The Detections of Dr. Sam Johnson

by Lillian de la Torre

  “Oh, good lack,” cried Miss Tresilian, pleased, “and what said they to the idol’s ornament?”

  “Never a word said they, but eyed it without blinking. ’Twas at their eye-level,” added the Russian giant.

  “You must keep a good look-out,” said I, “against Lascars and darkavised men.”

  “Nay,” roared the Russian giant, “let them look out for me. ’Tis mine, and so I will maintain, for I paid 200,000 rubles for it.”

  “So much?” breathed old Betts, and had the gems from my hand. He carried the thing under the mantelpiece lustres, and examined it with his glass to his eye, murmuring the while: “Nay, Arthur, I must get this by heart, I must fail of no detail, an account of this will be meat and drink to your uncle the Dutch merchant!”

  Over his shoulder young Arthur regarded the precious thing with lacklustre eye. “Of what use is it?” he scoffed. “Can a man eat it? Will it cure the evil or the pthisick? No, Father, the famed Stradivarius of Signor Viotti is the treasure for my money.”

  “You say true,” replied old Betts instanter, “and if I thought otherwise I had myself turned Dutch merchant and no fiddle-maker. Away, gross pelf!”

  He yielded the blazing circlet carefully into the hand of Miss Tresilian.

  “Welcome, gross pelf,” murmured she with a rueful smile, and looked into Viotti’s eyes, “for the tenth, aye the twentieth part of this gem would buy a life-time of happiness for two hearts.”

  The Italian pressed her hand, and together they gazed upon the famous Empress.

  Chinnery bit his lip.

  “Nay, then, let others see,” he cried bitterly. He took the miniature. With professional attention he must needs examine the great stone through his lapidary glass, holding it in the glow of the mantelpiece sconces and turning it this way and that. Prince Orloff seized the occasion to murmur a word in Miss Tresilian’s ear; clearly a Cossack compliment, for she mantled and shrank, and Viotti straightened his shoulders to glare at his highborn vis-à-vis.

  Then Miss Fanny took the ornament again carefully in hand, and passed the riband over the bent head of the Russian giant. He settled the miniature in its frame of diamonds complacently against his massive chest.

  “But come,” I cried, “let us delay no longer to look upon the Prince of fiddles, the famed Stradivari of Viotti.”

  Viotti bowed, and fetched it from the inner room where our effects lay.

  “You must know,” said he, opening the clasps and revealing in the silk-lined flat case a violin-shape swathed in silk, “that Antonio Stradivari lived and worked at Cremona more than fifty years, and made many superb violins; but mine is the greatest of them all.” He loosed it from its silk, and gave it into the eager hands of young Betts. All clustered about to view this second wonder.

  “’Tis a giant among fiddles!” cried young Betts—“even as [bowing] Viotti is a giant among fiddlers.”

  “What minuscule holes,” said I, examining the graceful curved incisions, like an S, in the face of the instrument, “how does one get inside?”

  “Minuscule!” cried young Betts, “they are quite the largest I have ever beheld.”

  “That is so,” said Viotti, “it is to this grandeur of dimension that I attribute my instrument’s grandeur of tone. Old Stradivari never quite repeated it; makers think that to make so large an incision, the grain must be right, or the face will break.”

  “I am of that mind,” said old Betts; “and as to getting inside, one must take the instrument apart; failing which, he may use my new-invented instrument, which I use for adjusting the sound-post—” he displayed a specimen from his pocket—“you see it is curved so, and articulated so, and it goes inside with ease, so.” With his neat little left hand, he manipulated the ingenious implement like a conjurer.

  “Remarkable,” cried Viotti, “I must have one.”

  “Pray,” said Betts, “accept of this one.”

  “Sir,” said Viotti, pocketing it, “I am your debtor.”

  “Then you shall repay me,” said old Betts, “with a tune.”

  “At your service, sir. But I see tea approaching—” the fiddler began to case his instrument with loving care—“I shall fiddle for the company after our regale.”

  He bore the precious thing to the inner room as one carries a child to the nursery; and we all addressed ourselves to the tea-table.

