LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume XXII, Issue 1863, 12 February 1880, Page 3

LITERATURE.

NUMBER “47.” THE WAITER’S STORY. It is more than twenty years ago since I first wert to the Hand and Glove as second waiter, in the summer time, and I have taken the same situation ever since. lam not head waiter there even now, though I shall be master of the place in a few months ; si you may conclude (though you was a libs, al gent yonrself. so far as I remember) I might have waited long enough before I ‘aved the money out of my wages and perquisites. But in the autumn of the year before last a curious thing happened at that hotel.

It was the race week at Brighton, when we are always full, and every room was engaged; most of them by old customers, but one or two. of course, by strangers One of these last was a Mr John Adamson ; he was a chance comer —that is, he had not written beforehand to secure a room, as is usual at that time, and therefore he got a very bad one. It was No. 47, which in slack seasons was never occupied ; it looked into the little courtyard in the middle of the house, and had nothing to recommend it but its great height—it was, in fact, two floors thrown into one ; some nervous persons had a fancy for it, ho wever, because a few steps down the passage was the trap door in she roof under which stood the ladder that formed the fire-escape ; but as a rule, people who were shown to No. 47 objected to it. Mr Adamson, however, made no objections ; and, indeed, to look at him. yon would have slid that he had been used to worse rooms. It was not so much his clothes—though they didn’t fit him, and yet looked as if he was wearing them for the first time—but a certain hang-dog, cringing way ha had with him, which showed he was a low fellow. He was a turfite, of course—a man who made his living, or tried to make it by horse racing, and had come down to fill his poohets at the expense of other people ; but so far as that went, so had all our other guests. There was the great Mr Dodds, the bookmaker, for instance — only second in the extent of his operations to the Leviathan himself—who travelled with bis secretary and had our first floor front; there was Captain Leger, who went halves in winnings—whatever he did in losings—with the Marquis of Spavin ; and there was Sir Toby Grey, who had three horses on the hill himself, and one of them first favorite for the Cup. But all these men, for the present, at least, were men of substance, and looked like it, You might have said they were made of money, for every one of them had a pocketbook bursting with bank notes, which was certain to be either fuller or emptier before the week was out. Now, Mr Adamson did not look as though he owned a bank note In the world, and if I had had to name his tra' 7 e I could have done it the first moment I clapped eyes on him ; it was Welsher. However, it is not the business of a hotel keeper to turn any man from his door who wants a bed and can afford to pay for it ; and as for picking and stealing, our own plate was all Britannia metal, while Mr Dodds, and Captain Leger, and Sir Toby knew very well how to take care of themselves and tbeir money, having been on the turf for the last twenty years, and accustomed to all descriptions of villains. As for me, I had enongh to do at that busy time without looking after the seedy tenant of No. 47, who went up the hill every day to the course on foot, and took sixpenn’ortb of whisky with his dinner in the coffee room and nothing after it. Cnly, of course it was suspicious, for the Hand and Glove was not a hotel meant for the likes of him, and he knew it. He was always apologising, as it were, for being there, and hoping he was not giving trouble when he asked for this or that —always something cheap—at the bar and in the publio room. He also pretended to be ignorant as to who was who, and enquired of ms on one occasion whether that was the Mr Dodds whom ho had just seen come out of No. 4, whereas, it is my opinion that he knew them all, and who was the principal winner after each day’s work. There was a good deal of betting on the race for the enp that year, in whion were entered two public favorites, who were very heavily backed by"the * gentlemen and as a rank outsider won, so also, of course, did the ‘bookmakers.’ It was rumored in the coffee room that evening that Mr Dodds had cleared £*o.ooo out of the transaction, and by the way he and his friends and his secretary kept it up that night in the first floor front, yon would have thought it might have been £40,000 What I will say for the raring folks, whether gent'y or otherwise, is, that they are free-handed j it is ‘light come, light go,’ with them, I suppose; but when fortune sends them a stroke of luck, they let other people share it. It was open house in No, 5 that night (next to his bedroom, the room was, and then the secretary’s, as I well remember) for all as knew him. and I dare say a good many as didn’t know him (more than to say ‘ Bravo Dodds! when he was reported to have pnlled off a stake) took their glass at his expense. Bnt Dodds had bis eyes abont him for all that, and his secretary too, and woe would have been to the man who tried to take more than what was offered him—that is, aught beyond food and liquor. They would not have given him into custody, not they, bnt they have laws of their own, these gentlemen, which they put in force at onoa against such transgressors. I believe soldiers, when they catch a thief among them, do the like. Well, the evening went off without anything worse than shouting, but in the morning there was a terrible ‘ to-do.’ Mr Dodds had been robbed in the night of all his winnings. In reality these were not quite so great as had been reported, bnt they amounted to £II,OOO in bank notes, and they were gone.

