, and would come back by-and-by.

  “When they were all up-stairs, the gentleman came in with the great-coat. I showed him where to hang it, so that I might have a good view of it; and he went away; and I lay under the sofa on my chest, for a couple of hours or so, waiting.

  “At last, the same young man came down. He walked across the room, whistling—stopped and listened—took another walk and whistled—stopped again, and listened—then began to go regularly round the pegs, feeling in the pockets of all the coats. When he came to the great-coat, and felt the pocket-book, he was so eager and so hurried that he broke the strap in tearing i
t open. As he began to put the money in his pocket, I crawled out from under the sofa, and his eyes met mine.

  “My face, as you may perceive, is brown now, but it was pale at that time, my health not being good; and looked as long as a horse’s. Besides which, there was a great draught of air from the door, underneath the sofa, and I had tied a handkerchief round my head; so what I looked like, altogether, I don’t know. He turned blue—literally blue—when he saw me crawling out, and I couldn’t feel surprised at it.

  “‘I am an officer of the Detective Police,’ said I, ‘and have been lying here, since you first came in this morning. I regret, for the sake of yourself and your friends, that you should have done what you have; but this case is complete. You have the pocket-book in your hand and the money upon you; and I must take you into custody!’

  “It was impossible to make out any case in his behalf, and on his trial he pleaded guilty. How or when he got the means I don’t know; but while he was awaiting his sentence, he poisoned himself in Newgate.

  “We inquired of this officer, on the conclusion of the foregoing anecdote, whether the time appeared long, or short, when he lay in that constrained position under the sofa?

  “Why, you see, sir,” he replied, “if he hadn’t come in, the first time, and I had not been quite sure he was the thief, and would return, the time would have seemed long. But, as it was, I being dead certain of my man, the time seemed pretty short.”

  THE CROOKED TELLER, by J.P. Buschlen

  The clerks of the P—— Bank, town of Mullin, were lounging in their rooms above the office, after hours. They were discussing an absconding incident reported in a city paper, and generalizing thereon.

  “Seems to me,” remarked the accountant, a man of perhaps twenty-two, “that the bank is taking a big chance on some of us fellows.”

  The junior looked up quickly.

  “Take Russ, for instance,” he said, grinning at the ledger-keeper—

  Russel Kane interrupted him with: “You fellows would be surprised to know that I was in a mixup once.”

  The teller, a pale-faced, dark-eyed individual, glanced at the speaker, but said nothing.

  “Did you get away with anything?” asked Carlaw, the junior, soberly.

  “My reputation,” smiled the ledger-keeper.

  “Tell us about it,” said Muir, the accountant.

  Kane laid his pipe aside and began.

  “It was in our Hamilton office. The clearing was heavy, and the paying-teller had received a bunch of parcels. Being a sort of general swipe and utility-man, I was called on to lend—let’s call him Jones—a hand. He put me on the parcels. Well, to make a short story shorter, I found one of them shy a hundred bucks. They had five one-hundred dollar notes listed, and there were only four in attendance. I called Jones’ attention to the fact, and he seemed surprised. He said it wasn’t often parcels were short. However, he reported the matter to the accountant, who charged the branch through head-office branch-account with the hundred. In three or four days we got a letter from the manager of the branch, calling our attention to the fact that the parcel had been checked by their ledger-keeper.”

  Here the teller and Kane exchanged glances, and Kane continued:

  “Several letters went back and forth, and finally head office made the two tellers put up the loss between them. This naturally got me in wrong with Jones, who, I felt, suspected me. In fact, I felt as if the whole office suspected me. It worried me a lot until one day I noticed the branch-teller’s resignation in the staff circular. I went to our manager with the circular, and he assured me that the last ounce of suspicion had been taken from my shoulders.

  “That’s all,” concluded the ledger-keeper, taking up his pipe again.

  The teller, Williams, who had not yet spoken, blew a ring of smoke.

  “Rotten!” he said, suddenly. “When a fellow gets mixed up in these things he may be in bad, for all he knows, as long as he is a bankclerk. Head office will be keeping its eye on him.”

  “Yes, sir,” observed the accountant, seriously, “that’s about how it goes. If anything ever reflected on me I think I’d quit and be done with it.”

  “You might quit,” said the teller, again, “but you wouldn’t be done with it. Resigning would only make you look guilty.”

  “Well,” replied Muir, “what’s a fellow to do? One thing’s certain—you’re not in close enough personal touch with head office to live down the disgrace.”

  Williams suddenly changed his viewpoint.

