The Garret and the Garden; Or, Low Life High Up by R. M. Ballantyne (free biff chip and kipper ebooks TXT) 📖

For a considerable time the boy prowled about the house of Mr Spivin in the hope of seeing David Laidlaw go out or in; but our Scot did not appear. At last a servant-girl came to the open door with a broom in her hand to survey the aspect of things in general. Tommy walked smartly up to her, despite the stern gaze of a suspicious policeman on the opposite side of the street.

“My sweet gal,” he said affably touching his cap, “is Capting Laidlaw within?”

“There’s no Captain Laidlaw here,” answered the girl sharply; “there was a Daivid Laidlaw, but—”

“Da-a-a-vid, my dear, not Daivid. The gen’l’m’n hisself told me, and surely ’e knows ’ow to prenounce ’is own name best.”

“You’ve a deal of cheek, boy—anyway, Laidlaw ’as bin took up, an’ ’e’s now in prison.”

The sudden look of consternation on the boy’s face caused the girl to laugh.

“D’ee know w’ere they’ve took ’im to?”

“No, I don’t.”

“But surely you don’t b’lieve ’e’s guilty?” said the boy, forgetting even his humorous tendencies in his anxiety about his friend.

“No, I don’t” said the girl, becoming suddenly earnest, “for Mary an’ me saw—”

“Martha-a-a!” shouted a female voice from the interior of the house at that moment.

The girl ran in. At the same time the suspicious policeman came up with, “Now then, youngster, move on.”

“Move off you mean, bobby. Hain’t you been to school yet, stoopid?” cried the boy, applying his thumb to his nose and moving his fingers in what he styled a thumbetrical manner as he ran away.

But poor Tommy Splint was in no jesting mood. He had been impressed with the idea from infancy—rightly or wrongly—that once in the clutches of the law it was no easy matter to escape from them; and he was now utterly incapable of deciding what his next step should be. In this difficulty he was about to return disconsolate to Cherub Court when it occurred to him that it might be worth while to pay a visit to the good ship Seacow, and obtain the opinion of Sam Blake.

Although it was broad day and the sun was glowing gloriously in an unclouded sky, he found Sam down in a dark hole, which he styled his bunk, fast asleep.

Sam did not move when Tommy shook and woke him. He merely opened his eyes quietly and said, “All right, my lad; what’s up?” After hearing the boy’s story to the end he merely said, “Mind your helm—clear out!” flung off his blankets, and bounded to the floor like an acrobat.

Being already in his shirt, short drawers, and stockings, it did not take quite a minute to don trousers, vest and coat. Another minute sufficed for the drawing on of boots, fastening a necktie, running a broken comb through his front locks, and throwing on a glazed hat. Two minutes all told! Men whose lives often depend on speed acquire a wonderful power of calmly-rapid action.

“What d’ee say to it, Sam?” asked Tommy as they hurried along the streets.

“Hold on! avast! belay! I’m thinkin’!” said Sam. The boy accordingly held on, avasted, and belayed until his companion had thought it out.

“Yes, that’s it,” said the sailor at last. “I’ll go an’ see Colonel—Colonel—what’s ’is name? old Liz’s friend—Burntwood, is it, or—”

“Brentwood,” said Tommy.

“That’s it—Brentwood. You don’t know his address, do you? No? Never mind; we’ll go to Cherub Court an’ get it, and then make sail for the Colonel’s. I’ve no more notion which way to steer, lad, than the man in the moon; but the Colonel will be sure to know how to lay our course, an’ he’ll be willin’, I’ve no doubt first for his own sake, seein’ that this Lockhart is his own lawyer; second, for old Liz’s sake, seein’ that her affairs are involved in it; and third, for the sake of his country, if he’s a good and true man.”

The sailor was not disappointed. Colonel Brentwood did not indeed himself know exactly how to act but he knew that the best thing to do in the circumstances was to seek aid from those who did know. He therefore went straight to Scotland Yard—that celebrated centre of the London Police Force—and put the matter before the authorities there. A detective, named Dean, was appointed to take the job in hand.

“John,” observed Mrs Brentwood to her husband, prophetically, after an interview with the detective at their own house, “you may depend upon it that Mr Dean will discover that more things are amiss than this affair of the Scotsman and dear old nurse.”

“Possibly—indeed probably,” returned the Colonel; “but what makes you think so?”

“The fact that no thorough scoundrel ever yet confined himself to one or two pieces of villainy.”

“But Lockhart is not yet proved to be a thorough scoundrel. You have condemned the poor man, my dear, without trial, and on insufficient evidence.”

“Insufficient evidence!” echoed Dora indignantly. “What more do you want? Has he not systematically robbed dear old Liz? Are not the Railway Share Lists and Reports open to inspection?”

