In no job did he play a principal's part: he was merely
told off by Smith or another to guard the entrance and sound the alarm.
When M'Kain's on the Bridge was broken, the Deacon found the false keys;
it was Smith who carried off such poor booty as was found. And though
the master suggested the attack upon Bruce's shop, knowing full well
the simplicity of the lock, he lingered at the Vintner's over a game of
hazard, and let the man pouch a sumptuous booty.
Even the onslaught upon the Excise Office, which cost his life, was
contrived with appalling clumsiness. The Deacon of the Wrights' Guild,
who could slash wood at his will, who knew the artifice of every lock
in the city, let his men go to work with no better implements than the
stolen coulter of a plough and a pair of spurs. And when they tackled
the ill omened job, Brodie was of those who brought failure upon it.
Long had they watched the door of the Excise; long had they studied the
habits of its clerks; so that they went to work in no vain spirit of
experiment. Nor on the fatal night did they force an entrance until they
had dogged the porter to his home. Smith and Brown ransacked the place
for money, while Brodie and Andrew Ainslie remained without to give a
necessary warning. Whereupon Ainslie was seized with fright, and Brodie,
losing his head, called off the others, so that six hundred pounds
were left, that might have been an easy prey. Smith, indignant at the
collapse of the long-pondered design, laid the blame upon his master,
and they swung, as Brodie's grim spirit of farce suggested, for four
pounds apiece.
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