  Viotti drank his tea sitting at Miss Tresilian’s feet. I thought the lady’s eyes roved a bit as long as they were tête-à-tête; but when Mr. Chinnery came from the withdrawing closet and moved to her side, where he sat glowering and taking nothing, then who so gay, so mantling, so laughing and pert as pretty Miss Tresilian between her two swains? And who, when tea was over, pressed for a tune so irresistibly as she?

  “I am all yours, ma’am,” said the handsome fiddler, and fetched his violin.

  Miss Tresilian settled her draperies at the harpsichord, Viotti brought down his bow, and I heard the storied Stradivari give forth a note as dismal and dull as ever blind crowder scraped out of his kit.

  Viotti turned white, and set down the fiddle.

  “This is not my violin,” said he.

  Dr. Johnson, to whom all musical notes, when not inaudible, are painful, picked up the instrument.

  “’Tis no other,” he said positively.

  “I know the voice of my violin as a mother knows the cry of her child,” cried Viotti passionately, “and this is not my violin. ’Tis a clever copy, by eye alone you shall not tell them apart—but be assured, ’tis only a copy.”

  He put it angrily from him. I took the rejected instrument into my hands, I weighed it, I shook it against my ear. All seemed in order. I brought it to the light and peered into the f-hole.

  “See, see,” I cried, “the label! The Cremona label!”

  Antonius Stradiuarius Cremonensis Faciebat Anno 1709

  “I see it,” said Viotti bitterly. “He who can forge a violin can forge a label.”

  The Russian Prince, condescending to interest himself in the fate of the Viotti Stradivarius, bent down to peer in his turn. His miniature, dangling, caught in Viotti’s raven curls, and as he straightened again the pendant stone parted from the soft gold loop with a jerk. ’Twas Viotti who first felt what had happened; he brought the stone from his locks with an exploring hand, and extended it to its owner, with a bow.

  His Highness’s answering bow was all civilized—but as his eye lit upon the stone his roar of anger was all Cossack. What he held was a prism of white glass. Dr. Burney turned pale; Dr. Johnson murmured in my ear: “Here is an artist at substitution!” and His Highness began to hiss through his teeth in Russian. Consternation struck the company; and futile though the gesture was, by common consent we turned to and scoured the rooms, inner and outer. The Orloff diamond was not to be found.

  “This is a matter for Bow Street!” cried Dr. Johnson.

  “This is a matter for me,” replied His Highness, shewing his teeth and speaking too softly. “I am my own justice. I shall expose this thief, and my Cossacks will kill him for me.”

  Miss Tresilian rose in horror.

  “Let no one move,” said Prince Orloff, still between his teeth. “We will sit here, till my diamond is restored, and—” he bowed to Viotti—“we make common cause, Signor—till the Stradivarius is restored as well.”

  Never shall I forget the next three hours. At first Mr. Tresilian tried to take the reasonable view, and was mighty prosy in respect to the hazard of jewel-thieves in his shop. But Prince Orloff grinned upon him without mirth until his voice dried to a trickle, and died away. Miss Fanny would have worked her beeswax figure, but ’twas not to be found, so she worked her fingers instead.

  Upon this Dr. Johnson was seized with one of his strange rolling fits, and went about the room touching everything against the evil chance. Oscillating his head and ejaculating “Too, too, too,” with tongue and teeth, he perambulated the rooms, both inner and outer. Often have I seen him thus in Fleet S
treet, touching the posts of the carriage-way in his absent fit. Tonight ’twas his humour to touch the under side of every thing, even the window-sills, in and out; and to tell the prisms of the lustres, every one. The self-imposed task was scrupulously performed before he returned to his seat by the fire, where he sat rolling and muttering in abstraction. Once Viotti opened the instrument-cases in the ante-room, but fruitlessly, for he returned to his place again in dejection. And again silence took us, and Prince Orloff’s demoniack eye.

  ’Twas Miss Polly who finally broke the spell. She went off in hystericks.

  “Pray, pray, your highness,” said Miss Fanny in a small voice, “be pleased to take our parole, this is most unfitting for a young and tender female. Pray let the ladies depart.”

  “Why, ma’am,” replied Prince Orloff courteously, “you may depart when you will—but”—the Cossack shewed his teeth—“you must leave your garments behind!”

  Miss Tresilian wrung her hands, but Miss Fanny shewed better resolution.

