If we are required to be sharp, why not? Is it not that there is sharpness brought against us ? If we had honest people only to deal with, we would not be needed; if only the committers of mistakes and blunders, we would require only common acuteness; if only honest rogues to
expose, we would do with merely ordinary powers; but when we have to encounter ingenuity, sharpened to a razor-edge by rapacity, dishonesty, and fear of punishment, we must be even more than razor-edged. It is impossible to form any idea of the wonderful devices of practised thieves without being acquainted with them. Just look at animals with instincts of preservation, and see how wonderfully they work them; and then consider that men and women have not only these instincts, but reason to help them, and you may come to have a notion of what such as I have to encounter in bringing offenders to justice. I offer a case that may help you.

Sometime in 1856, two stots were stolen from a park in Linlithgowshire. Information was sent to us, with a view to discover whether the beasts were disposed of here. Stephen Cook, an Edinburgh man, was suspected; but the Linlithgow officers, taking the charge very much upon themselves, chiefly conducted the investigation.I did not interfere, having something else to do. The Linlithgow officers failed. They were not even sure that Cook had stolen the beasts; and as little were they successful in getting hold of Cook, who was a very mysterious kind of being. Some of the butchers seemed to know such a man as a kind of middle salesman, occasionally selling them a beast, which, as they thought, he purchased from some grazier; but where he lived, or how far he engaged in this trade, they could not tell. Having paid him the money, they were done with him; and no suspicion ever entered their heads that he belonged to the Rob Roy order. Though not undertaking the search in 1856, I was impressed with some kind of romantic idea, which had taken hold of the Linlithgow officers, that Stephen Cook was a mystery. His mother’s house, in Allan’s Close, was known; yet this gave no clue, for the mother knew far less about her son than any one else. He went about the country; he was neither of this profession nor that; he was seldom or ever with her ; in short, she knew less about her son than even the Linlithgow officers, who thought they knew he was a cattle-lifter, as well as a cattle- seller. These notions stuck to me, and often I thought of Stephen Cook, for whom, indeed, I retained a kind of affection, merely because, like other people, I am not proof against mysteries. There is only this difference, that, while the other people only dream over them, I have generally a desire to unravel them, and make them no mysteries at all. In short, Stephen Cook passed into the back of my box of memories, and there his image stuck, ready for any light to bring it out.
It happened that, two years afterwards, on 15th December 1858, another stot was stolen from a park on the Dalkeith Road; and information having been sent, Stephen Cook became all at once one of my desires. On inquiry, I ascertained from a Mr Purves, a butcher in Edinburgh, that a beast answering the description—for a stot has marks as well as a man—had been sold to him—by whom ? no other than Stephen Cook. The mention of the name made me start. Stephen Cook again, thought I; even the mysterious Stephen Cook, who is unknown to his mother,—lives nowhere,—only turns up to Mr Purves to sell him a beast,—and then disappears, no man knows where. It is clear that Stephen Cook and I are destined to be acquainted. The matter is settled by the powers above, and there’s an end on’t.
I had not forgotten Allan’s Close, but in the mean- time, in case of disappointment there, I asked about among the butchers. Still the same answer,—“ Know nothing about him,—appears occasionally and disappears, —never drinks the luck-penny,—never chaffers long,— gets his money and off, till the next time; but when that time may come round no one knows,—that’s all.”
I don’t despise the ingenuity of other men; I knew that the Linlithgow officers had searched the mothers house,—and, no doubt, they did it thoroughly,—but the “idea” I have spoken of so often is with me, somehow or other, my guide, in spite of all arguments,—ay, some- times a little mirth now and then, as if the humorous gentlemen were certain that I was wrong for this once, anyhow. It was under this guidance, accordingly, that next morning—for I wanted no time to be lost, in case Stephen Cook should take a fancy to a stot somewhere else, perhaps in Angus, where they are so fat—I got up about six, before the men leave their beats, and,’ having dressed in my ordinary way, I took the road to Allan’s Close. I saw there the man on watch, and told him to remain at the foot of the stair, while I would take his lantern and try to find an honest man in the dark.
I then went up three stairs, and came to a door. I rapped more than once, when, at last, a voice came from behind,— “Wha’s there?”
“Are you Mrs Cook?” asks I.
“Yes; what want you at this early hour?” “ Just to speak a few words to you; open the door.”
“Can ye no tell me what it is ? you may be a robber for aught I ken.” “ No, no, my good woman; I would be sorry to harm you, but you must open the door; or, just to tell you the truth, I will force it; I am on the Queen’s service.”
I could detect the effect of this announcement in a flutter behind the door. I even heard the quick-coming breath, and the nervous movement of the hand as it began to finger the key, but I did not consider this an evidence of the woman’s guilt; anyone would have been startled by such an announcement. The door was opened, and I entered, shewing myself my way by the lantern.
“ Have you any one in the house with you ?’ “No, sir,” she answered, in a poor way; “ I am a lone
woman; there is no one lives with me.”
“ But haven’t you a son ?” I asked.
“ Ay, sir; but he is never wi’ me.” “How is this? has he any house of his own, that takes him away from his mother ? ”
“ No; yet he seldom or ever comes here.” “Then where does he live? he must live somewhere.” “ Dinna ken; he never comes here.” “When did you see him?” I then asked, more and
more impressed with the strange character of my hero. “ I havena seen him for twa or three months, sir.”
“ Did you see him two months ago, then ?” “Ay; I think I did.” “ You only think you did; could you be sure if I were to make it three months
“ Weel, perhaps.”
“ If you know so little of him,” I continued, “ do any of the people below-stairs know him ? ”
“ Oh, no, they ken naething about him; we hae naething to do with the folks on the stair.”

