AN EPISODE OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE.

SOME time ago a robbery was perpetrated in the mansion of Lord H——, which is situated in one of the squares of Belgravia. The thieves made a tolerably successful and remunerative haul. They cleared out the whole of the plate, and also much of the jewelry, which chiefly belonged to Lady H——, and was of enormous value.

How the thieves obtained access to the premises did not for a long while seem at all clear. Appearances on the surface warranted a belief that one or more of the servants of his lordship or her ladyship had aided and abetted the robbery. But there was no scintilla of what is called legal evidence to justify or warrant that suspicion. Nobody attached to the household was therefore arrested on the charge; but a reward was offered for the discovery of the offenders, and ordinary police vigilance was exhausted in the endeavour to track the delinquents.

Weeks and months (about three months) rolled by, and nobody was brought to justice.

His lordship was irritated beyond measure by this failure of justice. He one day went to his solicitors, declaring that he would spend half his fortune, if necessary, in order to secure the offender and his adequate punishment.

What share in the production of this decision Lady H—— may have had I do not know, but I have a notion that she had much to do with it; for it is certain beyond all doubt that the loss of her jewelry preyed upon her spirits, and exasperated her to the last pitch of intensity. Being rather shrewishly inclined, she would, I verily believe, have inflicted summary vengeance on the stoutest of the thieves if she could have clutched him.

Lord H——’s solicitors were somewhat annoyed at the failure of the police in the discovery of the criminals. They communicated with me upon the subject, and I at length was employed.

It was a teasing and difficult job. It gave me ten times more trouble than many a greater and more important business. Yet, having undertaken it, I was determined to go through with it. I would not, I felt, be baffled.

For a long while I could obtain no clue. At length I did get a scent of my prey, and from that moment the result was certain, although it could only be overtaken by a circuitous and uneven track.

I at length hunted down the principal delinquent.

The whole robbery had been effected by one man and one woman. The woman fled as soon as the man was arrested. I might have secured her before, but in doing so must have lost the man. Her arrest would have given him notice of his peril; and, in truth, I was almost careless about the female’s escape if I could catch her companion.

Lord H—— was more exasperated than ever when he ascertained who the criminal was; although he assured his solicitors, as they informed me, that he had not the slightest knowledge of the man, nor did he suppose the delinquent had any knowledge of him beyond that which all thieves of London might have in common of a nobleman.

I suspected that some mysterious cause inspired this desire for vengeance in his lordship, besides the natural influence of his loss upon his mind. That was sufficient to account for much revengefulness, but it did not appear to me an adequate motive for the sudden increase of such an emotion since the disclosure of the identity of the criminal. I do not, however, know that my suspicions were correct. It is possible that they were incorrect.

The offender was brought before the magistrate, in the usual course, and remand upon remand was applied for and obtained. The prisoner’s attorney resisted the application with all his argumentative power and force of advocacy, but in vain. The prosecution was thought by the bench to be entitled to every opportunity for discovering their property, and so involving the prisoner in the evidence of his guilt as to render his escape through the meshes of the law impossible.

At length the case was brought home with sufficient clearness to the prisoner, not only to warrant his committal for trial, but to secure his conviction when that trial took place. He was accordingly committed.

Next sessions a true bill was found against the prisoner by the grand jury of the Central Criminal Court, and in due course the prisoner was placed in the dock, to go through the great ordeal in connexion with this case.

The court was somewhat crowded. The incidents of this robbery had attracted public attention. The value of the plate, the rareness of the gems, the neatness and completeness of the exploit, had all combined to invest the case with an air of public importance.

In the court, awaiting the trial with greedy anxiousness, were Lord and Lady H——.

In the gallery was a female, attired in costly raiment, enriched by here and there a jewel of considerable value. She was, perhaps, one of the handsomest women in London; and her beauty was of that order usually denominated “sweet.” There was an apparent gentleness and amiability of expression underlying the traces of deep and painful emotion which something then transpiring, or anticipated, had aroused.

The eyes of this elegantly attired and beautiful female rested entirely upon Lord and Lady H——, who together occupied seats upon the bench on the right hand, a short distance from the judge, and who were prominent marks of observation for other persons beside this interesting female.