  “Be it so. My woman shall bring us others, and the ante-room shall serve for tiring-room.”

  So it was done. Though the discarded garments were stringently searched as to every seam, nothing of note was found except indeed that Miss Tresilian was revealed to be wearing the new female breeches richly laced, a practise which I shall recommend to my dear wife.

  Miss Tresilian returned to us tripping in the hem of a gown of Miss Fanny’s. Prince Orloff himself plunged his fingers into her soft hair, seemingly undecided whether as a caress or a punishment, and finding nothing there, not even a pad of wool, pronounced her ready to depart. Now a new question arose: how was an unprotected lady to make her way back to the City unattended?

  “Let me be searched, and I will see her home,” cried Chinnery.

  “’Tis my daughter,” put in Tresilian.

  Orloff was sick of the sight of them. He spoke in Russian to his entourage, and while one stood on guard the other laid hands upon Chinnery and bore him off to be searched. The ante-room was the scene of the proceedings, and Prince Orloff stood by to see that no seam, no curl of the wig was missed. Chinnery returned to Miss Tresilian very white, and fat old Tresilian took his place.

  “At this rate I will go too,” cried Viotti, and passed into the ante-room.

  “Come,” cried Chinnery, and without waiting for his rival swept his master and Miss Polly down the stair and away.

  Viotti was seething upon his return to the withdrawing room, and when he saw the girl was gone his temper went higher. He rushed to the door. The Cossack without so much as by your leave wrenched the violin-case from his hand, had it open in a trice, and with one hand ripped out the silken lining while with the other he roughly shook aloft the substituted violin.

  “Nay, keep it,” shouted Viotti in a passion, and rushed without it down the stair. Fussy little Betts retrieved the lining from the floor, and restored the whole neatly to the case, shaking his head over the violin the while. Orloff eyed him malevolently.

  “Let you begone,” he shouted suddenly. “Search him, and away with him!—You, too,” he added, scowling wolfishly upon the trembling boy.

  They were searched and gone, and all the instruments with them, and still we sat about the dying fire, Dr. Johnson swaying and muttering, Miss Fanny working her fingers for want of her beeswax, Dr. Burney in gloomy reverie, Prince Orloff pacing the room in agitation, the Cossacks immovable with folded arms.

  Suddenly Prince Orloff came and touched Dr. Johnson confidentially on the knee.

  “For what do we wait?” he asked softly. “For a piece of dead stone? ’Twas mine, ’tis gone. It is the will of God. Let us go home.”

  “Now I see, Prince,” said Dr. Johnson, “that you are a philosopher.”

  “It is the will of God,” said the philosopher. “Let us go home.”

  Next morning betimes I waited upon Dr. Johnson; but early though I was, one was before me. ’Twas Dr. Burney’s footman, his eyes starting from his face. He stood in the front room twisting his hands before him. Dr. Johnson signed me to listen.

  “Which when I heerd this housebreaker a-prying and a-scratching at the entry-way, sir,” said the footman earnestly, “I ons with my night-gown, and ups with my blunderbuss, and lets fly, Sir.”

  “What like was the miscreant?” enquired Dr. Johnson.

  “Nay, Sir, ’twas that dark, I never looked at ’un, but let off my piece without waiting.”

  “Was he not a black man?” I asked eagerly.

  The man shrugged.

  “All cats is black in the dark, as they say, Sir.”

  “What wore he? A banjan? A turban, belike?”

  “Nay, Sir, I cannot say, he was muffled to the brow in something, and when the blunderbuss went off he legged it mighty spry.”

  “Did you not hit him, then?”

  “Never a whit, for I fired in the air.”

  “’Tis a great pity,” said Dr. Johnson thoughtfully, “for ’tis clear that the diamond is hid in that room, and the thief was forced to return for it in dead of night. Now had you scanned him, or marked him with a pellet, you might have known him again.”

  “Yes, Sir,” said the man miserably, “I conceived it was my dooty, Sir.”

  “Very good, William,” said Dr. Johnson kindly, “always do your duty, my man. Well, we must see what we can do. Pray, William, desire your master from me, to make the withdrawing room secure, and admit nobody, until I shall direct him further. Say to him, that as soon as Boswell and I have broken our fast, we shall be with him straight, and shall concert further measures.”

