The Detections of Dr. Sam Johnson

by Lillian de la Torre

  “Nay, ma’am, enough,” said he, shielding the hapless victim.

  The woman gave over, and Pompey crept sobbing away from her under the bench. Gradually his sobs died away, and once more silence fell.

  The rope-dancer tired of his pacing. Clutching his wild elf-locks in both hands, he sank to the bench beside Bruce. The traveller breathed heavily, and the rope-dancer bent over him, feeling his heart, before resuming his pacing. Suddenly Dr. Johnson spoke aloud.

  “Mr. Bruce! Oblige me by handing me the diamond brooch which is in your left-hand waistcoat pocket.”

  Bruce came out of sleep standing up.

  “I have taken no diamond brooch.”

  “Pray, Sir, don’t quibble. The brooch is in your left-hand waistcoat pocket.”

  Bruce put up his heavy brows, and turned out the pocket. There was a flash of light in the moon as the diamond brooch fell to the stone floor.

  “Sir,” said Bruce steadily, “I give you my word of honour as a gentleman, I neither stabbed this unfortunate lady, nor stole her diamond brooch, which I now see for the first time.”

  “I believe you,” cried I, “for ’tis clear this rope-dancer planted it on you, ’tis he that stabbed the lady for her jewels.”

  “Never believe it,” said Bruce; “how did the poor man enter that triple-lock’d room and leave all lock’d again behind him?”

  “Somebody did,” said I, “that’s plain to a demonstration.”

  “Why,” says Dr. Johnson, “the rope-dancer did; he broke the window and turned the latch and so entered.”

  “I’ll confess,” cried the wretched rope-dancer. “I did indeed take the brooch—the lady was dead, she needed it no more, and my need was sore—but as God sees me, I never laid a finger on her, for she was good to me in my need.”

  He sank to the bench, and sobbed.

  For a space there was no noise but his heavy gasping. Bruce composed himself again to slumber. The mulatto woman sat in sullen silence. Once the door creaked on its hinges, and we thought the watch had come for us; but nothing appeared at the crack, and the door creaked to again.

  Suddenly from without there was an outcry. The heavy shouting of the watch and their thudding footsteps changed in the sound of blows and screams of pain. Then the door jerked open, and the watchman shoved a small figure through the door in a heap. ’Twas Pompey. We had not seen his evasion, for he had slipped through noiselessly on his belly, most like some little reptile. He returned sobbing and cringing, and holding his head, which rang with the watchmen’s blows.

  My merciful friend picked up the small shaking form, and set him on his knee.

  “Never cry, Pompey,” said he.

  “She beat me,” sobbed Pompey.

  “Never mind,” said Dr. Sam: Johnson slowly; his long shapely fingers gently stroked the small brown cheek.

  “And they beat me,” added Pompey, and wept afresh.

  “Be comforted,” said Dr. Johnson. “Do thou stay by me, I’ll tell thee a story. I’ll tell thee of—”

  He seemed to cast about for some suitable narrative. Memory suggested his choice.

  “I’ll tell thee of Homer, as I promised,” said he, and repeated some lines in Greek; the round-house rang with his sonorous voice.

  I thought the little savage ever less likely to be entertained with Greek.

  “Which is to say,” said Dr. Johnson, “in the words of Alexander Pope:

  “With shouts the Trojans, rushing from afar,

  Proclaim their motions, and provoke the war:

  So when inclement winters vex the plain

  With piercing frosts, or thick-descending rain,

  To warmer seas the cranes embodied fly,

  With noise, and order, through the midway sky;

  To pygmy nations wounds and death they bring,

  And all the war descends upon the wing.

  “But you are not to suppose,” Dr. Johnson instructed his unlikely pupil, “that these bird-contests ever happened, for ’tis only a fable.”

  “Nay, Sir,” struck in the Abyssinian traveller, “there you are out, for in Africa—”

  “Tut, Sir, a crane’s but a bird, even in Africa.”

  “In Africa, Sir—”

  The door was pushed roughly open, and the watch were there.

  “You must come along to Bow Street,” said the leader.

  “Not I,” said Dr. Sam: Johnson, “but you may take the murderer.”

  His powerful arms clamped like a vise upon the tiny figure in his lap.

