Originally published in Tinsley's Magazine (Tinsley Brothers) vol.1 #3 (Oct 1867).
You have doubtless heard of that famous carpet-bag which was associated with the Waterloo-Bridge mystery. Well, I am about to tell you a much more dreadful story (or one which seems to me to be so) about another carpet-bag, the owner of which the much-vaunted sagacity of the police has also failed to discover. In both cases, however, as though in revenge for their own incapacity, they have not hesitated to cast a slur upon innocent individuals. My neighbour B and myself were returning, one November afternoon, from our club, where I had looked in as usual, just to get a glimpse of the evening paper, in order to take the last telegraphic intelligence to my wife at home, when, finding ourselves late for our respective dinners, we hailed a hansom, and got into it; it being arranged that I should drop B within a street's length of his own house.
'Hullo?' cried my companion, directly we had started off; 'why, here's a carpet-bag, which somebody has left behind him.'
'Halves!' exclaimed I, with a sudden and uncontrollable impulse, the springs of which lay far enough away, in those days of boyhood when the rights of property are so imperfectly understood.
'No, no,' replied B severely; 'it is not yours, my friend. You know it was I that found it.
'Really, my dear B,' returned I, 'you quite surprise me. You must be aware that it belongs to neither of us, but to the unfortunate person who had engaged this hansom.'
'Very true,' assented B, but a little regretfully, as I thought, at the view I had deemed it right to take; for however Divines may preach, and (which is worse) the Law may dictate, when one has found a thing, one does seem to have some sort of a claim to it. If I were asked to point out what is par excellence THE law of nature, I should answer, It is that which is called on land 'the Right of Trover,' and on the seashore that of 'Flotsam and Jetsam.' Here was a carpet-bag left by the tide of humanity—or at least by one careless wave of it—and here were We its finders—for it is ridiculous that B should have a priority of claim, just because he happened to plump down (without hurting himself) upon the property in question, which might just as well have been on my side of the hansom as his. The question arose then, How were we to deal with it?
'It will never do to give it up to the cabman, eh?' observed B tentatively: 'he'll keep it for himself to a certainty.'
'Quite out of the question,' assented I. 'The poor fellow who lost it would never have a chance of recovering it.'
'I think I had better take it home, and advertise it in the Times,' suggested my friend.
'No, my dear fellow,' said I firmly: 'you shall never be troubled to walk with that great black leather-bag' (it was an uncommonly large one) 'through the streets. The cab takes me, you know, to my own door, so I'll take it to my house.'
'Very well,' said B, slowly handing over the property into my charge, with the air of a co-trustee, who, while executing some undoubtedly lawful deed, yet cannot help regretting that the person who acts with him should happen to be an attorney. 'You'll take great care of it, won't you?'
'Of course I will,' returned I indignantly. 'I shall either advertise it in the Times, or take it to the police-office the first thing in the morning.'
'Just so,' said B, who had now arrived at his journey's end. 'I shouldn't at all wonder if we saw a reward offered for it to-morrow in the second column. If we were poor people, this might be quite a god-send, might it not?'
This made us both laugh.
'You shall have halves,' said I, 'whatever it is.'
And so we parted with another shout of merriment. But when I glanced through the little window, I saw B looking after me with an intensity of expression, which, although we are always sorry to wish each other good-bye, I never noticed in his friendly countenance before.
It may be asked, perhaps, how it was that the cabman, seeing me enter his vehicle without luggage, and emerge from it with the property in question, did not at once question my right to the same; for it is scarcely to be supposed that he was metaphysician enough to allow that I could have evolved, not only the idea of a carpet-bag, but a carpet-bag itself, out of my inner consciousness.
The reply to this apparent difficulty is, that it was dark. Moreover, I won't swear that I did not hold the carpet-bag rather behind me, so as to shield it from observation, while I paid the man his full fare and sixpence over, for which, as usual, he did not stay to thank me, but drove swiftly away.
