Chapter II: Part 2

His next proceedings will show how he had turned his mechanical genius to account for the safe keeping of his diamonds. Any person opening the drawers in the nest would have found them full of old papers, and would also have found that they would not come entirely out of their places. Opening, however, the third drawer from the top, the auctioneer pulled at it strongly, until it came out with a sharp snap, exposing the opening into which it fitted. The back of this drawer was a movable flap, working on hinges, and retained in its place by a powerful spring, so that it required a considerable exertion of strength to extract the drawer from the nest. Putting his hand into the aperture, Mr Cross grasped an iron semicircular handle which fitted into a niche in the wall at the back of the drawers, and drew it towards him. As he did so, the seeming picture glided noiselessly away, leaving its frame surrounding a dark opening. Through this he passed into what was in effect a huge inner safe; a closet about four feet square by six in height, lined throughout with inch-thick steel, and within that again with four inches of fire-resisting composition contained in an iron skin. The sliding door was steel, very thick and massive, fastening with half-a-dozen spring catches, moving in a groove four inches in depth, and absolutely impervious to any one not acquainted with the machinery.

Every portion of this latter apparatus had been devised and constructed by the auctioneer with his own hands, and placed in position by him after the safe—made to his order by a famous maker—had been set up. The rest was a mere matter of stone-masonry, completed by ordinary workmen under his own eye; so that the secret was with him alone. Even now the whole has not been revealed. Prior to withdrawing the semicircular handle, it was necessary to turn it to the right, from a perpendicular to a horizontal position. Unless this were done, the act of pulling out the handle set in motion a clockwork apparatus, which at the end of thirty seconds released a heavy counterpoise, the effect of which was to close the sliding door of the inner safe smartly, and to throw out of gear the machinery which worked it. It could then only be opened by means of a second mechanical arrangement, connected with another handle which was concealed behind a block of stone in the wall near the roof. It is evident that any person entering the safe after opening the door, unless in possession of the second part of this secret, would be effectually trapped. His comrades, if any, would be unable to deliver him, and he would have to abide an ignominious capture. This device the auctioneer considered superior to any system of spring-guns or such-like vulgarities, which are almost as likely to injure the owner as the thief. Against each side of the safe were piled ordinary deed-boxes, containing the various securities representing the bulk of his fortune; but against the side opposite to the door was an iron box weighing perhaps five hundredweight, and clamped firmly to the floor.

The auctioneer knelt down, and with a small key fastened to the handle of the larger one, opened the box, disclosing a number of jewel-trays. As he lifted them out one after the other, the light of the lantern twinkled upon the rare and valuable gems, of all sizes and shapes, which lay loose upon the satin cushions. He looked at them long and earnestly, counting them over and over again, and flashing the more precious of them to and fro against the light.

‘Ay!’ he muttered—‘all for her—for little Amy. What use in them now? It’s all over—all over and done with for ever.’ But again came the thought that if Amy were to become a widow, she might wear the diamonds after all.

He closed and locked the box, rose from his knees, and went back to the nest of drawers outside. As he forced the handle into its place, the picture reappeared, and the sliding-door shut to with a click. Pushing back the movable flap, he insinuated the drawer into its place, replaced the papers taken from it, and closed it. Then, closing the inner strong-door, he stepped again into the street, shutting the outer door after him; and having satisfied himself that it was securely closed, went into the house and to bed, where he slept heavily, being quite tired out, until nearly ten o’clock in the morning.

* * * * *

Despite his vigils of the night before, Mr Cross was tolerably punctual to his eleven o’clock appointment at the rooms occupied by Captain Ferrard and his wife in Duke Street. That gentleman received him with smooth looks and fair words, for it was by no means his cue to be the first to quarrel. So he courteously hoped that Mr Cross was well, invited him to a seat, making no allusion to the fact that this was the first time they had met since the marriage, and then left his visitor to state the reason of his call.

‘I’m a plain business man, sir,’ said the auctioneer after a moment or two; ‘and I’ve got little time to spare, so I’ll come to the point at once. It seems, from what my daughter told me last night, that you and she don’t get on quite so well together as you should.’

‘Ay, ay!’ said the captain carelessly. The demon within him was being aroused. He had not the slightest intention of allowing this tradesman to lecture him. The latter waited for some further remark, but none came.

‘That isn’t as it should be between man and wife, you know,’ said he at last, somewhat nonplussed.

‘I’ll be as plain with you, Mr Cross, as you can possibly be with me,’ said the captain, turning round suddenly so as to face his visitor. ‘My wife has been complaining to you, it seems. Well, I suppose we have our trifling disagreements, like other couples, and scarcity of money does not tend to sweeten the temper—does it? I quite agree with you that this is not as it should be; but then, how few things are! Am I to suppose that it is only on this subject that you wish to speak to me?’