  The metamorphosis was astounding. One moment the small figure was nestled trustingly and innocently against the great shoulder. The next, it was a small fury, writhing, scratching, and biting, and cursing steadily in a strong new voice, in patois, African, and surprisingly good English. Then the mulatto woman struck like a fury, and we had all we could do to hold her off.

  “Do you mean to tell me,” I demanded incredulously, “that that small child stabbed his mistress?”

  We sat at breakfast at the Mitre Tavern. Hannah and Pompey had been committed to Newgate, and now ’twas time to refresh ourselves after the fatigues of the night. Sombre James Bruce ate sparingly of bread and cheese; the hungry rope-dancer stuffed himself with buttock of beef; Dr. Johnson called for a cut of cold veal pye, and ate with relish.

  “’Tis no small child,” said Dr. Johnson, “but a grown man, a very dangerous desperado cast in Lilliputian mould.”

  Boswell: “Yet his mother—”

  Johnson: “Foh, Hannah is not his mother.”

  “Of that you may be sure,” said Abyssinian Bruce, “for they are of different races.”

  Johnson: “Hannah is his accomplice; and in all probability his mistress, for there is no human freak so freakish but he may find a woman to love him. They have confessed it, ’twas a deep-laid plot to come to England and be free; for ’tis known among the slaves, since the case of Sommersett three years since, that the slave is free the moment he sets foot on the free soil of England. So the new-bought slave-woman palms off her paramour as her child, and Mistress Winwood brings them hither. Now they will tarry with her only so long as will serve to prepare a refuge, and then steal the jewels and make off. Vigilance detected the first attempt—”

  Boswell: “What part did the shuttlecock play?”

  Bruce: “’Twas a sleepy charm; I have seen such things in my travels.”

  Johnson snapped his finger at the dawdling waiter, and more veal pye came on the run.

  “So, Sir,” said he, loading a mouthful, “a new plot was necessitated. Being unable to enter from without, Hannah bethought herself to hide her tiny accomplice in the lock’d room—”

  Boswell: “Where: We searched the place.”

  Johnson: “We searched for a man. Had we been searching for a child, we would have looked in the coal-box, and found him.”

  Boswell: “What a risque!”

  Johnson: “No risque at all, though he were caught there—simply another childish prank. He played his part well.”

  Boswell: “’Twas a mad risque to make the attempt the very night we were to watch.”

  Johnson: “They did not know of it. The plan was concerted, by chance, in their absence, and carried out after the woman was withdrawn. Concealed in the coal-box, Pompey heard us affix the bolts; but he doubted not he could draw them easily enough, and so make off. The bolted-door mystification was no part of his scheam.”

  Boswell: “Yet what folly, to set so weak an arm to assassination.”

  Johnson: “’Tis not so weak an arm, as I found when I tried to hold him. Nor was assassination intended; he was but to snatch the gems, and make off. But Mistress Winwood waked and screamed, and in panick he silenced her. He had no time to unlock the triple locks; he must hide again. Then indeed was he in danger, had he been discovered; but he could do no other. Soon enough his accomplice’s wit taught her how to carry the coal-box out of danger without being suspected.”

  Boswell (thoughtfully):
“I made sure that the rope-dancer had done it by trickery. Say the scream was counterfeited, the lady but drugged within. Then the man who enters her smashed window in sight of witnesses may privily stab her before he opens the door and admits—”

  The rope-dancer threw down the great bone he was gnawing, leaped to his shoeless feet, and hauled me up by the cravat.

  “Ha’ done,” he cried roughly, “or gentleman or no you’ll fight me.”

  James Bruce pulled him down on the bench with one great hand.

  “With me so close on your heels,” said he calmly, “Dr. Johnson knew better. Pray, Dr. Johnson, how did you smoak Pompey’s imposture?”

  “Well, Sir,” replied Dr. Johnson as I settled my ruffles and the rope-dancer glowered upon his bone, “as we sat in the roundhouse, I tried one trick and another to learn the truth. I put forth the fable of the knife that stains the hand; and Hannah must needs examine her hands. Then she had been handling the knife. ’Twas no fable that a gem was missing. When I said so, it brought confusion, for there was guilt in two hearts. Our friend here thought to get clear of the gem, thrust in his matted poll; I was watching, and I saw the attempt. Hannah thought her accomplice was seeking to cheat her of part of the swag, and swinged him soundly for it. When Hannah turned against him, Pompey thought best to take to his heels before anger brought betrayal. And ’twas thus he betrayed himself.”

