Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 1, September 17, 1927
- Автор: Valentine, Corley H. W.
- Год: 1927
- Язык: английский
- Год: The Red Star News Company
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Flynn’s Weekly Detective Fiction. Vol. 27, No. 1, September 17, 1927». Краткое содержание книги:
He was never surrounded by the half jealous admiration which besets the successful merchant. He was never obliged to meet all the upper strata of his native town, shrewd as well as suspicious and sternly respectable people. This was a test which few criminals could ever have withstood and which William Brodie did withstand, with entire success.
Not a single suspicion of him was entertained, in all the years that he led his extraordinary double life, until the last year or two of it, when, indeed, a few people began to whisper behind their hands that robberies seemed to follow wherever Brodie worked.
Continuing the study of Brodie’s nether life, we find that even while his father lived he had already established two households, in each of which he maintained the position of master and father, neither of which knew of the existence of the other, as no one in the upper levels of his life knew of either.
What was more, although criminals were his associates and hangers on in both households, neither set of rascals ever discovered the other set.
Smith Comes to Town
Thus, Brodie had to watch out for complications between— 1. People who knew him as Deacon. 2. People who knew him as the master of the house where Anne Grant held sway. 3. People who knew him as the master of the house where Jean Watt held sway. 4. People who knew him as an active thief and knew nothing of Deacon, Jean Watt, Anne Grant or that he was anybody but a man who knew how to produce keys and plan robberies. And 5. The wild and half criminal layer of aristocratic youth who knew a little of both women and something of Deacon; but nothing of the thief and master of criminals of the lower world.
It must have been a hectic life, indeed, that he led, that cool and serious businessman, going about his affairs, slyly taking impressions of keys, observing where valuables were kept, learning the secrets of bolted doors, memorizing the hours and the habits of the townfolk, while he kept careful eyes abroad for chance — and undesired — acquaintances.
Edinburgh has always been a town of rather sharply separated social strata, always a cosmopolitan town. Many a town in England or France of the period would have rendered this imposture an impossibility, but the criminal world and the bawdy world kept pretty much to themselves. These and the decent business world affected to ignore the other’s existence, and the aristocratic world dealt loftily with the business world and was either totally ignorant of the lower world or, at most, only half friendly with it.
So that is precisely the condition of social life which allowed William Brodie to pursue this amazing course of his for so long.
But a change was coming.
In July, 1786, an Englishman named George Smith — or, a man who said that was his name — arrived at Edinburgh, and if Brodie had any premonitions about that time he must have had some bad dreams.
Smith put up at a tavern kept by Michael Henderson, in the “Grassmarket,” and there he was soon friends with one named Ainslee and one named Brown, whose proper name was said to be Moore.
This last named person was an escaped convict from England, who had been wandering around Scotland for twelve years, not daring to set his foot over the border.
Brodie, in his character of the master mind of a criminal fraternity, already knew Ainslee and “Brown.”
The tavern was frequented by doubtful characters, along with the honest farmers whose “ordinary” or restaurant it was, and Brodie had been able to go there in double character, being known to some as “deacon” and to some as a more or less shady individual, but it was safe enough, since few persons of these diverse classes would ever know or speak to each other.
A Working Partnership
The four, Smith, Brown, Ainslee and Brodie, gradually became intimate, and to them Brodie confessed that he had had thoughts for some time of “starting a life of crime.”
In this one respect, however, he was reticent with these new comrades, since his life of crime had long since been started. What he was really looking for, at that time, was some one who would alibi for him, and this he found in Smith, who knew a good deal about locks, bolts, keys and other door and window fastenings.
The proposal which was made was that Smith should be set up in a small grocery by Brodie, so that he might have a proper excuse for settling in the town, and that he should work, in his spare time, for Brodie, fixing locks and making keys and spying; also taking impressions of locks in wax and otherwise attending to Brodie’s dirty work.
According to the custom of the town, a boy from the neighborhood could be apprenticed to the “grocer” for a very small weekly sum, and thus Smith would be free to come and go, while seemingly leading a perfectly open mercantile life.
Brown and Ainslee were to have their parts in the arrangement, with maintenance from Brodie when they were not “working.”
Smith’s part time work for Brodie would make him the go-between, so that the two would be kept informed of what was afoot. On this basis they settled the partnership, with an equal division of the spoils as part of the agreement.
A number of minor robberies were at once committed, avowedly for the purpose of letting Brodie see how the combination worked!
The University’s Mace
As he became more assured of his partners, Brodie ceased to maintain some of the fictions with which he had started.
He allowed them to see that he had been a criminal for years, and admitted to them that he had a regular “fence,” as we should now call it, across the border in England.
This fence was a Scot, much “wanted” in his own country and therefore an exile, just as Brown was wanted and a fugitive from his country. These two wrote to each other and became well acquainted by letter.
So Smith ran the grocery and did odd jobs, of all sorts, for Brodie, and Ainslee and Brown seemed to live modestly on what they declared to be remittances from their families, and Brodie walked about without even the faint shadow of the suspicion which had been gathering.
Had he not stopped going himself to houses and institutions and banks for the work he now hired done? And did not the robberies keep right on, as usual?
In October of 1787 the four stole the silver mace of the University of Edinburgh, seemingly for pure wantonness. They could not dispose of it without giving themselves away, and melted down its value was that of mere lump silver.
It was never found, but the theft of it increased the fury of the town, which had been steadily rising so long.
People began to say that something really had to be done about the reign of terror which had so long existed. The mace was taken by a person or persons who had had a key to the room where it was kept.
In 1788, in the early part of the year, a lot of very expensive silk from a shop at Edinburgh Cross was stolen in the dead of the night. No doors were broken open — they were unlocked and locked again after the loot was taken, so that the watch might suspect nothing.
The honest tradesmen of the town, aroused by all these many robberies, all of which bore the stamp of “inside work,” as it would now be called, got together and made a very systematic effort to find out how it was that they had been despoiled for so many years.
They also offered a reward for the return of the silk and the pardon of any accomplice of the robbers who would turn informer.
Brown, who was always “Low Man” in the four who made up the criminal quartette, made a note of this reward. He had occasionally had disputes with the aggressive Brodie, and he was always in terror that one or more of the four would betray him; being the one escaped convict of the lot, he was in the most danger and for some reason he was not liked by any of the other three.