FIVE HUNDRED POUNDS REWARD.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 39, 21 October 1871, Page 16

FIVE HUNDRED POUNDS REWARD.

[From Tinsley’s Magazine.] ‘How horribly annoying! But what a blessing that the wretchtes did not discover that the diamonds were in the jewel-case!’ It was the morning after a grand ball at the British Embassy in Paris, and Mra Foljambe de Yere, who had, during the last few hours, been the victim of as daring a robbery as ever distinguished the police annals of “ La Grande Yille, was despairingly lamenting over her loss. ‘ Well, I must say that you rather brought it on yourself,’ remarked one of the gentlemen present (he was the brother of the agitated lady, and therefore in some sort privileged to speak, his mind). ‘The idea of leaving valuable jewels on your dressing table in an hotel.’ ‘ But the door was locked; you heard me tell the detective so. W"ho in the world would have imagined they were not safe ?’

1 ‘ Any one with common sense,’ retorted Major Fielding (relations are so rude, and this one in particular was provoked at the moment by the prospects of being detained, through his sister’s carelessness, in Paris, when the frost had broken up, and his horses were f eating their heads off in “ the shires”). * Any one with a grain of common sense. What can be easier, as that Monsieur Dupont said, than for a man employed in one of these hotels to take an impression in wax, of a bedroom key ? Probably, too, they have accomplices in the house, which makes everything serene.’ ‘ Tbe wretch!’ exclaimed pretty not over wise Mrs de Vere. ‘ How Ido hope he will be punished ! Nothing would be too bad for him* But O, dear! O, dear! What shall I say to aunt Catherine ? Ido believe she loves those bracelets better than she does anything else in the world. How, I wish I had not worn one of them last night! But it is a blessing that I did not do as she wished me to, and put them both on.’ ‘ Let us hope,’ suggested a middle-aged, much made-up Countess, who had spent the chief portion of her life in Paris, and set up for an esprit fort, ‘ that Lady Catherine will see, as you seem to do, my dear Nellie, the finger of Providence in this affair.’ Before the puzzed little woman could reply, the door of the salon was thrown noisily open, and in walked (or rather stalked) a tall dig-nified-looking, elderly lady, whose black eyes and nearly ebon brows made singular contrast with the mass of powder hair which rose up from her narrow but lofty forehead. Although expected by the party of some half-dozen friends and acquaintances whom the news of the robbery had gathered together, the entry of Lady Catherine Fairfax produced a decided sensation amongst the group. From the expression of her countenance —one which betrayed no feeling beyond her customary impassible composure —it was evident to all present that the dreadful news of the jewelrobbery had not yet reached the ears of dignified Lady Catherine. ‘My dear,’ she said to her niece, _ whose white forehead she had just touched with th e chilly lips of age, ‘ I have come to ask how you liked your ball. I have given up going to such gay things myself, but —Ah, Lady Brixham, how d’ye do? Why, Nellie, you have quite a levee ! Perhaps, as the room is so full I—’

‘O, no, dear aunt,’ broke in Mrs de Vere, who, feeling that there were safety in a multitude, dreaded nothing more than a confession en tete-a-tete with her aunt of her own carelessness in the matter of the jewels. ‘ Do stay ; such a dreadful thing has happened! The jewels I wore last night —’ ‘Not lost! Not the emerald-and-diamond bracelets!’ half shrieked her Ladyship. c Really, Nellie— ’ ‘ But I have not lost them, aunt Catherine. Why will you fancy such things ?’ ‘ Not lost, but stolen, which I fear is pretty much the same thing,’ put in Major Fielding. ‘ And so,’ said the family autocrat, after listening in portentous silence to the plain unvarnished fact that a daring and evidently practised thief had, during the past night (or rather morning), entered laer niece’s sleeping apartment, and thence, with felonious fingers, abstracted all the jewels with which Mrs Faljambe de Vere had, on the previous occasion, adorned her person —‘and so you really had the egregious folly to leave all that valuable jewellery —jewellery the chief part of which was not your own —pray do me the favor to remember that— on your dressingtable in an hotel! A public hotel a place frequented by all descriptions of people ! A place that —’ ‘ But my dear aunt,’ pleaded Mrs de Vere, ‘ the door was locked, so how could I suppose ‘ Suppose a fiddlestick ! Such absurdity I As if no one had a key but yourself! Such egregrious want of common sense and forethought I never saw ! You should have placed the ornaments under lock and key in a trunk, ‘ My dear Lady Catherine,’ broke in the Countess, ‘ I really think you are too hard upon poor Nellie. Accidents will happen ‘ You call having your most valuable jewels stolen an accident, do you? snorted Lady Catherine ; ‘ now I call it—but never mind, I suppose I must put up with the loss. All I can say is, that such a thing never happened to me. I never was robbed, or cheated, or taken in during the whole course of my life, and I defy any one to prove the contrary, Robbed indeed ! A person is a fool who allows himself to be robbed. I have always said so ; and I am near upon seventy, and ought,, I should think, to know a little of the world. After this short but vehement explosion of her wrath, Lady Catherine condescended (as a rule she objected to listening to any voice save her own) to ask and receive some information regarding the measures which had been taken for the recovery of the ingeniously abstracted property. It was a source of secret satisfaction to her Ladyship to learn that the detectives of La Rue de Jerusalem were on the alert, and that one of the most experienced of Peitri’s celebrated body had declared his belief that the delinquent could not long escape detection. „ ‘ They are wonderful fellows, those employes of La Police de Surete,’ remarked Major Fielding; ‘and I shouldn’t be surprised if they were on the rascal’s track now.’ The days went by—not slowly, they never did in the Paris of those days : the Paris of which it has been said that detail le lieu du monde mi on pent le mieux se passer du lonheur—the days went by and in spite of all the efforts of Monsieur Pietri’s perfectly organised police, the villian who had appropriated to himself, amongst other minor treasures, an heirloom in the Fairfax family, valued at seven hundred pounds, had hitherto managed to escape detection. At last, when nearly a fortnight after the famous robbery had elapsed, a ca rd—one on which was inscribed the name of Monsieur Belot—was presented, in the salon