The case then before the court was a tedious trial for perjury, in which there was a mass of conflicting evidence. The tasks of judge and jury were rendered peculiarly difficult by the tangled mass of fact and fiction which the skill of the prosecution and the dexterity of the defence had laid before the court. To the parties interested in the next case—that of the plate robbery—no doubt this protracted evidence was very irksome, as well as to the man in the dock, whose liberty trembled in the balance of this conflicting testimony, or the discrimination of his fellows the jurymen.

Simultaneously with the latter portion of this trial for perjury, the counsel for the defence, Mr. Sergeant Ponderous and Mr. Anthony Stuffgown, were engaged in a consultation with Mr. Wheedle, the prisoner’s attorney.

A communication had been made to the latter “gentleman according to Act of Parliament,” the night before. It was a letter written by the fair spectator in the gallery of the court, who had also had an interview with Mr. Wheedle that morning.

The position she then occupied in court had been selected for her by the prisoner’s legal adviser. He had calculated with tolerable precision where his lordship would sit, and he wished her to be within the range of his vision, without being too prominent to the disinterested spectator.

The prisoner’s attorney had, in this consultation, explained to the counsel his stratagem, or intended coup de théatre. The learned sergeant and his learned junior considered the idea a good one, and may be said to have approved it; although, as they explained, it was no part of their professional duty to offer an opinion upon it. When the consultation was ended, the counsel returned into court, one taking his seat and the other hanging listlessly on the railing of the counsels’ boxes.

Mr. Wheedle was on the staircase of the court, watching its two modes of egress, and awaiting the effect of his little stratagem.

An usher received a three-cornered note from the hands of somebody, addressed to Lord H——, with a small gold coin, and a request that he would put the half-sovereign in his own pocket, and hand the note to his lordship unseen by her ladyship.

The note ran thus:

“Gallery of the Old Bailey, “July 19th, 185-.

“My Lord,—For Heaven’s sake, don’t prosecute my brother, and kill your faithful Clara!”

His lordship cast his eyes to the gallery, and for the first time in that place he beheld the form and features of a lady not unknown to him, but one he had very frequently met elsewhere. Those eyes, and the recognition of the writer, were too much for the nobleman’s delicate sensibilities. His face became as pale as chalk. He trembled almost as violently as a man attacked by St. Vitus’s dance. He swooned immediately after he had thrust the missive unseen into one of his pockets.

This event caused what the reporters for the daily journals described as “a painful sensation” in court. His lordship was removed in his carriage to his residence in —— Square, Belgravia, without uttering more than one sentence.

That sentence he so uttered was an instruction to his solicitor to get the trial postponed.

The trial for perjury, after a short interval, was proceeded with, and ended in the prisoner’s acquittal.

Whereupon Mr. Keeneye, as one of the counsel for the prosecution, rose after a conference with his learned brother retained for the defence, and, addressing his lordship, begged that, owing to the sudden illness of the prosecutor, the trial of the prisoner might be postponed. The prisoner’s counsel felt, they said, some difficulty in resisting the application after what they had seen, but added, that they thought the prisoner, who had done nothing to cause his lordship’s illness, was entitled to be liberated on bail. The judge, after glancing at the depositions, said he did not see that the accused had any such claim, and declined to attach that condition to the adjournment of the case, as prayed for by the prosecution.

Clara, who from the gallery beheld all that had gone on, and who devoured every word that had been uttered by the lawyers and the bench with greedy ears, maintained a wonderful show of self-possession, but was stirred by the intensest and most anxious thought. She left the court when this decision had been arrived at in her brother’s case; he being, indeed, quite unconscious up to this moment as to what had taken place in his absence, and, when it was explained to him, being left ignorant for the time of its cause.

Next session the prisoner was again brought up for trial. His lordship attended—but not her ladyship. She was induced to remain at home by the solicitude of her husband, who apprehended the effect upon her of the fetid atmosphere of the court. Although he had been up to the day first appointed for the trial resolutely bent upon securing to the prisoner the weightiest punishment he could get inflicted, he was now prepared to recommend the prisoner to mercy.

