THE GUILTY GLOVES.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 162, 16 March 1871, Page 7

THE GUILTY GLOVES.

(From. Tom Hood's "Comic Annual.")

I was standing at a shop window in a main thoroughfare, when a twitch at my coat told me that an attempt was being made to pick my pocket. I turned sharply round, iv time to see a shabby-genteel individual run away and disappear down the next street. I started in pursuit, but was outstripped by a tall and well-dressed individual, who had, probably, also noticed the attempt. I was not far behind him, however, on turning the street, which, by the way, proved to be a cul de sac, practically, a boarding having been erected across it during the construction of a sewer in connection with the main drainage. The pickpocket, whom I found in custody of the stranger, had most likely been unaware of the closing of the street by which he meant to escape. He was standing in a listless unresisting attitude, with his hands in his pockets. I thought he and his captor were in conversation, but that, I concluded, was a mistake.

" I have the rascal," said the strangei*, as I came up. " Shall I fetch a constable ? Don't spare him, sir ; these fellows make our streets unsafe."

"A thousand thanks for catching him," said I ; and then, turning to the

thief, asked, " What have you to say against my giving you in charge, eh ? "

" I'm respectable, sir ! humble but respectable, I am, indeed. I—lI — I don't know what prompted me ; I never dreamt of such a thing before," pleaded the culprit, drawing his hands from his pockets, and clasping them imploringly.

He wore a pair of very shabby and ragged black kid gloves. I saw the straiiger start. He examined the gloves closely — much to our prisoner's amazement, apparently — turned one up at the wrist — looked at a mark inside, and then turning aside, hid his face in his handkerchief a few seconds.

"G-ood heavens! those gloves again!" he muttered ; then turning to me, continued,

" Let me implore you, sir, not to hand this man over to the police until you have examined into his statement about his previous respectability. I have sad reason to believe it may be true ; those gloves — those fatal gloves — too well do I know them."

" My dear sir," I said, touched by his agitation, "as he did not succeed in stealing anything, I have no objections letting him off altogether. Gro rascal — I beg your pardon — I mean — that is, if you are a rascal," I exclaimed, addressing our captive.

" Stay, misguided wretch!" cried the agitated stranger ; " deliver up those accursed gloves, and then go — and avoid temptation ! "

The man gave up the articles demanded, and my mysterious friend, with a sigh of relief, thrust them into his breast-pocke.t

" I see," said be, addressing me, " that you are at a loss to understand my emotion. Unfortunately the open street is no place for an explanation which would be sure to tinman me."

My curiosity was roused, and I remembered, very luckily, that I bad once had a very good bottle of wine at a quiet little hotel a few doors up the street. I invited my new friend to come and have a glass of sherry there, in order to calm his agitation, and allay my curiosity. After some show of resistance, he agreed, aud we soon found ourselves in a snug box ir the coffee-room. He then related to me the following extraordinary story, which I Avill try to give in his own words : —

There is no necessity for my going into a long account of myself or my family. Suffice it that I had an only brother, to whom, being much the elder, I acted as a guardian after the death of our parents. He was, alas ! wild and careless, and his faults increased as he grew older. lam sorry to say he drank and gambled. After a time this led to a divergence in our paths in life, though I still retained the strongest affection for him. At last I only heard from him when he was in need of money, which was not seldom. A longer time than usual had elapsed without my receiving any application of the kind, aud I was in hopes that he had mended his mode of life, when I was summoned late one night to St. Edward's Hospital. A terrible presentiment that came upou me as I hurried thither was too surely realised on my arrival.

My brother lay there dying ! He had been brought in by the police, who hr.d found him in a jeweller's shop. He had been shot by a patent safe, with, a pistol discharged by an attempt to open the door He was dying. He had just strength enough to tell me that last summer, while at. Hamburg, he had noticed a Spaniard who always won money at the gaming tables. He had observed that the Spaniard always drew on a pair of gloves before beginning to play, and took them off when he bad finished ; that although he did not seem to win much, and his neighbours did not seem to lose, yet his pile in the end was always larger than any of those near him. Determined to see what was the reason of this, my brother took his opportunity, and while the Spaniard put away his winnings, picked up the gloves which lay beside him.