‘Don’t be hasty,’ replied Mr Cross. ‘I’m not saying it’s your fault, nor anybody’s fault. I come to you in a friendly way, not to have words about it. I’ve been thinking the matter over a good deal since last night, and I’ve come to fancy things might somehow be arranged between us, after all.’

Ferrard pricked up his ears. ‘Very good of you to say so,’ he said politely.

‘I don’t say that I’ve quite thought it out, and I don’t say what I will do, you understand, or what I won’t. But no doubt there’s a good deal of truth in your remark about money and temper. I’m a rough, cross-grained sort of fellow, and perhaps I may have been too quick over this affair. I’m afraid I wasn’t too civil to you that day; and you must own _you_ were a bit aggravating too. I only want my girl to be happy.’

‘I assure you, Mr Cross,’ said the captain, with engaging frankness, ‘that in that respect we are entirely at one. I have every desire for your daughter’s happiness—and, I may add, for my own; of course, in a secondary degree. But I have already pointed out to you, and you have been good enough to agree with me, that good temper and easy circumstances are intimately allied; and I think you will also admit that bad temper and happiness are entirely incompatible. And considering our respective tastes and habits, five hundred a year can scarcely be considered affluence.’

For all his desire to be conciliatory, he could not entirely repress the slight sneer which pervaded his tone and manner.

The auctioneer looked steadily and gravely at him as he replied: ‘I daresay we shall find some way of getting rid of the inconvenience, sir. But I’m due in the City long before this, so I’ll only say that I hope we shall be better acquainted, and we can’t be that without seeing more of one another. What do you say to a bit of dinner at my house on Thursday and staying the night? Then you and I can talk this little matter over by ourselves, between man and man. I’m going out of town for a week on Friday; and if you don’t mind, I’ll arrange for Amy to meet me at London Bridge and keep me company—she looks as if a whiff of the sea wouldn’t hurt her—and then, you know, you could think over any proposal I might make to you, alone and quietly; and tell me what you say to it, when we come back.’

The captain’s heart leaped within him at these proposals. Pressing claims were at this moment hanging over him, which it seemed that he might now be able to meet. He could ask no fairer opportunity for captivating his father-in-law and so turning his dearth into plenty. So he responded to the invitation with great heartiness, professed himself delighted at the prospect of so pleasant a trip for his wife; and they shook hands and parted.

Mr Cross stood on the doorstep for a moment, deep in thought. His mind sadly misgave him. He mistrusted his power of dealing with this cool, sarcastic, easy-mannered vagabond, as he would have dealt with one of his own class. He shook his head as he walked away. If the man would but die!

That night, feeling weary and worn out, he thought he would indulge in a little tinkering of some sort in his workshop—to him a never-failing source of relaxation. For some time past he had been engaged in making a duplicate set of keys for the doors of the strong-room and the iron box which held the diamonds, as a useful precaution in case the originals should be lost or mislaid. So, after dinner, he put on his leathern apron and again set to work, pipe in mouth. When he had finished the work, he paid the usual evening visit to his diamonds, using the new keys. With a touch or two of the small file which he carried in his hand, he found that they fitted perfectly.

Amy had been the same day to her father in the City, all anxiety to learn the result of the interview, as her husband declined to tell her anything. Mr Cross had, as we know, but little to tell; he could only bid her, as before, keep a good heart, and it would all come right. He informed her of the arrangements which had been made for Thursday and Friday next, named the hour at which she was to meet him at London Bridge, and sent her away a little perplexed, but rejoicing greatly at the prospect of the trip, and trusting implicitly in her father’s wisdom.

THE ART OF CONVERSATION.

Certain things are supposed to come by the grace of nature and the free gift of providence; and the Art of Conversation is one of them. No one dreams of cultivating this art, either in its perfected form or in those rudiments which stand as a ‘grammar in use for beginners;’ that is—correct diction, just expression, that inflection of the voice which shall be eloquent without being theatrical, and that emphasis which shall be indicative without being exaggerated. People drawl out their words into long tails or clip them into docked stumps; they loop them on to the other with a running chain of ‘_er_s,’ or they bite them off short, each word falling plumb and isolated, disconnected from all the rest; they let their labials go by the board, and bury their _r_s in the recesses of their larynx; they throw the accent on the wrong syllable, and transform their vowels according to their liking; they say ‘wuz’ for ‘was,’ ‘onnibus’ for ‘omnibus,’ and ‘y’ are’ for ‘you are;’ they shoulder out all the middle aspirates and some of the initial, and forget that words ending in ‘ing’ have a final _g_ which is neither to be burked out of existence nor hardened into a ringing _k_. All which lingual misdemeanours they commit with a clear conscience and a light heart, because ignorant that they have committed any misdemeanour at all.