I verily believe the man was not so annoyed by the loss of the money as by the fact of hia having been robbed—that ia, of another man having outwitted him. He stormed and raved like a mad bull, ao that my master hardly dared to listen to what he had to say about the matter — though, indeed, it was very little. These notes, which were all for large amounts, were in a pocket-book by themselves, and lay in a drawer in hia room. Ho had seen all was right, he thought, before he retired to rest, hia door being not only looked, but fastened with a bolt with a spring bell to it. Only there waa at that time nothing in the pocket-book but two copies of the ‘Sporting Times,’ very neatly folded. The notea must have been taken out before bund—while he waa entertaining hia frieuda—and the little substitution effected. When my master asked Mr Dodda, * Have yon got the numbers of the notes ?’ he burst into a fury. ‘ Because I have been robbed, (ir, do you take me for a born idiot ? Of course I have.’

His secretary, indeed, had made a memorandum of them; but unfortunately, had wrapped it up with the notes themselves, which was very handy and convenient for the thief.

Mr Dodds was a stout man, and I thought would have had a fit of apoplexy when he discovered this, I don’t remember ever bearing so much strong language from tho same mouth in so short a time. We kept the sec-etary locked up in the bar till the storm had blown over a littie, and in the meantime we did what we could. As Mr Adamson was the only stranger at the Hand and Glove, suspicion naturally fell upon him—and so did Mr Dodds. In less time than it takes to tell you, the unfortunate man was stripped to the skin, and his room searched with tnat completness that not a pin’s head could have escaped notice ; but nothing was found ; and exc pt that he had gone up with tho rest to drink a glass of chamoagne in the first door front in honor of Mr Dodds success, not a tittle of preof existed against him. Ha had not left the house that day since he had returned from the races, and even now he showed no signs of departure. He said he had been infamously treated, but had tco much respect for Mr D.Ads to take the law of him for the insult that had been indicted on him. And he stayed for the next day’s races where he told me he had been “welshed” ont of fifteen shillings, or he should have been happy to have given me half a crown, though “attendance” was included in our hills, in justice to himself, my master sent for the police ; but of course they were no good, and Mr Dodds had to give them five pounds, in consideration of having expressed an opinion, in hia usual terms, upon their iucompetoncy. He offered one thousand pounds reward for the recovery of the notes, and started off with the se rttary (with his tail between hi.s legs) for tho next race meeting.

Some peopio thought it was the secretary who had done the trick ; but Mr Dodds knew better, and so did I. I have heard of things being ‘borne in ” upon folks—a first cousin of mine by the mother’s side being a bit of a Calvin—but never was any man more convinced of what he hadn’t seen than I was that Mr John

Adamson had taken that money. The hold it got on me was suprising, especially after the thousand pounds reward was offered, which did not make my brain less busy about the matter, yon may be certain. At first I could talk of nothing else, so that I got to be quite a laughing stock with my fellow servants at the inn, when I grew sulky and dropped it, which was afterwards lucky for me. They, of course, talked about it too, for a robbery of that magnitude under one’s own roof was enough to set any tongue wagging ; but after a month or two the thing wore away from their minds, whereas with me it was as fresh as ever.