  “Maybe you’re right, at that. I suppose it’s hard enough plugging, under ordinary circumstances, without having to work against—”

  He was searching for a word. Carlaw accommodatingly supplied it.

  “The wind,” he suggested.

  Kane laughed, and looking at Muir remarked:

  “Aren’t you proud of our junior, Ed?”

  Carlaw shot a rubber-band into the speaker’s face, and then there was a scramble and a scuffle. Heated from his exertions, the junior at length decided he would take the air, and Muir thought he would go home and read. Muir alone roomed out of the bank.

  “Russ,” said Williams, when they were alone, “I was afraid you were going to mention the fact that I was the ledger-keeper who checked that parcel you were telling about.”

  Kane laughed.

  “Don’t worry, Walt,” he replied. “It doesn’t do a fellow any good to get mixed up in gossip about these things. I experienced the sensation myself and it made me careful about saying anything that might reflect on the honesty of others.… But isn’t it hell what a responsibility we take on these invisible salaries of ours?”

  “Worse than that,” thought the teller.

  They came by degrees to the discussion of a subject that always occupies the thoughts of town bank-men late in the evening.

  “She seems to be drawing nearer to you, Walt,” observed the ledger-keeper, referring to one of the town girls.

  “Do you blame her?” Williams’ peculiar smile was apparent.

  “Can’t say that I do.” Kane was in the habit of saying about Williams that a fellow couldn’t help liking him any more than the girls could.

  When the ledger-keeper thought of turning in, Williams said he felt more like going for a walk and suggested (after Kane had thrown off his shoes) that they go out together. But the ledger-keeper was sleepy, and Williams went out alone. He walked to the end of the asphalt, up the main street. While resting against an electric-light post boasting a ten candle-power lamp, he drew a letter from an inside coat-pocket. After reading it he cursed a party by the name of “Max,” then put the letter back in hiding. By the time he reached the bank again both ledger-keeper and junior were snoring.

  Williams’ smile travelled from the face of his sleeping-companion, around the room, and finally down the shoot-hole in the floor, through which the vault light cast its bright reflection.

  A few days later the teller received a parcel of five thousand dollars from Toronto. It came during the morning rush and was laid aside for a while. The accountant went across to one of the other banks. It was while Muir was away that Williams opened the money-parcel and turning to the ledger-keeper remarked that the notes ought to be counted at once, as the till was nearly out of fives.

  All ledger-keepers like counting money. It makes them feel that they are soon to be promoted. Kane persuaded the junior to take care of the ledger while he ran over the parcel from Toronto.

  “Have you counted it yourself?” he asked the teller.

  “Not yet,” answered Williams, “I’ve been too busy.”

  Kane went through the fives and found them all right. But he could not make the tens what they were listed. He asked the teller to run over one package that seemed to have only forty tens in it. Williams counted the package.

  “By heavens!” he cried, “there are only forty!”

  The manager was notified, and came out to the cage. He counted the parcel, and found it one hundred dollars
short. Immediately he wrote a letter to the Toronto office.

  When the accountant came in Williams accosted him at his desk.

  “Ed,” he said, in a semi-whisper, “did you ever have anyone try to slip it over on you from the city offices?”

  “No,” replied Muir; “why?”

  The teller told him about the shortage.

  “All the time I was on the cash I never had anything like that happen me,” said the accountant, and there was a mystified expression on his face. “They keep a mighty close tick on out-going parcels down in Toronto, Walt, and I don’t understand how a short one could get through.”

  “It’s got me going,” returned the teller; and after gazing absently ahead of him for a while, he turned and walked toward the cage.

  Meanwhile the ledger-keeper was working over his ledger with a burning face and a pair of stinging ears. He stood it for quite a while before going into the manager’s room.

  “Mr. White,” he began, “I’d like to speak with you for a few minutes.”

  The manager asked him to sit down; he did so and related the story he had told the boys some days since as they sat in their rooms over the bank.

  “This affair,” he said in conclusion, referring to the present shortage in the parcel, “will get me in bad again. What would you advise me to do?”

  The manager rubbed his chin and replied:

  “Wait until Toronto writes. And don’t worry, my boy; these things can’t be helped.”

  Kane felt relieved. The same night Williams, without being invited, went up to the accountant’s rooms and found Muir at home.

  After they had talked a while, the teller asked, bluntly:

  “Did you ever have reason to suspect Russ?”

  The accountant showed immediate surprise, but spoke only after a minute’s reflection.

  “No, Walt. What makes you ask? Surely you don’t think—”

  “I hate to think it,” Williams replied quickly, “but I can’t get over that story he told us the other night.”

  The accountant put down his pipe.