Even people of birth and breeding, who should be without offence in those matters, fail in their grammar, and say the queerest things in the world. ‘These sort of things;’ ‘Who have you asked?’ ‘Every one of them know you;’ ‘Between you and I;’ ‘Neither men or women;’ ‘No one’ as the antecedent, and ‘they’ as the relative—these are just a few of the commonest errors of daily speech of which no one is ashamed, and to which were you to make a formal objection, you would be thought a pedant for your pains, and laughed at when your back was turned. If these things are done in the green tree of method, what may not be looked for in the dry of substance? And sure it is that we find very queer things indeed in that dry of substance, and prove for ourselves how the Art of Conversation is reduced to its primitive elements, which few give themselves the trouble to embellish, and fewer still to perfect.

To begin at the beginning, how seldom people pay undivided attention to the conversation on hand, and how often their thoughts wander and stray everywhere but where they should be! The most absurd, the most trivial, thing distracts them. A spider on the wall breaks the thread of an enthralling narrative, and a butterfly on the lawn breaks into the gravest, or the most poetic, talk as ruthlessly as the proverbial bull smashes into the proverbial china-shop. Another alumnus in the same school, though of a different class, will not let you speak without interruption. Like a cockerel, spurring and springing at its brother, this kind dashes at you with an answer before you have half stated your case. ‘You mean this?’ he says, performing that feat called ‘taking the words out of your mouth.’ And forthwith he begins his refutation of that which you have not said and probably had no intention of saying. Another will not wait until you have finished. His words cross and intermingle with yours in hopeless confusion of both sound and sense. You both speak together, and neither listens to the other—you, because you ‘have the floor,’ and he, because he wishes to have it. Conversation with such is impossible. It is a battle of words—mere words—like a heap of loose stones shot pell-mell out of a cart; and not that orderly interchange of ideas which is what true conversation should be.

Others, cousins-german to these, interfere in talk with which they have no business. They do not join in; thus enlarging the basis and enriching the superstructure; but they break in with something quite irrelevant, destroying the most interesting discussion on the most puerile pretence, as a feather whisk might knock down a Sèvres vase. This form of bad-breeding is much in use among women when they are jealous, and want to make themselves unpleasant to each other. The poet or the lord, the bishop or the general, that grand name or this great fortune—the man who is the feminine cynosure and whose attention confers distinction—is talking to some one singled out from the rest. He has to be detached and made to transfer himself. Accordingly, one of the boldest of the discontented outsiders goes up to the charge, and in the midst of a talk on literature, art, politics, on his travels or her experiences, cuts in with a question about the next flower-show or the last murder; with Who? What? When? How? no nearer to the subject on hand than the moon is near to Middlesex. This is an offence of daily occurrence, even among well-bred people—human nature having the ugly trick of breaking out of the delicate swaddling-clothes in which education and refinement would fain confine it.

Sometimes your interlocutor is a mother abnormally occupied with her children, and unable for two consecutive minutes to free her thoughts from the petty details of their lives. She does not even pretend to listen to what you are saying. All the time you are speaking, her eyes are wandering about the room, to make sure that Tom is not forgetting his manners, and that Jane is not making holes in hers—that Frank is where he should be, and Sarah not where she should not be—that Edith is not talking too much, and that Charley is not talking too little: it does not matter what she is anxious about, seeing that if it be not one thing it will be another. And you need not be offended, nor take her inattention as a slight special to yourself. The Golden-mouthed himself could not fix her thoughts, wandering as they always are over the pathless spaces of her maternal fear. She is one of the most disagreeable of the whole tribe of the conversational awkward-squad. You have nothing for it but to stop dead—in the midst of a sentence, if need be—until she has brought her roving eyes back to the point which presupposes attention, and appears to be conscious that you are speaking to her.

Others yawn in your face with frank and undisguised weariness; and some put up the transparent screen of a fan or two fingers; others, again, make that constrained grimace which accompanies the eating and the swallowing of the yawn, and think that their sudden gulp and hesitation will pass unobserved. Some give wrong answers, with their eyes fixed on yours, as if listening devoutly to all you say, and absorbed in your conversation. They have mastered this part of the form, and can look as if drinking in to the last verbal drop. The reality is analogous to that condition of Baron Münchhausen’s horse with which we are all familiar, and which we express by the phrase: ‘Going in at one ear and out by another.’ One who had learned this art of looking attention without giving it, once fell into a pit whence was no possible extraction. ‘Do you call gentlemen in England It?’ said an English-speaking German who thought his sweet companion had been entirely interested in his talk. Her eyes—and what eyes they were!—had been all he could desire—fixed, listening, interested. Meanwhile, her ears had been occupied elsewhere. At her back, on the ottoman where she was sitting, was being carried on a conversation in which she was deeply interested. Before her sat her German, labouring heavily among the stiff clay-clods of his imperfect English. Her answer to his remark betrayed the absence of the mind underneath all the steadfastness of her bewildering eyes. ‘Do you call gentlemen in England It?’ he repeated with mingled reproach, sorrow, and—enlightenment. That random answer to his previous question cost her the offer of a spray of orange blossom—and him the pain of its refusal.