Where could he have put that money when we searched him and his room so thoroughly? and did he get clear away with it ? were the two questions that worried me most

That ho stole the notes from Mr Dodd’s drawer I took for granted. Perhaps I should not so soon have got free of my fellow-servants’ chaff—especially as it begun to rile me—if something else had not presently occurred to turn their attention from the subject altogether. This was a murderer committed at Lewes, within a few miles of us. A murder is always more exciting than a robbery, and In this instance the victim was a Brighton cab driver, known to many of ns, which, of course, made the incident more attractive. Otherwise it was a common case enough ; the man had made a few pounds in a Derby lottery, and for those and the watch In his pocket, the other, who was a bookmaker on the turf, called Kyneton, had murdered bim. The trial had nothing noteworthy in it from first to last; but when the murderer had met his deserts a certain paragraph appeared in a Lewes paper, which being copied into other journals attracted much attention, and set my ears tingling more than anybody’s. After the murder was found guilty, it said, he bad made a voluntary statement to one of tbs prison warders that it was he who had stolen ihe notes from Mr Dodds at the Hand and Glove Hotel at Brighten during the race weak in the previous autumn. ‘Come, Bob,’ said my master, ‘that disposes of your fdend Adamson having had anything to do with it, which you thought such a “ moral.” ’

‘ Well, sir, I suppose it does,’ said I. ‘Of course it does ; and I am very glad this has happened, since it removes all suspicion from any one connected with the hotel. You don’t know anything of this fellow Kyneton being about tLe place on the Cnp day, do you V * No, sir,’ said I, ‘ but there were a many folks coming and going, and especially, as you remember, to congratnlata Mr Dodds on his good fortune.’ ‘Just so, and this Kyneton was one of them, no doubt. ’

But, for my part, I still stack to my own opinion. If Kyneton had stolen eleven thousand pounds in the antnmn, what need had he to kill a man for twenty ponnds and a silver watch a few months afterwards ? The man was not a gentleman, and wonld not have flung so much money away in as many years. And why did he tell a warder about it, instead of confessing his crime to the chaplain in the usual way ? The next Sunday happened to be my Sunday out, and I took advantage of it to go to Lewes. 1 had an acquaintance there who was a sporting reporter upon the staff of the newspaper in which the paragraph first appeared, and I had a great fancy to put a few questions to him. Be was a civil fellow enough, and had had information from me on certain occasions—one picks it up when horsey gents are talking together, in spite of their whispering ways—which had been useful to him.

‘Now, Jack,’ I avid, ‘I want to see the prison warder as this here Kyneton told that story to about that robbery at our hotel ’

‘ Well, to tell yon the truth, Bob,’ he says laughingly, * you’ll find that a little difficult. Between ourselves, it was all bogus. It has been very successful, and been quoted in all the London papers, but no such statement was ever made.’

‘Then, how did it get into the papers?’ ‘Oh, it was put in by a penny-a-liner.’ ‘Then, Jack, I must see that penny-a-liner. ’

‘To tell yon the whole truth, Ned,’ he answered with another laugh (but I thought not quite so natural a one) ‘he stands before you ; it was me as wrote it ’ ‘ Oh, you wrote it, did you ? Now loot hero, this will go no further,’said I, ‘than you and me, but I must know more. You said you would tell me the whole truth ; then toll me, who was it as paid you to write it ?’

‘Well, my proprietors, of course,’ he answered, sulkily.’ • I know that, but who paid you besides !’ * Well, if you must know, a man by the name of Loftus, I met him at the Harp here during the trial, and he said he would give something to see himself in print. It struck him, he said (and he was right), that to make Kynetou confess to the Dodds robbery would be an attractive sort of a paragraph, and between us we worked it up. It was more my composition than his, but I did not tell him so, and he promised me a guinea when he saw it in type, and he paid the guinea like a man; and what was the harm in it ?’

‘No sort of harm, Jack,’ says I, ‘and, indeed, rather the reverse. I assure you you shall never get into trouble about it; but just tell me what this man was like.’ ‘ Well, he was rather a down-looking cove ’

‘ Hang-dog ?’ said I ‘ Well, yes, to be frank, hang-dog, washedout, whity-brown sort of fellow.’ ‘ With a beard ?’ inquired I. ‘No, with no beard.’ ‘ Did you notice any impediment in bis speech ?’ {To ho continued.)