The Onlooker, Volume 1, Part 2

That night, with the aid of a river rat, our trunk, jettisoned by the excellent Quin, was fished up; and being tight as a drum, its contents had come to little harm with their sudden baptism. At last, our dozen silk trunks—holding a treasure of thirty thousand dollars and whereon we looked to clear a heavy profit—were safe in the Reade Street loft; and my hasty heart, which had been beating at double speed since that almost fatal interference, slowed to normal count.

One might now suppose that our woes were at an end, all danger over, and nothing to do but dispose of our shimmering cargo to best advantage. Harris and I were of that spirit-lifting view; we began on the very next day to feel about for customers.

Harris, whose former smuggling exploits had dealt solely with gems, knew as little of silk as did I. Had either been expert we might have foreseen a coming peril into whose arms we in our blindness all but walked. No, my children, our troubles were not yet done. We had escaped the engulfing suck of Charybdis, only to be darted upon by those six grim mouths of her sister monster, Scylla, over the way.

Well do I recall that morning. I had seen but two possible purchasers of silks when Harris overtook me. His eye shone with alarm. Lorns had run him down with the news—however he himself discovered it, I never knew—that another peril was yawning. Harris hurried me to our Reade Street lair and gave particulars.

"It seems," said Harris, quite out of breath with the speed we'd made in hunting cover, "that A.T. Stewart is for America the sole agent of these particular brands of silk which we've brought in. Some one to whom we've offered them has notified the Stewart company. At this moment and as we sit here, the detectives belonging to Stewart, and for all I may guess, the whole Central Office as well, are on our track. They want to discover who has these silks; and how they came in, since the customs records show no such importations. And there's a dark characteristic to these silks. Each bolt has its peculiar, individual selvage. Each, with a sample of its selvage, is registered at the home looms. Could anyone get a snip of a selvage he could return with it to Lyons, learn from the manufacturers' book just when it was woven, when sold, and to whom. I can tell you one thing," observed Harris, as he concluded his story, "we're in a bad corner."

How the cold drops spangled my brows! I began to wish with much heart that I'd never met Harris; nor heard, that Trinity churchyard day, of Cornbury and his devious smuggling methods of gathering wealth.

There was one ray of hope; neither Harris nor I had disclosed our names, nor the whereabouts or quantity of the silks; and as each had been dealing with folk with whom he'd never before met, we were both as yet mysteries unsolved. Nor were we ever solved. Harris and I kept off the streets during daylight hours for a full month. We were not utterly idle; we unpleasantly employed ourselves in trimming away that tell-tale selvage. Preferring safety to profit, we put forth no efforts to realize on our speculations for almost a year. By that time the one day's wonder of "Who's got A.T. Stewart's silks?" had ceased to disturb the mercantile world and the grand procession of dry goods interest had passed on and over it. At last we crept forth like felons—as of good sooth! we were—and disposed of our mutilated silks to certain good folk whose forefathers once ruled Palestine. These beaky gentry liked bargains, and were in nowise curious; they bought our wares without lifting an eyebrow of inquiry, and from them constructed—though with that I had no concern—those long "circulars," so called, which were the feminine joy a third of a century gone. As to Harris and myself; what with delays, what with expenses, what with figures reduced to dispose of our plunder, we got evenly out. We got back our money; but for those fear-shaken hours of two separate perils, we were never paid.

For myself, I smuggled no more. Still, I did not relinquish my pious purpose to despoil that public treasury Egyptian quoted heretofore. Neither did I give up the Customs as a rich theater of illicit endeavor. Only my methods changed. I now decided that I, myself, would become an Inspector, like unto the useful Lorns, and make my fortune from the opulent inside. I procured the coveted appointment, for I could bring power to bear, and some future day I'll tell you of "The Emperor's Cigars."