Beyond these rudiments comes the higher art reaching into grace, and needing enlightened intelligence for its perfection. The section which we have been considering belongs only to the grammar, the beginning, the mere infancy of things, like the New Zealander’s tattoo for personal decoration, or his hideous idol for representative art. Beyond the good-breeding of attention comes the supreme art, we had almost said the science of conversation—of all things the most difficult, to judge by its rarity at least in England. It is more common in France, where it is better understood, and where a good conversationalist is prized as a Master in his own degree. And be it observed—a good conversationalist is not the same thing as a good anecdotist, a good debater, a good talker—this last too often sinning with Coleridge in monopolising all the talk to himself, and granting only some ‘brilliant flashes of silence’ wherein the ruck may have their innings. A good conversationalist, on the contrary, is essentially reciprocal. He flings his own ball, but he catches the return and waits for its throw. He has a light touch, and that kind of skill which glances off rather than hits fair and square. He has also the power of suggestiveness and direction, as perfect in its way as the skill with which certain adepts can make a ball wind in and out of stumps and stakes by the clever twist of their first throw off. He is not one of those who run a subject to earth and finish it all the same as one would finish a fox; but he keeps it alive and going with the neatest, deftest, little fillips possible—as the Japanese keep up their paper butterflies with airy puffs of their flimsy fans, or as a thaumaturgist guides his spinning-plates with the tip of his forefinger. When it is all over, and you ask yourself what you have got by it, you are forced to confess, Nothing. You have been superficially amused, and for the moment interested; but you have learned nothing, and are no richer mentally than you were before the verbal butterfly began to flutter and the wordy plate to spin.

We in England, however, know but little of this kind of talk. We have men who argue, and men who assert; and we have men, and women too, who come down with a thud on the toes of all whom they encounter in the various walks of conversation. But of the light bright thrust and parry, the brilliant quarte and tierce, the flashing ‘pinked’ and quick _riposte_ characteristic of the palmy days of Parisian society, we have but very little. For foils we use bludgeons; for paper butterflies, leaden bullets. We are too much in earnest to be graceful, and too anxious about our subject to be careful of our method. Hence we have better dialecticians than conversationalists, and better fighters than fencers. But really, say, at a dinner, or in the crowded corners of a fashionable soirée, you cannot go into the mazes of ‘evidences,’ nor discuss the value of esoteric Buddhism, nor yet winnow your sheaf of political economy, beginning with Adam Smith and ending with Henry George. You can only play with words and toss up airy bubbles of ideas. And he who can play with most dexterity, and whose airy bubbles have the brightest iridescence, is the hero of the moment and the master of the situation.

As a rule, authors are but dull dogs in conversation. They keep their good things for their books. Those who expect in literary society the feast of reason and the flow of soul, find themselves for the most part wofully disappointed. More is to be got out of the amateurist set—that fringe which would be if it could, and which hangs on to the main body as the best thing it can do in the circumstances. But authors of the professional and bread-winning class will talk only of things already known, repeating what they have written, but taking care not to forestall what they have not yet printed. They, and all professionals of any denomination whatsoever, are also given to talk shop among themselves; and shop is usually disagreeable to the outsider.

We might do worse than cultivate Conversation as an Art. Time has room for all things in his hand, and life has need of variety. Desperately busy and terribly in earnest as we may be, blowing bubbles has yet its value. Moreover, the true art of conversation is a lesson in good-breeding, which, in its turn, is the _fine fleur_ of civilisation; and thus, from the rootwork of manner to the efflorescence of matter, there is something to be gained by the perfection of the art.

IN QUEER COMPANY.

IN TWO PARTS.—PART I.

If the following account of what happened to me a few years ago serves no other purpose, it may pass muster as an illustration of two old sayings, namely, that ‘One half of the world does not know how the other half lives,’ and that ‘Truth is often stranger than fiction.’

It was late on a very cold afternoon during the winter of 1876-77, that I was hurrying westward along the Marylebone Road, congratulating myself upon having turned my back upon the bitter east wind, and comparing the climate of London towards the end of December with that which I had been enjoying exactly twelve months previously, when at Calcutta, as one of the Special Correspondents with the Prince of Wales. I had got nearly as far as the Edgware Road, when a man touched his hat to me and asked me for the wherewith to get a night’s lodging. He did not look like an ordinary or a professional beggar. His clothes, although very shabby, were evidently well made. He looked so pinched and weary, that I stopped and fumbled in the ticket-pocket of my overcoat for a sixpence to give him. He stared at me very hard indeed whilst I was getting the money, and as I handed it to him, broke out with an exclamation of wonder, asking me whether my name was not so-and-so. I replied that it was; and asked him where he had ever seen me before. To make a long story short, this poverty-stricken man asking alms on the public streets turned out to be a gentleman I had known many years before, when he was a captain in one of our crack lancer regiments, and had a private fortune of his own of more than fifteen hundred a year. When I had last seen him, he was a man of little over thirty; but was now on the wrong side of fifty; and owing to want, care, hunger, cold, and dirt, looked very much older. He had always been a very fast man. Betting, cards, and doing bills at sixty per cent., had worked out their legitimate ends upon him. I had lost all sight of him for fully twenty years, but remembered having heard that he had been obliged to sell out on account of his many debts. All this, and much more too, he related when he came to my house, as I had told him to do, and helped him as far as it was in my power, with a little money and some old clothes.