of her own hotel, to Lady Catherine Fairfax. She was alone; it was five o’clock in the even, ing, the season winter, and the gas was burning brightly, as only Paris gas can or could burn, in the dainty, if not comfortably, furnished little room.

Lady Catherine incontinently desired that Monsieur Belot might be ushered into her august presence.' Once there, the visitor, whom her Ladyship described a few hours later as a gentleman of highly distinguished manners and address, lost on time in explaining the object of his visit. He was, he said, the secre taire privatissimo—if I may be allowed to coin the word —of the great Monsieur Pietri, and his mission from that dignified official was to request Lady Catherine Fairfax to kindly allow the authorities a sight, in furtherance of the ends of justice, of the fellow bracelet to the one of which the zealous Paris detectives were in search. It would not be detained more than a day—the time to photograph it, and to put the employes thoroughly an fait of their business. It is needless to particularise the interview, which did not last many minutes, and terminated, as most of Lady Catherine’s acquaintances in Paris before the end of the following day knew, by her Ladyship’s placing with many thanks, her much-prized treasure into the keeping of high-bred, fashionable looking Monsieur Belot. ‘ Such a delightful man ! and so shrewd! There is nothing like having to do with sensible people. The moment he opened his lips, I felt that Monsieur Belot and I understood each other.’

The fact of having intrusted the companion ot her missing treasure to the keeping of the great Pietri’s secretary was, during the space of eight-ancl-forty hours, a source of constant self-congratulation to Lady Catherine; and so often and with so much unintentional broderie did she repeat the particulars of her interview, that, as Major Fielding waggishly (when out of his aunt’s hearing) remarked, it was very clear that Monsieur Belot had, on that occasion, endeavored to profit by her Ladyship’s counsels and experience. But great as was Lady Catherine’s confidence in her late visitor, she could not quite succeed in inspiring her nephew with the same unreasoning trust; and therefore it was that, on the day but one following the (to the old lady) hope-inspiring visit, Major Fielding strolled off to the Hue de Jerusalem, and, sending in his card, requested an interview with the Chef de la Police de Surete. Once in the cabinet particulier of that important functionary, the English officer touched upon the subject of the second bracelet. Lady Catherine, lie said, was all anxiety to know whether, as Monsieur Belot had led her to hope, the temporary possession by the detective officers of the bracelet which she had placed in that gentlemau’s hands had led, or w r as likely to lead, to any discovery of the stolen property. As lie spoke the eyes—tolerably keen ones —of Major George Fielding were fixed upon the face of his companion. The latter heard him to the end in silence, and then an oath, not loud, but deep, followed by a short burst of cynical laughter, escaped his lips, ‘Le sacre coquin!’ he exclaimed ; and then the truth —a suspicion of which had already obtruded itself on the Major’s mind—became at once apparent. It was no emissary from the Rue de Jerusalem—no accredited searcher after stolen goods—who had, with his bland respectability of manner, imposed upon the English ‘ milady.’ The man who had wiled away from this wise-in-her-own-conceits old woman her so-dearly-cherished gaud, was most probably—as the Chef de la Police did not hesitate to say—the very individual who had, less than a week previously, entered Mrs de Yere’s bedroom and taken from it the bracelet, on obtaining the fellow of which he had doubtless subsequently set his heart!

To describe Lady Catherine’s state of mind, when she became aware of the trick which had been played upon her, would be impossible. At first she seemed positively stunned by the magnitude of the blow, and refused to believe that through her own folly and self-confidence she had merely doubled her loss, had parted with her prestige, and abdicated the right of reproaching her niece with the shortcomings of which she had been guilty. Notwithstanding all the well-directed efforts of the Paris police, and the offer of a reward of five hundred pounds for the recovery of the missing jewels, the tliief remains to this day undiscovered. The subject is so sore a one to Lady Catherine Fairfax, that any allusion to it is carefully avoided by her friends. She is, however, many a year too old to be permanently improved by the rude lesson which she on that memorable occasion received.