Secret Service; or, Recollections of a City DetectiveForrester, Andrew
General
Secret Service; or, Recollections of a City Detective
Forrester, Andrew
Detective and mystery stories, English; Fiction; Short stories
Mr. Green's rage knew no bounds. In vain the girl protested her
innocence, and declared it was the wicked device of some wretch for her
destruction, or horrid conspiracy by some dreadful enemy to blast her
reputation and dishonour her poor parents, which planted the evidence
against her.
The merchant told her that if she confessed her crime he might forgive
her. She would not admit a crime that, she said, she had not committed.
Mrs. Green remonstrated with the girl about her obstinacy, and advised
her that it would be better to confess an offence which was so fairly
brought home to her, and against the evidence of which it was impossible
for a single moment to contend. The girl threw herself upon her
mistress's sympathy, hoping that _she_ at least could not think her
guilty of the crime attributed to her, although appearances were so much
against her.
At last, under the cross-fire from these accusers, the young woman, who
still refused to confess, dropped into a chair, and, in tones of agony,
implored God to witness that she had never taken a thing that did not
belong to her from any human being.
Mr. Green said this was more than he could stand. Such frightful
hypocrisy, such horrid cant, such blasphemy, was the grossest outrage
upon Heaven he had ever beheld. He told the boy to fetch a policeman,
which service the lad rendered with alacrity. The already-convicted
thief was given into the custody of the officer, taken to the
station-house, and locked up.
The next day at the police-court the evidence of these facts was laid
before the magistrate. The pawnbroker who had taken in the pledge was
not able to identify the prisoner as the female who had pawned the
article; but said that she was about the height, age, and appearance of
the prisoner, although he would not swear to her. It was pledged, he
said, about the hour of twelve in the morning; and Mrs. Green being
called upon to give evidence as to the movements of her servant, with a
view of confirming or breaking down the pawnbroker's suspicion--as the
case might be--was obliged to say that Eliza had been out on an errand
for her mistress between eleven and twelve o'clock on the day referred
to.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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