The evidence, which in the briefs as originally delivered to counsel disclosed a complete chain of proof, was remodelled. They now contained a narrative which set forth the difficulties of the theory for the prosecution, and went far towards explaining away the points against the accused. The briefs for the defence, which as originally delivered set forth no possible answer to the charge, now contained a theory which reconciled the evidence as it stood, or was expected to stand, with a possibility of the innocence of the accused.

A witness for the prosecution did not answer to his name when called; and the reader may be informed that this witness had gone beyond the jurisdiction of any English tribunal. The result was, that the prosecution broke down, and the culprit was liberated.

The explanation of this miscarriage of justice is simple. Pretty Clara was the mistress of the noble lord. He had indeed seduced her some years before, and she had been living since then (unknown to his wife) under his lordship’s protection. She was the sister of the prisoner. She was innocent of all participation in or knowledge of the robbery. For many years she had not seen that brother. They were orphans. They had both been thrown upon the world at a very early age to earn their own bread. She, when not more than fourteen years of age, had been placed in one of the West-End millinery houses, and had won a promotion to the counter of a shop in Oxford Street. He had occupied a situation in a City warehouse, but had never obtained a promotion by the exercise of any industry or fidelity on his part.

Brother and sister had both diverged from the paths of virtue in different ways and at different times, and had been for a period of six years unknown to each other. Neither cared to let the other know his or her whereabouts, pursuits, and mode of life. What had become of her, the reader knows. Of him it is necessary to say, that he robbed his employers, who forgave what they correctly believed to be a first offence, but discharged him without a character. From step to step he travelled deeper and deeper into the mazes of criminality, until he got inextricably involved with associates in various cases of fraud, larceny, and burglary.

The mode in which the robbery had been effected was very simple. The prisoner had won over the affections of a servant in Lord H——’s household, and used the information he thus obtained to effect, with her connivance, if not her assistance, the crime for which he afterwards stood charged at the Old Bailey. This, however, was not his first appearance in that court. He had been there on a former occasion, and had, as on this day, been acquitted by a flaw in the evidence against him. The sister, through whose instrumentality he now escaped, became acquainted with his last crime and peril by a newspaper, which, in noticing the cases laid before the grand jury, mentioned, as a fact discovered by the prosecution, the real name of the accused, and one or two instances of his early career, sufficient to prove his identity with her lost brother.

From the moment when Clara made this discovery, it had become impossible for her to get access to his lordship. Her first thought was to throw herself at his feet, and ask, as the only disinterested favour she had sought at his hands, and as the highest reward for her dishonour—a brother’s liberty. Foiled in this, her woman’s wit suggested a communication with the attorney for the defence. She had no difficulty in ascertaining who had that task allotted to him, and she met Mr. Wheedle, who arranged with her the stratagem which proved so successful.

This little episode was followed by one or two circumstances that the reader may be put in possession of. Lord H——, who was by no means a strong-minded man, accepted the incident as a warning of Providence. He would not for a trifle risk the enmity of her ladyship, to whom he was somewhat attached, and he dreaded the notoriety of his own criminal association with the prisoner’s sister. He resolved to be virtuous, and carried out that resolution by a financial arrangement with his mistress, through the family lawyer. She, who had not been further tainted by sin than in her illicit connexion with the prosecutor, used the means now placed at her disposal in a way that enabled her to gain an honest and creditable livelihood henceforth. Her brother tried to do the same; but that wish was broken down by the constant interference with his good resolutions from old associates. He also tried various modes, like his sister, for obtaining an honest livelihood; but the impossibility of maintaining an incognito rendered this impracticable. Ever and anon he encountered former “friends,” who reviled his intentions, and frustrated them. It was a good joke, they told him, that notion of his of working for a livelihood. “Did he,” they asked ironically, “really think of turning honest? What a funny idea!” they exclaimed. They persecuted him in various modes. They would demand money from him, and if he hesitated they would threaten to “split” or “peach” upon him. He had to give them on such occasions all he had, and promise more than he had or could perform as the price of their forbearance. Dogged on every hand, and finding it impossible to earn an honest livelihood in this country, he fled from it, with the aid of money supplied him by his sister and brother-in-law (for by this time Clara had become the wife of a good-natured, easy-going fellow, who held an appointment in her Majesty’s Customs); and I lost sight of him amid a crowd of steerage passengers on board an emigrant ship bound for Australia, where I hope he is now living as a creditable member of society.