When I asked him what he intended to do for the future, he said that if he could only get a decent outfit and a few pounds for travelling expenses, he had an opening in Paris that would soon put him on his legs again. It so happened that I knew slightly two or three men who had been in the same regiment with this individual; and of these there was one who was very well off. I therefore wrote out an appeal for the poor fellow, sent it to the different parties; and was greatly pleased when I found that instead of realising, as I had hoped, some ten or fifteen pounds, the contributions sent me came to upwards of thirty pounds. With this money I first got the unfortunate man a fairly good outfit of clothes, and then made over to him the balance left, about six pounds, to use as he liked. He was exceedingly grateful; and asked me to express his thanks to those who had responded so generously to my letters. It was about a fortnight after I had met him on the Marylebone Road that he called to bid me farewell, and to thank me again for all I had done, which, after all, was merely having written some half-dozen letters, and taken a little trouble in getting his clothes as good and as cheap as I could. He told me that he was leaving for Paris that evening.

For five or six months I neither saw nor heard anything about him. At the end of that time I received a note from this individual, telling me he was in London, saying he would like to see me, and giving me his address at a respectable hotel near Leicester Square. I wrote an answer; and as I happened to be going into the neighbourhood, called at the hotel, intending to leave it there. But as the waiter told me that the gentleman was at home, and was then writing in the coffee-room, I went there, and found my former acquaintance, who seemed delighted to see me. He had evidently prospered since I last saw him. He was well, if perhaps somewhat flashily dressed; had what seemed to be a valuable pin in his neck-scarf, a thick gold chain from one waistcoat pocket to another, and two or three rings on his fingers. He looked more like a Frenchman than an Englishman; and would certainly have passed a better muster at Brebant’s or in the _Café du Helder_ than he could have done in a London club. But what showed more plainly than anything else that he had done well, and what pleased me greatly, was that he there and then pulled out a roll of bank-notes and insisted upon repaying me what I had collected for him from his former friends. It was in vain that I protested that those gentlemen had parted with their money as a gift and not as a loan; that I did not know where to find them at present; and that I begged he would not think of repaying me the small portion I had contributed to the amount. No; nothing would serve him but to make me take the money and to give it back as best I could to those who had assisted him in his great distress.

As a matter of course, I was very curious to know by what means he had, in some measure at anyrate, recovered his position in the world; or how he had managed to fill his empty purse. But to all my questions he gave the most evasive answers. Remembering what his pursuits used to be long ago, I felt certain that he had got into some lucky vein of play or of betting, and that he was making a living either by cards or on the racecourse. But after a few days’ observation of what he did, I was sure that I was labouring under a mistake. Just at that time of the year several of our great race-meetings were in full swing; but he never went near any of them; nor did he ever attempt to go back amongst the men who had been his companions long ago. I offered to get his name put down as an honorary or visiting member of one or two good clubs; but he invariably declined. When he asked me, as he often did, to dine with him, it was always at one or other of the best foreign restaurants in London. When I called on him at his hotel, he seemed to be always busy either writing or receiving letters. One night I looked him up about eleven P.M. on my way back from the theatre. But they told me at the hotel he always went out between nine and ten P.M., and seldom came back before the small-hours of the morning.

In London, a busy man has little or no time to think of any one’s affairs except his own; but I confess that this gentleman used often to puzzle me not a little. His seeming prosperity in money matters as compared with his former circumstances, and the singular life he led, caused me often to wonder what were the sources whence he derived his income, my curiosity being not a little increased by his evident desire to keep me in the dark as to the truth of the case. But the solution of a difficult social problem almost invariably comes to hand when least expected, and this case was no exception to the rule.

I had not seen my friend for some two or three weeks, when I received a note asking me to call upon him, as he had met with a bad accident and was confined to his bed. I accordingly went to see him; and found that he had slipped upon the street, had injured his knee somewhat severely, and was suffering great pain. He had called in a surgeon, who had ordered the most perfect rest for at least ten days or a fortnight; and having no other friend in London of whom he could ask a favour, he begged me to help him in certain matters of business which could not be neglected. As a matter of course, I offered to be of any service I could to him; and he said that the first favour he would ask of me was to go to a small news-agent near Soho Square and ask for any letters directed to ‘T. D.; to be left till called for.’

