The Topeka state journal., 1897-08-09
WAS IT A CRIME I?

chap, he found out somehow that there
was something about a certain village
that made it worth while for him to hang
around there above bit
"It's first class job says he to our
man here. "If we pull it off, it's idleness
and the fat of the land for the rest of our
born days. Are you on?''
s'I'm on" says our man, like the brute
he is, never SO much as asking what it is
he's on in.
The house was called Chudleiph Abbey,
and it seems it was an old house, all over
ivy and creepers, and an old lady lived
there with a young nephew and a pretty
niece. OF course you guess there must be
some sort of lovemaking when a young
man and his pretty cousin live under one
roof. So there was, SO there was. And
their sort of lovemaking was the marrying
sort. The question was popped, and the
day was named, and then my young sir
must needs get the family diamonds out
of the bank to see how his sweetheart look
ed in them.
He thought she looked sweet in them,
you may be sure, and he gave them to her
to keep, just telling her not to let any one
know she'd got them till he'd got safe to
keep them in. So she takes them up to
her room, 6nd she hides them. Now he
thought and she thought no one knew
about them diamonds but don't need to
change their addresses without it's being
known somehow to more than one and
more than two, and among those that
knew were our man and his mate.
Well, they meant to have the diamonds,
and they laid their plan, and there was
two things that made their plan SO easy
to work. First, the young lady slept in a
room at the far end of long passage,
with no one near her.
1t was the Oldest part of the house, and
she liked it because it was $50 romantic" "
You know what young ladies be, sirl
Next, the young gentleman, what always
slept at home, was to sleep at the inn the
night before the wedding. You know,
sir. it, s a custom with gentlefolks. So the
plan was that on the night before the we'd
ding, when there was only the women in
the house, our men was to climb up the
ivy and creep into our young lady's room
and take the diamonds.
"Itl take me some time to find where
she's hid them,'' he says to the other chap.
$50 I'd better make the girl safe first
1t was decided that man was to go
right away for a week, so that there might
not be any suspicion, and when he came
back his mate would meet him at a GER
tain place and hour and tell him If any
change was wanted in the plan. If his
mate didn't meet him, he was to go to the
house at once.
So he climbed up one night and filed
the window bars nearly through and got
all ready, and then he went away.
After week he came back.
1t was very dark night. He waited
quarter of an hour by the old wall, but
no one came So he took his knife in his
teeth and climbed up the ivy, going very
slow and quiet. The bars were just as he
had left them. He took one out very
gently and laid it down and got into the
room.
ol r,f
scent and camphor, like a chemists shop.
He listened for the girls breathing to
guide him to the bed, but he heard moth
ing. Presently, feeling about, his hand
touched the bedpost. Then he wraps his
red cotton handkerchief round his hand to
put over her mouth, and he takes his knife
in the other hand and feels for her face
and pulls the sheet off her neck. She
never moved, and it was done in min
ute. Then he lays down his wet knife on
/, the bed and strikes a match quite at his
ease to look for the diamonds,
He lights a candle that stands by the
bed head and then sees the bed and what's
on it, and he gives a yell that fetches
every soul in the house awake, and he
goes of then and there stark, raving,
screaming mad. The sight of what he
meant all along to dof Not it! Con-
science? Not bit of it'll Sheer fright at
the sight of what he'd done and hadn't
meant to do.
The candle showed him the bed-all
mass of white howers-and what was lying
on it under the white sheet had laid there
dead long afore he come a-nigh the place.
I've heard say as corpses can't bleed.
Well, all l know is-well, 1 won't t say any
more about that part of it, sir, if you
dom like it. 1t amt pleasant even to
hear a bout, and the sight of it sent 'im
clear off is head.
1t was corpses throat he'd cut, the
blundering, numbering villain, and when
the servants ran in with lights they found
him lying across the bed foot, foaning at
the mouth and mad as a halter. If he'd
had any sense left for thinking, he would
not ha' known what to think, but this is
what really had happened: The other
ohap-onoe our man was out of the way
thinks to have try for the diamonds off
his own hat, but meanwhile the young
lady at the abbey'd found out the fled
window bars, and when he tried it on the
young master and the undergraduates was
ready for him and took him with the knife
in his hand, lending over the empty bed.
Thinks he, t'other chap shan't get off,
then, neither, SO off he goes to jail, leaving
his mate to be copped when he comes back
to try it on according to agreement, and
in jail he turned funky and choked him
self with his belt for there was other
things against him, besides their having
found out he was the Peckham mystery.
And, no one in the abbey expecting any
more visitors through the window, they
didn't have the bars mended, but a silly
maid who's frightened out of her wits
sticks them up again to look like they did
before.
And how come the young lady to be
dead already? Why, bless your soul, sir,
didn't tell your 1t wasn't the young
lady at all. 1t was the old housekeeper,
as had been ailing this long time and had
gone off sudden with the turn the first
chap gave her when be screamed as be was
took, and they laid her out in that room,
being farthest from the other rooms
And if he'd had al ounce of pluck our
man might ha' got AWAY hllt it's my he