We always forget that the thief-shape is the natural one, for can it be denied that we are all born thieves? I know at least that I was, and I suspect you were no better. If you are not a thief now, it’s because you were by good monitors twisted and torn out of that devil’s form; and how much pains were taken to get you into another, so that it is only at best a second nature with you to be honest. In short, the thief is a more natural being than you are, although you think him a monster. Nor is it any wonder he’s perfect, for your laws and habits have only wrought as a direct help of the character he got from the mother of us all, and probably his own mother in particular. Any obstruction he meets with is, therefore, something that ought to give way, simply because it shouldn’t be there; for how can you prove to him that an act of parliament has greater authority than the instinct with which he was born. No doubt he won’t argue with you. If you say you have a right to lock up, he won’t say that he has a right to unlock down, but he’ll do it, and not only without compunction, but with the same feeling of right that the tiger has when he seizes on an intruder upon the landmarks of his jungle and tears him to pieces.

On proceeding to Coates Crescent, I ascertained that the thieves had obtained entrance by opening the outer main-door with keys or pick-locks, and all the rest was easy. The scene inside was just what Mr Jackson had described it—there wasn’t a lock to an escritoir or drawer that was not punched off. Every secret place intended for holding valuables had been searched; and it soon appeared that these artistes had been very assiduous, if not a long time at the work. It would not be easy for me to enumerate the booty—valuable gold rings, earrings with precious stones, brooches of fine material and workmanship, silver ornaments of price, pieces of plate, and articles of foreign bijouterie. They had wound up with things they stood in need of for personal wear—top-coats, boots, and stockings; and, to crown all, as many bottles of fine wine as would suffice to make a jolly bout when they reached their home. I have not mentioned a small musical box, because by bringing it in as I now do at the end, I want to lay some stress upon it, to the effect of getting it to play a tune.

I soon saw that I had a difficult case in hand, and I told Mr Jackson as much. The thieves were of the regular mould. I had no personal traces to trust to, and the articles taken away were of so meltable or transferable a nature that it might not be easy to trace them. My best chance lay in the articles of dress, for, as I have already hinted, thieves deriving their right from nature have all a corresponding ambition to be gentlemen. There’s something curious here. Those who work their way up by honest industry seldom think of strutting about in fine clothes. Social feelings have taken the savage out of ’em. It is the natural-born gentleman who despises work that adorns our promenades and ball-rooms. ’Tis because they have a diploma from nature; and so the thieves who work by natural instinct come slap up to them and claim an equality. Certain it is, anyhow, I never knew a regular thief who didn’t think he was a gentleman, and as for getting him to forego a nobby coat from a pin, he would almost be hanged first. I have found this my cue pretty often.

I had, therefore, some hope from the coats, but while getting a description of them and the other articles I felt a kind of curiosity about the peculiarities of the musical box.

“A small thing,” said Mr Jackson, “some six inches long and three broad.”

“Too like the others of its kind,” said I; and giving way to a whim at the moment, “What tunes does it play?”

“Why, I can hardly tell,” replied he, “for it belongs rather to the females. But I think I recollect that ‘The Blue-Bells of Scotland’ is among them.”

“Perhaps,” said I, keeping up the humour of the thing, “I may thereby get an answer to the question, ‘Where, tell me where, does my highland laddie dwell?’ ”

Mr Jackson smiled even in the midst of the wreck of his house.

“I fear,” he said, “that unless you have some other clue than the tune, you won’t get me back my property.”

“I have done more by less than a tune,” said I, not very serious, but without giving up my hope, which I have never done in any case till it gave up me.

So with my list completed, and a promise to the gentleman that independently of the joke about the box I would do my best to get hold of the robbers, as well as the property, I left him. I felt that it was not a job to be taken lightly, or rather, I should say, that I considered my character somewhat at stake, insomuch as the gentleman seemed to place faith in my name. There is an amount of routine in all inquiries of this kind. The brokers, the ‘big uncles,’ (the large pawns,) and the ‘half uncles,’ (the wee pawns,) were all to be gone through, and they were with that dodging assiduity so necessary to the success of our calling. No trace in these places, and as for seeing one of my natural gentlemen in a grand blue beaver top-coat, I could encounter no such figure. I not only could not find where my highland laddie dwelt, but I did not even know my lover. Nor did I succeed any better with those who are fond of rings, for that the jewellery had found its way among the Fancies I had little doubt. How many very soft hands I took hold of in a laughing way, to know whether they were jewelled with my cornelians or torquoises, I can’t tell; but then their confidence as yet wanted the ripening of time, and I must wait upon a power that has no pity for detectives any more than for lovers.

And I did wait, yet not so long as that the tune of “The Blue-Bells of Scotland” had passed away, scared though it was by the hoarse screams and discords of crime and misery. One evening I was on the watch-saunter, still the old dodging way by which I have earned more than ever I did by sudden jerks of enthusiasm. I turned down Blackfriars’ Wynd, and proceeded till I came to the shop of Mr Henry Devlin, who kept in that quarter a tavern, which, without reproach to the landlord, was haunted by those gentlemen who owe so much to nature. Now, I pray you, don’t think I am a miracle-monger. I make the statement deliberately, and defy your suspicions when I say, that just as I came to the door of the tavern, which was open, and by the door of which I could see into a small room off the bar, my attention was arrested by a low and delicate sound. I placed my head by the edge of the open door and listened. The sound was that of a musical box. The tune was so low and indistinct that I held my breath, as if thereby I could increase the watchfulness of my ear. “It is! it is!” I muttered. Yes, it was “The Blue-Bells of Scotland.” The charmed instrument ceased; and so enamoured had I been for the few seconds, that I found myself standing in the attitude of a statue for minutes after the cause of my enchantment had renounced its power.

With a knowledge of what you here anticipate, I claim the liberty of a pause, to enable me to remark, that though utterly unfit to touch questions of so ticklish a nature, I have had reason to think, in my blunt way, that in nine cases out of ten there is something mysterious in the way of Providence towards the discovery of crime. Just run up the history of almost any detective you please, and you will come to the semblance of a trace so very minute that you may view it either as a natural or a mysterious thing, just according to your temperament and your point of view. As a philosopher, and a little hardened against the supernatural, you may treat my credulity as you think proper. I don’t complain, provided you admit that I am entitled to my weakness; but bearing in mind at the same time, that there are always working powers which make a