The Spaniard presently made a great outcry about his loss, but was only laughed at. But he never came to the table again ; bo that in s- few days my

brother felt he might securely test the powers he had acquired. He soon found that while the excitement of the game was at its height — while he himself was quite carried away by it — his hands, clothed in those mysterious gloves, were straying among heaps of his neighbours, and coining back to his pile full of coins. He was shocked at first, but, escaping detection, became hardened ; so that by the cud of the season he was possessed of an immense sum. He returned to England, where he soon spent it. As he did not frequent the gaming table in London, the gloves lay by unused ; until one day, when he was in want of money, he found them among his clothes, and determined to see if they would prove profitable elsewhere than on the green cloth. He drew them on, and, as he declared to me, quite unconsciously made his way to the jeweller's shop, effected an entrance, and was shot while trying to break open the safe. He died soon after relating this story to me, and as he died he placed the mysterious gloves in my hand, begging me to keep them in memory of him and his unconscious crime, but at the same time bidding me never wear them. I took them home and locked them away in a drawer.

Two or three months afterwards, on returning to my chamber, I found, to my surprise, that I had been plundered of all my valuables, and that my valet, an old, tried, and attached servant, had disappeared. While looking over the place, I found I had left unlocked the drawer where I kept the gloves — and they were gone. I understood the whole thing at a glance, and at once stifled all inquiry. I felt he was the victim of my carelessness. My conjecture was right. Six month after he returned to me penitent, and begged to be given over to justice. It was not until I closely questioned him that he remembered having found an old pair of gloves in a drawer in which he was putting away some handkerchiefs. I asked him what he had done with them, aud he said he had, oddly enough, kept them until the previous night, when he lost them at the theatre. On his reaching his lodgings, he said, he suddenly became impressed with tho crime he had committed against a, kind master, and the life of sin he was le uling, and determined to give himself up to me. Need I say I forgave him ?

A few days after, I saw, in the police reports, the case of a young man of good position, w'io was brought up charged with stealing money from a collection plate at church. Out of consideration for his respectability, the report was given in full, and I read that, in reply to a question as to whether he had ever come by anything dishonestly — " on your oath, sir " — he had answered "never;" but then, hesitating, he said, " Well, ho picked up a pair of old gloves at the theatre, and hadn't advertised them." lat once saw the clue, and went to the police court, but it was too laic. Tho poor fellow had been sent for trial, and the gloves (about which I dared not, for shame, make too many enquiries) had been lost sight of. But within a week there was a dire scandal in the police division in which that court lay. An old, experienced, and respected inspector had been sent to tho Exhibition in plain clothe?, to sec that no jewels were stolen from a case containing very valuable gems, and had been himself detected in the act of purloining some of the finest. He protested his innocence, but the facts were too strong. He was committed, but the disgrace so preyed on his mind that he committed suicide in the cell. .

I went to the prison, and, by a little judicious bribery, obtained possession of the fatal gloves. Determined that they should not escape from my custody again, I locked them up in a secret drawer in my desk. There they lay in safety for a couple of years, when, unfortunately, they were once more let loose on society. I was in that terrible railway accident in the Cleasby Tunnel, which you must remember, and all my luggage (which was in the van next to the engine) was destroyed. I searched for the debris of my desk, but the gloves were not among it. I waited in painful suspense to learn their whereabouts ; nor did I wait long.

In less than a week a porter at Cleasby station was discovered by one of the ticket clerks in the act of breaking open a case of gold watches in the goeds shed. The porter was summarily convicted ; but, strange to say, within three days after, the very clerk who had detected him was caught taking money from the till in the booking office. On hearing this, lat once hurried down to Cleasby and applied to see the unfortunate clerk. My application was refused, on the ground that he was unfit to see anyone, owing to his wife's having been arrested that very morning on a charge of shop lifting. The governor of the gaol knew them both as respectable people up to this unfortunate time, and I prevailed on him to let me see the woman, alleging that I hoped I could clear their characters. Alas ! I learnt from the womau that my conjecture was correct — that she had worn a pair of gloves belonging to her husband without noticing it in her distress of mind — that she had gone to a shop for certain necessaries, and when taken into custody was so utterly unnerved that she didn't know what had beoome of the gloves. Here, then, I lost all trace of them, bxit not for very long.