My wife was exceedingly interested in this carpet-bag—a black one, evidently divided within into compartments—and punched it vigorously, with the object of discovering, from the nature of the resistance offered, what was the character of its contents. 'If we could open it,' argued she, 'we should surely learn from internal evidence the name and address of the owner, and be able to forward it to him immediately.'
But when all the little keys in our possession had been tried without effect upon its patent lock, we decided that it could not possibly contain anything beyond a change of clothes—probably some poor gentleman's evening suit—and a couple of hairbrushes. There was no doubt about them, for I could feel their bristles through the leather. Under these circumstances, the expenditure of seven-and-sixpence in an advertisement in the Times was not to be dreamed of, and I made up my mind to 'communicate with the police.' There was also something authoritative, and which seemed to confer importance upon one, in such an act. People who are described as 'taking that very proper course,' in the newspaper, always strike one in the light of public benefactors. Moreover, although nothing was really ever further from my thoughts (and I think I may add even from B's) than to appropriate that carpet-bag or its contents to my own uses, yet there was a certain sense of self-sacrifice in the action, or, at all events, of the most heroic honesty. Aristides himself could not have behaved more justly: it was a proceeding that even Draco would have spoken of from the bench, I thought, in terms of the highest praise. At all events, I should be looked upon by the police authorities—accustomed to deal with persons actuated by such very different sentiments—with something more than cold respect. In a word, I don't remember to have ever felt more self-complacent than when I took my way, after luncheon, the next day (a Saturday), to the nearest police-station, with the intention of supplying the Inspector with that mysterious mental aliment which Sir Richard Mayne calls 'information received.'
Having reached the office, and being told by the policeman on duty in the antechamber to 'pass on'—as though I were an apple-woman obstructing the pavement—I soon found myself in the presence of his superior, and undergoing the minutest inspection from that sagacious person. His eye measured me, as though he had been my tailor, from my head to my knees, and doubtless would have gone further, and literally 'taken the length of my foot,' but for a great counter which intervened between him and me, and curtailed his investigations, although by no means his curiosity. I never was so looked at before in all my life; and it was at this moment I began to feel regret that I had so enjoyed the misfortunes of those three victims to the P division at the Crystal Palace.
'I have found a carpet-bag,' said I, in a hesitating tone.
'Umph?' returned the Inspector, turning over the leaves of a great ledger, and looking as though he was about to mention that it was his duty to warn me that any admissions I might make would be used against me. 'Umph? repeated he, still more severely; 'that is a very odd thing to find, sir, indeed.'
Now, really, I put it to anyone, was this fair? Why should he have said that? We were in London, a populous city, where almost everybody who possesses a change of raiment also owns a carpet-bag, and is liable to lose it. If the celebrated New Zealander had arrived, and was, with his scantily-attired nation, solely in the occupation of the metropolis, such an innuendo could have been hardly justified; but as it was, it seemed to me quite insulting.
'Sir,' said I (turning, I have no doubt, very red), 'I found it in a hansom.'
'Ah? returned the Inspector, with the fierce exultation of a wild animal who fancies he scents blood, 'you found it in a hansom.'
'Yes,' observed I with irritation; 'I've got it now: I don't want it. You may send for it, if you like.'
'Be good enough to--?' No, that's just what he did not say. Gratitude I had ceased to expect from this person, but I did expect common civility, and I was disappointed.
'State the circumstances,' was all he said; and he took up his pen and wrote them down with malignant deliberation. At this point I began in my mind's eye to see the court of the Old Bailey, not from the grand-jury box, wherefrom I had beheld it in the flesh, but from the point of view enjoyed by the prisoner in the dock. Suspicion, arrest, conviction, (for all I knew) penal servitude for life, was what I now expected, instead of that autograph letter from the Home Secretary complimenting me upon my sagacity and rectitude, with the receipt of which my imagination had flattered me as I came along.
'Now, sir,' said he gloomily, when I had quite finished, 'you have done very wrong, and something entirely unjustifiable.'