  “How so?”

  “I took pity on a beaten child, took him on my knee, and patted his cheek. There is no mistaking a man’s cheek that has gone a day without the razor. At first my mind could scarce believe what my fingers told me. But I began to recollect what historians tell us, how Augustus had his dwarf, and Constantine had one no bigger than a partridge; Mark Antony had one under two feet in height, and Domitian assembled them by troops; Catherine de Medici bred the little creatures. Why not then a waiting dwarf in Mistress Winwood’s household?”

  “What erudition, Sir!” cried Bruce.

  “Aye,” said I slyly, “on the part of The Universal Magazine, whence all these antient instances come.”

  “’Twas then clear,” went on Johnson, ignoring me with grandeur, “whose arm had the nerve for the deed, and whose frame was small enough to hide safely in a room we searched. I held him amused till the watch came; I assure you ’twas a strange experience, reciting Homer while I held a dangerous murderer on my knee.”

  “’Twas an interposition of Providence,” said the rope-dancer.

  “Which found a learned instrument,” said Abyssinian Bruce, bowing to my ingenious friend. “Yet in one thing, Dr. Johnson, you are out. Pompey is no freak of nature, but a member of the race of pygmies that inhabit the African forest. Whether they battle the cranes, I will not say; but had you listened, instead of shouting me down, you would have heard what report speaks of the race of the Wambutti, the African pygmy, a race stunted, but clever, adroit, and strong. Now, Sir, the Wambutti—”

  “You, Sir,” cried Dr. Johnson, cutting the discourse short, “may have heard travellers’ tales of the pygmies; but I, Sir, (swelling) I am the man who caught one alive.”

  [This bit of fiction began with such a blackamoor page as Hogarth drew in Marriage à la Mode, accreting the fictitious Jamaicans and the real African Traveller as it developed.]

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Dr. Sam Johnson Mysteries

  MURDER LOCK’D IN

  “Murder! Murder lock’d in!”

  With these horrifying words began my first experience of the detective genius of the great Dr. Sam: Johnson, him who—but let us proceed in order.

  The ’63 was to me a memorable year; for in it I had the happiness to obtain the acquaintance of that extraordinary man. Though then but a raw Scotch lad of two-and-twenty, I had already read the WORKS OF JOHNSON with delight and instruction, and imbibed therefrom the highest reverence for their authour. Coming up to London in that year, I came with the firm resolution to win my way into his friendship.

  On Monday, the 16th of May, I was sitting in the back-parlour of Tom Davies, book-seller and sometime actor, when the man I sought to meet came unexpectedly into the shop. Glimpsing him through the glass-door, Davies in sepulchral tone announced his approach as of Hamlet’s ghost: “Look, my Lord, it comes!”

  I scrambled to my feet as the great man entered, his tall, burly form clad in mulberry stuff of full-skirted antique cut, a large bushy greyish wig surmounting his strong-cut features of classical mould.

  “I present Mr. Boswell—” began Davies. If he intended to add “from Scotland,” I cut him off.

  “Don’t tell him where I come from!” I cried, having heard of the great man’s prejudice against Scots.

  “From Scotland!” cried Davies roguishly.

  “Mr. Johnson,” said I—for not yet had he become “Doctor” Johnson, though as such I shall always think of him—“Mr. Johnson, I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it.”

  “That, sir, I find,” quipped Johnson with a smile, “is what a great many of your countrymen cannot help!”

  This jest, I knew, was aimed at the hordes of place-seekers who “could not help coming from” Scotland to seek their fortunes in London when Scottish Lord Bute became first minister to the new King; but it put me out of countenance.

  “Don’t be uneasy,” Davies whispered me at parting, “I can see he likes you very well!”