I did so; and found there four letters so addressed, all bearing French post-marks, and took them to him at the hotel. He opened them with evident eagerness, and read them with an anxiety which he could not disguise from me, although he very evidently tried his best to do so. The contents of these communications seemed to give him great annoyance. After a short time, during which he seemed deep in thought, he wrote out a curious, mysterious advertisement, such as we read almost every day in the ‘Agony column’ of the _Times_, and asked me to get it inserted in three of the chief morning papers. I read what he had written, and wondered not a little what he meant. In the advertisement, ‘Adventure’ was requested to ‘keep dark until Phillip wrote.’ The sick man saw me smile as I read it, and looked very anxious and embarrassed, assuring me that there was no harm whatever in the hidden meaning of the notice. Having work of my own to attend to, I left him, saying I would call again the next day. But he begged so earnestly for me to come before post-time, that I consented to do so. He told me that he did not like intrusting his letters to the people of the hotel, who were either very curious or extremely neglectful on all such matters. I therefore returned in the afternoon, when he handed me two letters, which he asked me to post. They were both addressed to Paris, to persons with French-like names, and were to be left _poste restante_ at different post-offices. The next day but one he asked me to go to the same small news-agent near Soho Square and ask for any letters that might be there for him. I found two, and brought them to him. He read them with great eagerness; and again wrote two letters, which he asked me to post for him, evidently not caring to trust the people of the hotel with his correspondence. This went on almost every day. On one occasion, he took out of one of the letters I brought him a draft from a Paris bank upon one in London for one hundred pounds payable to ‘T. C. Dane, or order.’ He indorsed it, and asked me to get it cashed for him, which I did. He evidently saw that I was not only puzzled as to what his mysterious business could be, but that I had serious thoughts of not coming near him again until I found out whether my doing so would compromise myself. And apparently acting upon a sudden impulse, he all at once opened out and made what I may call his confession to me.

‘For some time past,’ he began, ‘I have seen that you wonder what my business is, and why I am so mysterious with regard to what I do and what I write. Well, I will now make a clean breast of it.’

He then told me that some two or three years previously, he had got into what he called ‘worse than a mess’ in Paris. He had somehow got mixed up with a gang of card-sharpers, without knowing to what an extent they carried on their dishonest practices, and had so far compromised himself, that the French police had him at their mercy. They had, however, let him off, holding over him the power they had to prosecute him at any future time, should they think he deserved it. But they made certain conditions with him; and these were, that he should go to London, and furnish them from time to time with all the information he could gather respecting certain receivers of goods, stolen in France, who resided in this metropolis. In order to do this the more effectually, he had managed not only to get acquainted with the leaders of a gang which worked for their friends in Paris, but he had also got himself received as one of them, and used to go to their meetings almost every night. The work, as he told me, had been most unpleasant, but it was nearly at an end; and the French police had promised that he should very soon be altogether free from his engagements with them.

To mix with people of whom little or nothing is known, and to penetrate into places which are hidden from the generality of mankind, has always had a great charm for me. Mr Dane was not a little surprised when, instead of leaving him after I had heard his story, I told him he would do me a great favour if he took me to a meeting of his dishonest friends; and that I would pledge myself never to give any information that might lead to a single member of the band getting into trouble. After making some objections to my request, he at last consented; and said that the first night he could get out he would go to the meeting of the gang by himself, but would then make arrangements for me to accompany him the following evening. And thus it was that I managed to get into very ‘queer company.’

If any one was to offer me one hundred pounds to show him where the place in which the thieves and receivers of stolen goods is or was situated, I could not do so, even if it was honourable to divulge what I had promised faithfully to keep secret. This much I may say, that having dined in the Strand, we walked up Catherine Street, and turned to the right when we came to the court that flanks the south side of Drury Lane Theatre. Here my companion stopped, took out of his pocket a pair of spectacles, and said I must put them on before he could take me any farther. I did as he desired; and found the glasses to be so dark that I could not see an inch beyond my nose. My friend laughed; and linking his arm in mine, said he would conduct me safely; but that he was obliged to make it a point I should not be able to recognise the streets we passed through, even if I wanted to do so. As near as I could guess, we took some ten minutes to reach our destination, after I had put on the glasses. My companion then stopped, knocked in a peculiar manner at a street door, told me to take off the spectacles, and led me through what seemed to be a coffee-shop of the most humble kind. In a large room beyond this, there were seated six or seven men, who were not by any means all of the same type. Two or three were evidently Frenchmen, and were talking together with the usual volubility of their nation. The rest were scattered here and there. All were smoking. Some had cups of tea or coffee before them, whilst others seemed to be indulging in spirits-and-water. My companion was greeted by all present as a friend they had been waiting for and were glad to see. He introduced me to the party assembled as ‘one of us, just come from Paris.’ No questions were asked, nor, beyond one or two civil inquiries, was any particular notice taken of me. I was asked what I would drink, offered my choice of cigars or cigarettes; and then the meeting commenced to discuss, in an informal kind of manner, the business which had brought those present together.