Dear me, dear me! how I wished I had let B carry home that carpet-bag, as he had so pressingly offered to do, instead of me! How I wished I had put it behind the fire! How I wished I was going to sail for Otago that evening, per clipper ship Swiftsure, whose departure I had seen advertised on the wall of the police-station asI came in! Every detail of what I had remarked coming along the streets crowded before my eyes, just as the novelists describe them to do in the cases of condemned or moribund persons. The Inspector's accents smote upon my ear like the strokes of a passing bell.
'Your manifest duty, sir, was to inform the cabman that the property in question—very likely documents of priceless worth—'
'No,' interrupted I hastily ; 'hair-brushes.' The next moment, by the expression of his face, I felt that I had made a great mistake.
'Hair-brushes!' said he slowly, suiting the action to the word by slowly stroking one of his muttonchop whiskers: 'then you've opened it, have you?'
'No, no,' said I imploringly; 'none of our keys would fit the lock.' Here I saw that I had made another most unfortunate mistake.
'O, indeed!' was all the Inspector said, but he looked volumes—the whole four volumes of the Newgate Calendar.
'Your obvious duty, in the first instance,' returned he with meaning, 'was to have given up the property to the cabman, in order that it might have been at once conveyed to the Lost-Parcels' Office—'
'Dear me,' cried I with sudden vehemence, 'so I ought, of course! I quite forgot about the Lost-Parcels' Office.'
'Ah, you knew of it, then, but you forgot it,' returned the Inspector in a tone of sarcasm that I have heard my brother-in-law, who is a county magistrate, use to poachers found with partridge-nets in their accidental possession. 'You will be good enough to favour me with your address.'
I gave it him of course. I would have made him a present of the lease of my house, if it would have mollified him at that moment.
'More than twenty-four hours will have elapsed before this carpet-bag can be sent to its proper destination,' pursued he; 'therefore the owner will probably have called at the Lost-Parcels' Office, and not finding it there, will conclude—and indeed the authorities will tell him so—that all further search is vain. Cabmen are bound to return articles so discovered within twelve hours; and if they do not do so, it is because they are thieves.'
'Exactly so,' urged I despairingly; 'that is why I deemed it safer to take this home with me; I thought the cabman might not be trustworthy.'
'You could have taken his number, I suppose,' remarked the Inspector cynically. 'It is too late to forward the article to Scotland-yard to-night; you had better bring it hither yourself on Monday. Good-morning.'
He did not say 'Good-morning' like a parting salutation at all. It seemed to express: 'You may go now, but on your personal recognisances to reappear here within eight-and-forty hours. I have not done with you, nor anything like it. I have got my eye upon you; my myrmidons shall have their orders. A man that can see hair-brushes through the leather of a carpet-bag, and yet forgets the existence of a Lost-Parcels' Office, is not likely to come to good; I shall see you again. Good-morning.'
The intermediate Sabbath was by no means a day of rest to me. Black Care, that sits behind the horseman, seemed always to be sitting in front of me in the form of a leathern carpet-bag. If an incubus ever took that form, I pity those of my ancestresses who were witches. My wife, to whom I had communicated my apprehensions, pictured her beloved husband with a mask on (as beheld in Never too late to mend at the Princess's Theatre), shorn of his name, and answering to a number with four figures in it. We were about to retire to rest upon that Sunday night at 10°30, as usual, when the parlour-maid came up to the drawing-room with a very pale face, to say that there were a couple of policemen in the hall, who wanted to speak with me.
'They shall never part us! exclaimed my wife with a shriek of agony. 'O Walter, Walter! why did you laugh at those poor people at the Crystal Palace, who were falsely accused of picking pockets?'
I unbarred the shutters, and looked out into our crescent. Yes, as I had suspected; there were two other policemen watching the house from outside.
'Heaven bless you, Polly,' said I with pathos; 'you at least will know that I am innocent.' Then taking advantage of the temporary unconsciousness induced by hysterics, I tore myself away from her side.