  Making a leg, the man withdrew, and soon the floating aroma of good India tea heralded Francis the manservant with our breakfast.

  “Surely all is now clear,” I cried in excitement, “I see it all. This olive-skinned, black-browed young man who calls himself Viotti has hypothecated Prince Orloff’s diamond, and but for the vigilance of the good William he had already carried it in triumph to the hands of his masters the Hindoo princes.”

  Johnson swallowed a swig of tea.

  “How do you make that good?” enquired he mildly.

  “Why, thus, sir. Who is Viotti?”

  “Why, Sir, Burney will tell you, Europe’s rising young violinist, the favourite pupil of Pugnani, the fiddler who has played his way into every heart in Geneva, Dresden, Berlin, Warsaw, St. Petersburg, and Paris … and into one heart in London.”

  “Are you sure Viotti is in London?”

  “My eyes tell me so.”

  “You judge over-hastily,” I cried, triumphing to have so caught out my philosophical friend. “Who has seen Viotti? Have you? Has Burney? Who knows that this black-browed young man is in very truth Viotti, and not an imposter? Your eyes tell you, here is a young man. Mr. Tresilian tells you, this is the world’s greatest violinist. Who tells him so? The man himself. But a man may lie. Letters from Paris. But letters may be forged.”

  “Yet what folly,” suggested my learned friend mildly, mopping tea from the ridges of his waistcoat, “what folly to attempt the one personation a man cannot make good. ’Tis as if I were to strive to pass myself off as Johnson the equestrian. How long can I sustain the character? I must be detected the moment the company challenges me to mount and give an exhibition of my skill.”

  “Aye, sir,” I exclaimed in excitement, “and so must he be the moment he puts bow to violin—unless he has the wit to extricate himself by pretending the sad lumpish wails he produces proceed from a violin bewitched, a changeling violin, a forgery. As indeed the instrument he carries must be a forgery, for how is a masquerader to come by a genuine Cremona? Nay, what need has he of a true Stradivari, who cannot play upon it like Viotti, be the instrument never so great? No, Sir, depend upon it, we have here to do with an impostor, come hither with no other object than to steal the great Orloff diamond from the Prince.”

  Johnson: “Surely ’tis a needless elaboration. A man may steal a diamond without giving himself out to be the wor
ld’s greatest performer upon the violin, the haut-boy or the Jew’s-harp.”

  Boswell: “How? How is one to take a diamond from a warrior seven feet high, unless by lulling him into security? For which, his easiness at the home of Dr. Burney is pitched upon. His partiality for music is known.”

  Johnson: “Well, Sir, say on. How did the pseudo-Viotti make off with the diamond after passing under the hands of the Cossacks?”

  Boswell: “Nor did he so. He dared not attempt it. Hence his fit of passion in departing. He must depend upon his entrée at Burney’s to carry it off subsequently from its hiding-place within the room.”

  “Why, Bozzy, you must consider,” said my friend, peering into the empty tea-pot, “that our thief, whoever he be, was fain to gain entrée at dead of night, at risk of a blast from a blunderbuss. Is this your conception of the entrée at Dr. Burney’s?”

  “Perhaps passion warped his judgment. Or, it may be, the princely Hindoos his masters pressed him to the attempt.”

  “Pray, Bozzy,” said my friend with asperity, setting down his cup with finality, “let us have no more of this romantick tale of the princely Hindoos, who in my belief know no more of the matter than the babe unborn. The diamond is to seek in Dr. Burney’s withdrawing room, and the thief is to seek among those who were in it, so let’s be up and doing, and leave the Hindoos to Mrs. Macaulay.”

  So saying, he clapped his old cocked hat on his little brown scratch-wig and set forth. I followed suit, and we set out for St. Martin’s Street.

  Passing, as so often before, with admiration under Temple Bar, whom should we meet but the very man, him who called himself Viotti.

  “Well-met, Dr. Johnson!” cried the volatile foreigner, “well-met indeed, for I am come forth to seek you. They give you a name, sir, for a detector of villainies, and I who have suffered one indeed, beg that you will put forth your endeavour to restore my priceless Stradivari and detect him who has made away with it.”

  I looked with amaze upon this impudence, but Dr. Johnson received the young man with unruffled complaisance.