From what I could gather, it seemed that there had been, a few days before, a robbery of valuable jewels in Paris; and that the difficulty of those connected with the affair was to get the plunder safely over to the United States. The London police had been put on the alert; but the thieves—or shall I call them the agents and helpers of thieves?—did not seem to fear them. They discussed very freely the relative merits of the French and English detective systems; saying, that in cases of housebreaking and murders, the latter rarely failed to bring the offenders to justice; but that in cases of clever ‘plants,’ the former were much more to be feared.

‘You never know,’ said one Englishman present, with a round oath, ‘where or when you may come across those horrible French spies. Why, we might have here, in the very midst of us, some one who is in their pay.’

I thought to myself how little these fellows knew that my friend who had introduced me into the room belonged to the very tribe whom they feared so much. But of the United States they spoke in the highest terms; or in very much the same manner that an artisan who could not earn the wherewith to pay for dry bread in this country, might praise some place in the Far West where industry was certain to gain an honest living. From what I gathered, it would seem that whenever a robbery on a large scale is carried out, the first object of those concerned is to get ‘the swag’ out of the country as soon as possible. Thus, the produce of a plunder in Paris is almost invariably taken to London, and _vice versâ_. If the thieves can so arrange beforehand as to get away from where the theft has been committed within a few hours of the completion of their handiwork, they believe themselves to be all but safe, or at least the chances are about five to one in their favour. If they have the luck to get clear of Europe and safely land in America, the chances are that they will get clear altogether, realise a good price for their plunder, and make things pleasant all round. The United States, as I said before, is a capital country to go to; but South America is still better. In neither of these parts are many questions asked; but in the latter country the prices given are higher than in the north, and sales are more readily effected. In London, the market for jewelry is by no means good; for, as a rule, the stones have to be taken out of the setting; and the latter has to be secreted or instantly melted, else the police are pretty certain to get scent of the affair.

It must not be thought that those composing the very singular company amongst whom I found myself were at all in the burglar line. I don’t believe that there was a single housebreaking implement to be found amongst them. From all I gathered, they were the receivers, and not the actual robbers, of valuable goods. They talked together of their common pursuit much in the same manner that so many brokers might converse respecting the fluctuations of the Stock Exchange, or a party of farmers might give their opinions respecting the coming corn or other crops. What surprised me most was the manner in which the company, one and all, spoke of what they called their ‘business,’ as if it was of the most legitimate kind; and I feel certain that they would have resented warmly the words of any one who threw the shadow of a doubt upon the propriety of their occupation. In what they said of things in general, they all appeared to be very much of the same way of thinking; or, at anyrate, they expressed themselves as holding very much the same views. On one subject only did I hear strong language expressed, and that was when one of them—who, from what he said, seemed to have come from France very recently—gave an account of the manner in which the Paris detectives had found out a certain robbery, and had brought those who had perpetrated the same to justice. For individuals in the pay of the police, or rather who belonged to the same, to disguise themselves and mix with the individuals who were more or less ‘wanted,’ they regarded as ‘low’ and ‘sneaking’ in the extreme. They were unanimous in their opinion that if the French system of detecting robberies was ever introduced into England, this ‘would no longer’—as one of the party expressed himself—‘be a country for any honest man to live in.’

HINTS FOR HOUSEWIVES.

So much information about everything is now so easily obtainable, that there is little excuse for enduring many of the small domestic worries to which housekeepers and others are often subjected. Why, for instance, need any one be inconvenienced by damp cupboards, when we read that a bowl of quicklime placed therein will speedily absorb the moisture? Some of us are nervous about beds not being well aired, and yet we have only to fill a large stone bottle with boiling water and put it into the bed, pressing the bolster and pillows round it in a heap. By this simple contrivance, it is comforting to learn, no one need fear giving a friend a damp bed, even if this is done only once a fortnight.

Flies are a familiar nuisance; but we are told of a foreign remedy in laurel oil, which, better than glass fly-catchers and others, will not only rid us of these pests, but preserves looking-glasses and picture-frames when coated with it. Jane the ‘help’ should derive satisfaction from the assurance that beetles may be effectually got rid of by sprinkling once or twice on the floor a mixture of pure carbolic acid and water, one part to ten.

It is not frequenters of restaurants only who wonder why the simple precaution of throwing red pepper pods or a few pieces of charcoal into the pan—said to prevent odours from boiling-ham, cabbage, &c.—is not oftener observed. Cooks are further reminded that in roasting meat, salt should not be put upon the joint before it is put in the oven, as salt extracts the juice; and that lime-water will improve the condition of old potatoes in boiling.

Eggs could be purchased with greater confidence if the German method of preserving them by means of silicate of soda was generally followed. A small quantity of the clear sirup solution is smeared over the surface of the shell. On drying, a thin, hard, glassy film remains, which serves as an admirable protection and substitute for wax, oil, gums, &c.