  Thus encouraged, I made bold to wait upon the philosopher the very next Sunday, in his chambers in the Temple, where the benchers of the law hold sway. I strode along Fleet Street, clad in my best; my new bloom-coloured coat, so I flattered myself, setting off my neat form and dark, sharp-cut features. As I walked along, I savoured in anticipation this, my first encounter with the lion in his den, surrounded by his learned volumes and the tools of his trade.

  But it was not yet to be, for as I turned under the arch into Inner Temple Lane, I encountered the philosopher issuing from his doorway in full Sunday panoply. His mulberry coat was well brushed, his wig was new-powdered, he wore a clean linen neckcloth and fresh bands to his wrists.

  “Welcome, Mr. Boswell,” said he cordially, “you are welcome to the Temple. As you see, I am just now going forth. Will you not walk along with me? I go to wait on Mistress Lennon the poetess, who dwells here in the Temple, but a step across the gardens, in Bayfield Court. Come, I will present you at her levee.”

  “With all my heart, sir,” said I, pleased to go among the wits, and in such company.

  But as it turned out, I never did present myself at the literary levee, for as we came to Bayfield Court, a knot of people buzzing about the door caught us up in their concerns.

  “Well met, Mr. Johnson,” called a voice, “we have need of your counsel. We have sent for the watch, but he does not come, the sluggard.”

  “The watch? What’s amiss, ma’am?”

  A babble of voices answered him. Every charwoman known to Bayfield Court, it seemed, seethed in a swarm before the entry.

  “Old Mrs. Duncom—locked in, and hears no knock—here’s Mrs. Taffety come to dine—”

  A dozen hands pushed forward an agitated lady in a capuchin.

  “Invited, Mr. Johnson, two o’clock the hour, and Mrs. Duncom don’t answer. I fear the old maid is ill and the young maid is gone to fetch the surgeon, and Mrs. Duncom you know has not the use of her limbs.”

  “We must rouze her. Come, Mrs. Taffety, I’ll make myself heard, I warrant.”

  The whole feminine contingent, abandoning hope of the watch, escorted us up the stair. As we mounted, I took stock of our posse. The benchers of the law, their employers, were off on their Sunday occasions, but the servitors were present in force. I saw an Irish wench with red hair and a turned-up nose, flanked close by a couple of lanky, ill-conditioned lads, probably sculls to the benchers and certainly admirers to the wench. A dark wiry little gypsy of a woman with alert black eyes boosted along a sturdy motherly soul addressed by all as Aunt Moll. Sukey and Win and Juggy, twittering to e
ach other, followed after.

  Arrived at the attick landing, Dr. Johnson raised his voice and called upon Mrs. Duncom in rolling stentorian tones. Mrs. Taffety seconded him, invoking the maids in a thin screech: “Betty! Annet!” Dead silence answered them.

  “Then we must break in the door.” said Dr. Johnson.

  Indeed he looked abundantly capable of effecting such a feat single-handed; but at that moment a stumble of feet upon the stair proclaimed the arrival of the watch. “Hold!” cried that worthy. “None of your assault and battery, for I’ll undertake to spring the lock.”

  “Will you so?” said Dr. Johnson, eyeing him thoughtfully.

  The watch was no Bow Street constable, but one of the Temple guardians, a stubby old man in a seedy fustian coat, girded with a broad leather belt from which depended his short sword and his truncheon of office.

  The women regarded him admiringly as he stepped forward, full of self-importance, and made play with a kind of skewer which he thrust into the lock.

  Nothing happened.

  After considerable probing and coaxing the man was fain to desist.

  “’Tis plain, sir,” he covered his failure, “that the door is bolted from within.”

  “Bolted!” cried Mrs. Taffety. “Of course ’tis bolted! Mistress Duncom ever barred herself in like a fortress, for she kept a fortune in broad pieces under her bed in a silver tankard, and so she went ever in fear of robbers.”

  “How came you to know of this fortune, ma’am?” demanded Dr. Johnson.

  “Why, sir, the whole world knew, ’twas no secret.”

  “It ought to have been. Well, fortress or no, it appears we must break in.”

  “Hold sir!” cried the black-eyed charwoman. “You’ll affright the old lady into fits. I know a better way.”

  “Name it, then, ma’am.”

  “My master Grisley’s chambers, you must know, sir, lie on the other side of the court—”