“True, Dora, true. Be not indignant. I have admitted that you may be right. Our detective will soon find out. He has the calm, self-confident, penetrating look of a man who could, if possible, screw something out of nothing.”

Whether or not Mr Dean possessed the power ascribed to him is yet to be seen. We have not space to follow him through the whole of the serpentine sinuosities of his investigations, but we will watch him at one or two salient points of his course.

First of all he visited Tommy Splint, who, in the privacy of his “boodwar” revealed to him, as he thought, every scrap of information about the affair that he possessed. To all of this Mr Dean listened in perfect silence, patiently, and with a smile of universal benevolence. He not only appreciated all the boy’s commentaries and jests and prophecies on the situation, but encouraged the full development of his communicative disposition. Tommy was charmed. Never before had he met with such an audience—except, perhaps, in Susy.

When the boy had fairly run himself out Mr Dean proceeded to pump and squeeze, and the amount of relevant matter that he pumped and squeezed out of him, in cross-questioning, was so great, that Tommy was lost in a mixture of admiration and humility. You see, up to that time he had thought himself rather a knowing fellow; but Mr Dean managed to remove the scales from his eyes.

“Now, my boy,” said the detective, after having squeezed him quite flat, and screwed the very last drop out of him, “you are quite sure, I suppose, as to Mr Trumps’s words—namely, that he knew Mrs Morley—chimney-pot Liz, as you call her—”

“Parding. I never called her that—chimley-pot is her name.”

“Well, chimley-pot be it—and that he had formerly known Mr Lockhart but did not say when or where he had first become acquainted with either; yet Trumps’s peculiar look and manner when speaking of the lawyer led you to think he knew more about him than he chose to tell?”

“Right you air, sir. That’s ’ow it stands.”

“Good; and in reference to the servant-girl—you are sure that she became suddenly very earnest when she said she believed Laidlaw was not guilty, and that she and some one named Mary had ‘seen something,’ but you don’t know what, owing to a sudden interruption?”

“Right again, sir.”

“Now, then,” said Mr Dean, rising, “we will go up and see Mrs Morley.”

They found the old woman alone, knitting in her rustic chair in her floral bower on the roof. Mr Dean sat down to have a chat and Tommy seated himself on a stool to gaze and listen, for he was fascinated, somehow, by the detective.

It was really interesting to observe the tact with which the man approached his subject and the extreme patience with which he listened to the somewhat garrulous old woman.

Being a Briton he began, of course, with the weather, but slid quickly and naturally from that prolific subject to the garden, in connection with which he displayed a considerable knowledge of horticulture—but this rather in the way of question than of comment. To slide from the garden to the gardener was very easy as well as natural; and here Mr Dean quite won the old woman’s heart by his indirect praise of Susy’s manipulation of plants and soils. To speak of Susy, without referring to Susy’s early history, would have been to show want of interest in a very interesting subject. Mr Dean did not err in this respect. From Susy’s mother he naturally referred to the family in which she and old Liz had been in service, and to the return of the only surviving member of it to England.

All this was very interesting, no doubt, but it did not throw much light into the mind of Mr Dean, until old Liz mentioned the fact that Mr Lockhart, besides being solicitor to the Brentwoods, was also solicitor to old Mr Weston, who had left his property to Colonel Brentwood. She also said that she feared, from what Mrs Brentwood had recently said to her, there was some difficulty about the will, which was a pity, as the only people she knew besides Mr Lockhart who knew anything about it were a footman named Rogers and a butler named Sutherland, both of whom had been witnesses to the will; but the footman had gone to the bad, and the butler had gone she knew not where.

Then Mr Dean began to smell another rat, besides that which he was just then in pursuit of, for the Colonel had incidentally mentioned to him the circumstance of the estate passing away from him, owing to a new will having been recently discovered. Although the matter was not the detective’s present business, he made a mental note of it.

After quitting the garden, and promising soon to return, the detective had an interview with Mr Trumps in the parlour of the thieves’ missionary. Many a fallen and apparently lost man and woman had been brought to the Saviour in that parlour by that missionary—the same whom we have introduced to the reader in the thieves’ den. Through the medium of Tommy Splint the interview was brought about, and no sooner did Trumps ascertain the object that Dean had in view than he became suddenly confidential.

“Now, look here,” he said, when he found himself alone with Mr Dean, “I knows more about them Brentwoods and Westons than you think for.”

“No doubt you do; and I suppose you wish to sell your knowledge at the highest possible figure,” said Dean, with a very slight smile.

“You’re wrong for once,” returned Trumps. “If you’d said that to me two days ago, I’d ’ave said ‘yes;’ but I’ve ’eard things in this blessed room w’ich ’as made me change my mind. You’re welcome to