Читать книгу Charles Peace, or The Adventures of a Notorious Burglar онлайн

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Meanwhile Peace was quietly working at his trade in Leather-lane.

He had, on the following day, disposed of the plate to a Jew fence in Whitechapel; the watches he secreted in the premises he occupied.

He had effected so complete a change in his personal appearance that it was hardly possible for anyone to recognise him as the man who had carried out so daring a robbery; indeed, the policeman into whose arms he ran when making off from the premises had but a transcient glance at him; his impression was that he was a mulatto, and he was so described in the “Hue and Cry.”

This in itself would have been sufficient to put the detectives on the wrong scent, and thereby to defeat the ends of justice.

Peace did not stir out from his workshop, save in its own immediate neighbourhood, for some days; and no one for a moment suspected that the quiet, mild-spoken, industrious artisan of Leather-lane was the real culprit.

A week or two passed over, and the burglary at Highgate became a thing of the past; at the expiration of which time, Peace committed some more burglaries in a different neighbourhood. These were on a minor scale, but he contrived to escape detection.