Before the day when Mr. Brown's money became due, the English branch of the house of Voleur and Enlever was shut up; letters addressed to the chief establishment in Paris were returned through the Dead Letter Office. The firm had become dissolved, the house had run away, and no man could discover its whereabouts.
Mr. Brown saw that his money was lost, unless he could make those rascals Downey and Grabble pay. To this point all his thoughts were directed. He felt quite convinced that these "respectable" traders knew all about their Continental friends, and that it only needed a searching investigation to prove the complicity of the houses through whom he had been defrauded.
At this state of the affair I was employed.
My inquiries soon unravelled the whole plot. It turned upon a simple fact; but the surrounding incidents of the narrative were remarkably unique, and interesting to the mercantile community.
In fact Downey and Grabble were in the first place taken in, and nearly done for; to a large amount, by Voleur and Enlever. The persuasion of the Frenchmen had been more than a match for the craft of those Englishmen, who originally hailed from the county of York.
One day--about a fortnight before Mr. Brown's visit to the London warehouse of the Frenchmen--M. Voleur and a fair countrywoman, who was not Madame Voleur, were proceeding along one of the quiet streets of the City, in the afternoon, not many hours before the departure of the tidal train, by which they intended to quit the British metropolis, when that elegant gentleman was tapped on the shoulder in the politest manner by a man who turned out, on further acquaintanceship, to be an officer of the Sheriff of London. The Frenchman was conveyed to the sponging-house over which this officer presided, despite his protests and the lady's tears.
The creditors, Messrs. Downey and Grabble, had made an affidavit that the debtor, M. Voleur, was about to leave the country with the view of hindering and delaying the recovery by them of the money to which they were entitled; and, upon the strength of this oath, one of the learned judges had authorised the detention of the Frenchman until he paid the demand, gave bail for its payment, or liquidated the obligation in bankruptcy.