Economy in housekeeping would be facilitated by the better observance of what are known in common parlance as ‘wrinkles.’ For example, why purchase inferior nutmegs, when their quality can be tested by pricking them with a pin? If they are good, the oil will instantly spread around the puncture. It is worth recollecting that bar-soap should be cut into square pieces, and put in a dry place, as it lasts better after shrinking. If we wish to keep lemons fresh for some time, we have only to place them in a jar of water and change it every morning. In selecting flour, we are advised to look to the colour. If it is white with a yellowish straw-colour tint, we should buy it; but if it is white with a bluish cast, or with black specks, we should refuse it.

Broken china can be mended with a useful glutine made with a piece of old cheese mixed with lime; and the wooden palings of the garden may be preserved from the weather by coating them with a composition of boiled linseed oil and pulverised charcoal, mixed to the consistence of paint. In this way wood can be made to last longer than iron in the ground. If we consult our health, we should plant the garden with odoriferous plants such as wall-flowers, mignonette, and other old English flowers and herbs, which have a remarkable power of developing ozone and purifying the atmosphere from miasmatic poisons.

Amateur joiners may derive comfort from the knowledge that nails and screws if rubbed with a little soap are easily driven into hard wood. The same household commodity, of a fine white quality, if rubbed over new linen will enable it to be more easily embroidered, as it prevents the threads from cracking.

A deal of breakage amongst glass and crockery can be prevented by the simple precaution of placing lamp-chimneys, tumblers, and such articles in a pot filled with cold water to which some common table-salt has been added. Boil the water well, and then allow it to cool slowly. When the articles are taken out and washed, they will resist any sudden changes of temperature.

Crape may be renovated by thoroughly brushing all dust from the material, sprinkling with alcohol, and rolling in newspaper, commencing with the paper and crape together, so that the paper may be between every portion of the material. Allow it to remain so until dry.

A better plan for removing grease-spots than by applying a hot iron is to rub in some spirit of wine with the hand until the grease is brought to powder, and there will be no trace of it. Every schoolboy is not aware that ink-spots can be removed from the leaves of books by using a solution of oxalic acid in water; nor does every housemaid know that ‘spots’ are easily cleaned from varnished furniture by rubbing it with spirit of camphor.

The elasticity of cane-chair bottoms can be restored by washing the cane with soap and water until it is well soaked, and then drying thoroughly in the air, after which they will become as tight and firm as new, if none of the canes are broken.

Marks on tables caused by leaving hot jugs or plates there will disappear under the soothing influence of lamp-oil well rubbed in with a soft cloth, finishing with a little spirit of wine or eau-de-Cologne rubbed dry with another cloth. When the white pianoforte keys become discoloured, we should remove the front door, fall, and slip of wood just over them; then lift up each key separately from the front—do not take them out—and rub the keys with a white cloth slightly damped with cold water, and dry off with a cloth slightly warm. Should the keys be sticky, first damp the cloth with a little spirit of wine or gin. Soap or washing-powder must not be used. It is worth while keeping a supply of ammonia in the household, in case we wish to remove finger-marks from paint, or require to cleanse brushes or greasy pans. A teaspoonful in a basin of warm water will make hair-brushes beautifully white; but care must be taken not to let the backs of the brushes dip below the surface. Rinse them with clean warm water, and put in a sunny window to dry.

Egg-shells crushed into small bits and shaken well in decanters three parts filled with cold water, will not only clean them thoroughly, but make the glass look like new. By rubbing with a damp flannel dipped in the best whiting, the brown discolorations may be taken off cups in which custards have been baked. Again, are all of us aware that emery powder will remove ordinary stains from white ivory knife-handles, or that the lustre of morocco leather is restored by varnishing with white of egg?

Nothing, it is said, is better to clean silver with than alcohol and ammonia, finishing with a little whiting on a soft cloth. When putting away the silver tea or coffee pot which is not in use every day, lay a little stick across the top under the cover. This will allow fresh air to get in, and prevent the mustiness of the contents, familiar to hotel and lodging-house sufferers.

A BLACKBIRD’S NEST.

BY ALEXANDER ANDERSON.

[In the month of May might be seen, at the Forth Bridge Works,
South Queensferry, a blackbird sitting on her nest, which was
built on an elevated projecting beam in the engineering shed,
in close proximity to the driving-shaft, and immediately above
a powerful steam-engine.]

She sits upon her nest all day,
Secure amid the toiling din
Of serpent belts that coil and play,
And, moaning, ever twist and spin.

What cares she for the noise and whir
Of clanking hammers sounding near?
A mother’s heart has lifted her
Beyond a single touch of fear.

Beneath her, throbbing anvils shout,
And lift their voice with ringing peal,
While engines groan and toss about
Their tentacles of gleaming steel.

Around her, plates of metal, smote
And beat upon by clutch and strain,
Take shape beneath the grasp of Thought—
The mute Napoleon of the brain.