In our little hall there stood the largest policeman I ever saw out of a pantomime, and one almost as big was standing behind him. Each had a dark-lantern stuck in his belt, which gave them an awful appearance; and the cook and the kitchen-maid were regarding them, as though they were a couple of Guy Fawkeses, with unfeigned amazement. It was not the 'amazement' spoken of in the marriage-service; however, between them and those policemen there was, for once, no tender bond of sympathy, I feel certain; they were almost as frightened as their master.
'Here I am,' said I, holding my hands before me, as I had seen all heroic criminals do upon the stage, when 'the game is up, and 'the darbies' must be put on, and why not with a good grace?
'Yes, sir,' returned the giant respectfully; 'I am sorry to trouble you, but the fact is we suspect there's somebody in that empty house' (he was Irish, of course) 'next door: we have been directed to watch it, and a certain mark which we set upon it has been removed, whereby we know that some person has entered who has no right to be there. The owner is out of town, so if you will kindly let us get out of your garret-window, and on to the roof—'
'Gentlemen,' cried I in a rapture, 'the whole house is at your service. I respect the Law above all things. What would you take to drink?'
The revulsion of feeling was almost too much for me. It is unnecessary to describe how enthusiastically I seconded the efforts of 'the force,' accompanying them to the very roof-top, and only leaving them when they made their burglarious entry into the next door, and the possibility arose of a contest with robbers. They almost frightened my eldest child into a fit as they tramped by her apartment, but I assured them that she was used to fits, and that it was of no consequence. In short, if ever a man showed himself a good citizen, and deserving of the approbation of 'the authorities,' it was I. I even ventured, while pushing the big man through the garret-window (where he stuck fast, and had to have his lantern taken off), to give him the heads of the carpet-bag story, in order that he might retail them in the proper quarter. But he gave me to understand that 'misdemeanours' were not in his line, which lay rather in the suppression of 'burglaries with violence.' I don't know whether they found anybody in that uninhabited house or not; and I don't care.
The next morning, I once more betook myself, carpet-bag in hand, to the police-station. There was another Inspector sitting at the receipt of rascaldom, and I had to tell all my story over again.
'When did you furnish this information? asked this terrible official, who was twice as ferocious as the other.
'Yesterday,' said I.
'Yesterday? returned he in an awful voice; 'why, I was here all day yesterday. What time was it when, according to your own account, you came here to give up this property?'
'About three o'clock,' said I.
'I was here at three. Number forty-two, wasn't I here at three o'clock yesterday?'
'Stop! cried I; 'I forgot; it was Saturday. Of course I couldn't come here on a Sunday.'
You should have heard the inspectors 'Umph! when I said that. If that man ever goes to church of his own free-will, I'll forfeit my character for the second time—and I don't intend to do that in a hurry.
'Well, we've got your address,' said he. 'We know where to find you, if anything should arise further out of this matter.'
'Further?' cried I. 'Why you've got the carpet-bag and all that's in it. What can arise out of it further?'
'It's impossible to say,' returned the Inspector drily. 'But suppose—I only say suppose—the whole story should be a device for getting rid of a'—here he pointed to the dreadful carpet-bag—'something hinconwenient.'
'Good heavens!' cried I, turning pale with horror, 'not a dead body?'
'Just so,' nodded the Inspector; 'who knows?'
I found myself at home somehow; but the shock had a serious effect upon my system. When I found myself well enough to revisit the club, B's cheery laugh grated upon my ears very unpleasantly. He would have laughed, if I may use the vulgarism, on the other side of his mouth, if he had taken home that carpet-bag.
'Well,' exclaimed he, 'how did that little venture of ours turn out? (Fancy either of those Inspectors hearing him say 'venture'!) 'Remember, I am entitled to halves, you know.'
'Yes, you are,'returned I gravely; 'and if anything comes of it, you shall certainly have halves. The reward that is most likely to be offered is six months' imprisonment with hard labour; and you shall serve three of them, and welcome!'
I do not know whether I am not under 'the surveillance of the police' even now.