The following week there was a paragraph in the papers, headed, " A Tradesman Bobbing Himself." It stated that a respectable draper of Cleasby — the very man who had given the clerk's wife into custody for shoplifting — had been discovered in the night breaking open his own till. One of his employes, hearing a noise in the shop a little after twelve, had gone down and detected his employer committing a burglary on his own premises ! I went down again to Cleasby at once, but only to learn that the poor fellow had been — at the instigation of his wife, a designing woman, who had lived on very ill terms with him — removed to a lunatic asylum. A.ll [ could extort from her was that "as to any gloves," he bad certainly been suffering from chapped hands, to which on this particular night he had applied cold cream, going to bed in a pair of "old black kids." I wish I had not been so easily discouraged. Ah ! if I had only learnt to what asylum he had been sent, and had prosecuted my search further, how great a weight wc'uld it have removed, which now weighs on me ! Will you believe it sir ? The chaplain of the asylum where that unhappy man was, had the bad luck to pick up those gloves by mistake for his own. He was coming up to town on business, and that very afternoon he was taken up for stealing a volume of sermons from a hook-stall !"

As I became more interested in this strange narrative, and its narrator grew more and more excited, he leant across the narrow table on his elbow, until our heads were close together, and his last words wore almost whispered in my ear. The opening of the door of the coffee-room seemed to rouse him. . Some one just entering the room called to the waiter to " bvinw a pint o' stout with that chop — and look sharp !" My friend started, trembled, and turned pale.

" From that day, sir, until now I never saw those gloves again. Now I have them, and I dread losing them on co more. I will go and destroy them — burn them at onee — and return."

lie strode across the room, and disappeared hurriedly through the door. The new-comer gave a low whistle, and walked straight to my box. .Surveying it hastily, he turned his attention to me, eyeing me steadily for a minute.

" Humph ! You're on the square, eh ? Leastways, if you're ou the cross, you're a new hand, for I know most cross coves. What's your game ? Been ou tho batter and down on yer luck ? If so, don't you go in with Dick. Honesty's tlio best poverty, take mv word for it !"

I sprang to my feet, conscious that his meaning was insulting if his language was unintelligible. I saw him glance quickly at my waistcoat, and laugh.

" Ah, I see it now," changiug his tone and manner completely ; '' carry me out, if he ain't copped yer redding! What's the time, sir, please ?"

I put my hand to my waistcoat pocket. My watch and chain had disappeared. " All -right, we'll have 'em back !" said the new comer, who opened tho window and shouted. The next minute I beard the hurried tramp of unmistakable police boots going up the street.

" He knows where to find him when he's wanted. But may I ask, sir, how you came to be standing a shove in the mouth to a chap like Littr'ry Dick ?"

Still somewhat at a loss to gather his meaning, I explained to my visitor what had occurred to bring me and the vanished stranger into the Lotel, and gave a slight sketch of the story he had related.

" Ah," said my new friend, " he's a leary card. We call him Littr'ry Dick cos he romances just like a book. Now that's all lies as be told you. T'other fellow was his pal, and they were taking their hook, but, the street beiu' up, was collared, and he covered the other chap artful, and nabbed your yack !"

" And, pray, who are you ?" I asked, puzzled,

" Chiffey, detective, Scotland- yard !" I paused. The story I had heard, if strange, had a vraisemhlance about it. Was it possible a mere thief could have improvised it ? I said as much.

" You don't believe about the gloves leading people into crime against their will ?" I asked.

" Ever hear of what's called kleptomany, sir ?" he inquired, in return.

I nodded.

" Well, sir, parties tells you as that kleptomany makes people thieves again their inclination — so why shouldn't gloves ? G-loves or kleptomany, it's all hid in my belief !"

A paragraph appeared in the London " Times," stating that an eminent publisher has offered £10,000 for the right of printing the revised edition of the Bible,, now in progress. Now it is said that the head if an oldfashioned firm had offered three times that amount for the privilege. No less than seventy-Gve certificate meetings were held at the Melbourne Insolvent Court on the 24th Feb., and thirty -seven of the insolvents were successful in obtaining their certificate of discharge.

Another large nugget lias been unearthed at Kitty's Kush, Victoria. The actual weight is 561 b.