There was no time to elaborate theories or schemes of capture. A gold watch and chain valued at about £30, and £14 in money, were gone. A rare prize was afloat among the sharks, and I surmised that the circumstance would be difficult to hide. The thief and the honest man are alike in one failing—they find it difficult to conceal success. It prints itself in their faces; in the quantity of drink they consume; in the tread of their feet; the triumphant leer at the baffled or sniffing detective, and in their reckless indulgence in gaudy articles of flash dress. I went down to the Cowgate and Canongate at once, strolling into every likely place, and nipping up quite a host of my “bairns.” I thought I had got the right men indeed when I found two known as “The Crab Apple” and “Coskey” flush of money and muddled with drink, but a day’s investigation proved that they owed their good fortune to a stupid swell who had got into their clutches over in the New Town. Coskey, indeed, strongly declared that he did not believe the Anderson affair had been managed by a professional criminal at all. “If it had been done by any of us I’d have heard on it,” was his frank remark to me. I was pretty sure that Coskey spoke the truth, for in his nervous anxiety to escape Calcraft’s toilet he had actually confessed to me all the particulars of the New Town robbery by which his own pockets had been filled, and which afterwards led to a seven years’ retirement from the scene of his labours. The hint thus received prepared me for making the worst slip of all I had made in the case. I went to Anderson’s widow to get the number of the watch, and some description by which it might be identified. She could not tell me the number or the maker’s name; she could only say that it had a white dial and black figures, but declared that she would know it out of a thousand by a deep “clour” or indentation on the back of the case. “I was there when it got the mark,” she said, “and I could never be mistaken if the watch was put before me. A thief might alter the number, but nobody could take out that mark, for we tried it, and the watchmaker could do nothing for it. My man was working hard one day with the watch on, when a customer called to be measured. The waistcoat he wore wasn’t a very bonny one, and he whipped it off in a hurry, forgetting about the watch, which was tugged out, and came bang against the handle of one of his irons. The watch was never a bit the worse, but the case had aye the mark on it—just there,” and the widow, to illustrate her statement, showed me a spot on the back of my own watch, and then so minutely explained the line of the indentation, its length and its depth, that I felt sure that if it came in my way I should be able to identify it as readily as by a number. This would have been all very well if her information had there ended, but it didn’t.