“Did any of them ever see him?”

“ I’m no just sure if they ever did; but I dinna ken; maybe they may, and maybe they mayna.” “ Well,” said I at last, “ I must search your house.”
“ Oh, ye’re welcome to do that; but, besides my cat and myself, there’s nae leeving creature here.” “ And the mice,” said I, as I began to peer about. “ And the mice,” said she. The woman went and put on some dress, and I went through the two rooms, opened the presses, looked below the two beds, and saw no sign. I then’got her to open any drawers she had, to see whether there was any men’s apparel—coats, or shirts, or shoes,—but no, not a trace that any male creature had anything to do with that house. Like the former officers, I was at my wit’s end, and my “ idea ” was getting to be a fiction.
I forgot to say, that the house was at the top of the stair. Outside the door of the dwelling there was a kind of coal cellar, a dark hole with a door. I opened that, and threw the light of the bull’s-eye upward; but nothing was to be seen, but a bucket or so, and cobwebs. After throwing the door to, my eye was next arrested by another cellar-like door, which was securely guarded by a padlock. Why is the one door open, and the other padlocked ? I thought. A cellar is not usually padlocked. “ What kind of a place is this,” said I.
“ It leads to the roof, I fancy,” she replied. “ I dinna ken the use o’t; maybe it belongs to the land- lord.” “ Then, who has the key ? ”
“ Dinna ken, sir, and canna tell.”
“But I must get in, Mrs Cook; and if you haven’t the key, I will go to the landlord; and before that, I’ll try the people below. Yes, I will knock every soul of them up.”

“ Oh, it will make a noise in the stair, sir; and I hope you’ll no do that.”
“ Well, I can knock off the padlock with an axe,” said I, and proceeded into the house again for such an instrument.
“ Lord bless me,” she cried, as she trotted after me, “have I no tauld ye the door just leads to the roof? and what in the name o’ that’s gude can you want there ? ”
“And why should you want to prevent me ? ” said I, laying hold of her axe. “ If I choose to take a walk on the roof, that surely can do you no harm.” “ There’s nae use for breaking doors ony way,” she cried, as she became more excited. “ ’Twill rouse a’ the neighbours.” “Indeed it will, and it would please me better to get the key.” “ Aweel then, but you ’ll no seek up when you see it’s just a trap-stair leading to the roof.”
“ We ’ll speak about that after the door’s open; come
away with the key, for I know you have it.” And then, what appeared to me very strange, she seemed to grope in a box of ashes.
“ Surely the key cannot be there ? ” said I.

“I dinna ken, I am just looking, for ye ken it’s o’ nae use to onybody, except maybe the sweeps; and really I take little care o’t; and—losh, there it is—but you’ll sune be satisfied that it just leads to the roof.” A long parley this, but far from being useless,—the key, with its position among the cinders, was just as mysterious as my old haunting gentleman, Stephen Cook the cattle-lifter.
I then went and undid the padlock, with the old woman beside me, watching every motion. I opened the door, and looked in. “ Now, you see, sir, that I was right; just a trap- stair for the sweeps.” And a trap sufficient to catch a rat-of my size it seemed to be, for the passage was so narrow that the effort would be to crawl and even force your way up, by squeezing the sides.
“ Are ye no satisfied now ? ” said the indefatigable woman.
“Not until I go up and come down again,” said I, as, going to the top of the common stair, I called for the policeman. He came up directly, and taking his station at the bottom of this strange passage, I put in my head and shoulders, having previously given the man his lantern to hold for a little, and hand up to me when I ascended.
I found it a tough job for a man of my dimensions, but I forced my way; and having got to the top, there I was in a garret, with the bare cupples running along, and the roof joists overhead. I now told the man to hand me the lantern, which having got, I began to glance about the bull’s-eye light here and there, till I fixed it upon a man lying on a mattress in the corner. He must have thought me a strange visitor at that hour in the dark. Indeed, he could scarcely have seen my person—only the round disc of the bull’s-eye glaring upon him. There was my mystery,—Stephen Cook. I took him up, he was tried at the High Court, and got twelve months. It will at once be seen, that the padlock was resorted to as a cunning mode of impressing one with the idea that the opening was to an outside lumber-room, where it could not be supposed that any one could sleep; but it was the very padlock itself—resorted to by cunning to divert suspicion ___that roused my suspicion.