AN EASTER WINDFALL.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12772, 1 June 1904, Page 4

AN EASTER WINDFALL.

STREET-SELLER INHERITS A FORTUNE. The wheel of fortune has made- one of its strange revolutions. A newspaper seller who stood outside Victoria Station has leapt from penury to affluence. Jle celebrated his twenty-first birthday and became entitled to a fortune, one, it is said, of £IO,OOO. The hero of Ibis little story is Henry Bagslcr, the son of a Brighton estate agent. But it is of no use for any one to inquire among his friends at Victoria Station for Henry Bagster. They would answer blankly that they have never heard of him. “Do yon know where ‘Spiv’ is:” one might ask, and then their faces would show signs of intelligence, and the inquirer would be referred to the various public-houses in the district for his answer. Not a policeman attached to the Rochesterrow Station is unacquainted with “Spiv,” and there is not a newspaperseller, odd man, or public house loafer within a- radius of a mile of Victoria who is not on terms of friendship with him. The knowledge that he would become possessed of great wealth has not come upon Bagsier suddenly. For years he has told his friends in the common-lodging-houses where he has lived that he was heir to a fortune, and lie has been looked up to as a prospective plutocrat. About his early life he has ever been reluctant to talk much, hut it is known that he is the son of a Brighton estate agent who died while Bagster was still a little baby. Even in those days lie was incorrigible, and preferred the company of gutter children to that of any other. He was quite out of his element when put to Ealing Grammar School, and ran away from discipline to companions who were more congenial than the other students of the school. He obtained a situation as “pony boy” in the stables of a well-known sporting member of the London Stock Exchange, but there again he objected to discipline, and came into violent collision with another stableman and had to go.

He had never objected to work, but he would only labour as his own master. He therefore sold matches in the slreels, dealt in mechanical toys, called cabs, sold papers, or anything else that brought him in sullioient money to buy food and drink and pay for his bed at night. From time to time sums of money reached him from a firm of solicitors at Brighton, and then it was that the doubters as to his prospective wealth no longer doubted, but became strong in their allegiance to him.

Since about the year 1900 he has with more or less regularity stood near Victoria Station selling papers, and is well known there, but during the racing season he attended race meetings and sold cards. He also assisted bookmakers by hand telegraphing from one to another the prices of horses, and embarked in as much turf speculation as his means would allow.

He has already left his old quarters in Stratton Ground, Westminster, but Victoria Station possesses for him a magnetic attraction that he apparently cannot resist, and in that neighbourhood he lingered nearly the whole of Saturday and Sunday. A visitor who went to wish him many happy returns of the day, found him surrounded by friends in the Standard Music Hall. He was dressed in a blue serge suit, grey overcoat, cloth cap pulled down over his eyes t and a crimson scarf.

Notwithstanding the “wealth” about to come to him, the details of life are not being overlooked by “Spiv,” who, when asked what ho proposed to do in the Immediate future, replied by asking what he was going to get out of the conversation. The terms proposed proving agreeable, he surrendered himself for a few minutes, but his friends implored that he should not be kept away from them long. Bagsier is now quite the “lion” of Victoria. Policemen smile as he passes by, newspaper-sellers point him out to customers wnth awe as being a plutocrat who was until recently one of themselves, and everyone gazes at him with interest. But lie bears all the attentions thrust upon him with modesty, looking upon them as being the natural penalty of greatness. He is waiting with as much patience as can be expected until the money from his ; mother’s estate reaches him, and he is naturally elated at his good fortune; but even in his case there is a. rift in the lute of happiness.

Conversations alleged to have taken place with him, of which he knows nothing, have appeared in the press, and he strongly obj'ects. His ground of complaint is not so much that the sentiments are not such as he would have given voice to, but. that his companions at Victoria have passed themselves off as the one and only “Spiv,” and have drawn, and applied to their own uses, the revenue derived from granting interviews—a hard case indeed.

During the last few days. Bagstcr has devoted considerable thought to the subject of the investment of his fortune. “It will bo about £8,000,” lie said yesterday; “not the big sums that have been mentioned in some of the papers. Mr Philip Conway, the solicitor, is doing everything that is necessary for me, and I shall not have to go to Brighton to collect the money.

“I received a letter during the week from the solicitors at Brighton enclosing a cheque for £SO on account, but as I don’t happen to have a banking account at present”—and Bagstcr grimly smiled as he doubtless thought of Ilia times when lie had not been able to pay for a bed—“l could not cash it. Mr Conway returned it, and asked tor an open cheque, but, owing to the holidays occuring he has not yet received it. I have had £2 from Mr Conway to keep me going until the other monev arrives.”

Asked as to his movements. “Spiv” said that he ivas going to Kempton Park races to-day. To sell race-cards ?

“Xo, no.” lie hastily answered; “I have ‘finished with that. Pm going to bet.” “Which part of the course will you go to?”—“Why, in Tattersall’s ring, of course.” The money difficulty being pointed out, he replied : “Ob. I shall have no trouble about that; Fm going to borrow the money. Plenty of people have offered to lend to me, but I want a good man; I don’t want to have anything to do with shady folk.” The question of the invesmeni of his money Is all arranged. He spoke of his plans in regard to this subject with the air of a director of a finance corporation. “Six thousand pounds will be invested in an Argentine bank at 4 per cent.—-a very much belter investment (ban Consols at 2{ —and £2,000 will be put into the bank in my name on current account.” He further stated that he intended to sever himself from all his old haunts and companion*. “I shall have to,” he remarked with conviction, “or they would be all over me like a swarm of flies, and it would be no good. First of all I shall go on the Continent, and then afterwards, if I come back to England, I shall give people the wrong address, so that I shan’t be found by ‘the boys.’ “Anyhow,” he add in conclusion, “Fve finished working,” and he returned to hs companions with a preoccupied air,