THE BLUE WAISTCOAT.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1250, 13 February 1896, Page 42

THE BLUE WAISTCOAT.

One of the best-known tenants of Brown’sbuildings, Gray’s Inn, was Mr Ephraim I. Davis. A brass plate bearing the terse inscription, “Davis, First Floor, Money Lent,’’ announced his whereabouts and his avocation to passing strangers ; but Air Davis was better known by his ingenious daily advertisements, wherein he implored the temporarily impecunious to rest their burdens upon him without sureties, inquiry fees, or any preliminary expenses whatever, and at a merely nominal rate of interest. The widow who forestalled a poor annunity at sixty per cent, and the clergyman who discounted his next year’s tithes on similar terms were familar types of Mr Davis’s (clients. Sometimes, however, it happened that more adventurous borrowers patronised the money-lender’s establishment, and these were apt to indulge in little recalcitrancies against some of Mr Davis’s methods of increasing interest or enforcing instalments, so that they were not always timid and gentle footsteps that ascended the worn stairs to the office on the first floor. However, Mr Davis was blessed with a good digestion and a cast-iron conscience, and took the ups and downs of his career with a serenity born of the satisfaction that his private pile was steadily increasing. And on a certain beautiful night in July, sitting in his chambers after a busy and prosperous day, Mr Davis, like that Scriptural fool whose soul was demanded of him, decided that the time had come to retire from the worry of business and live at ease upon the wealth his industry had accumulated.

It was a hot night, and JMr Davis, having duly “ sported his oak,'’' had thrown up the window which looked on to the desolate patch, humorously designated garden by Mrs Willetts, the housekeeper. A zigzag waterpipe running from the roof to the ground provided an excellent step-ladder for eats, and the money-lender sometimes amused himself after the labours of the day by dislodging feline gymnasts with well-aimed missiles of cinder, a little heap of which had accumulated in the enclosure below.

But on this particular night Mr Davis’s ruminations were too pleasant to be disturbed, and he devoted himself to chocolate and buttered toast—his favourite nine o’clock refreshment—with the zest of a man whose perseverance and hard work have entitled him to repose and indulgence. Mr Davis had his toast before him. cut methodically into three equal slips ; the chocolate was excellent, and a big Flor de Cuba lay on the table to be smoked after the brief repast. He had sipped half of the chocolate and finished tno of the slips of toast, when he heard a knock at his outer door. At first he took no notice : then, as the knocking was continued, he rose angrily and went to the door. Opening a little panel, he spied through, and shouted, “ You’re too late ; 1 see no one after eight o'clock. You can come to-morrow if you like. You’re too late now, 1 tell you,” the last sentence being repeated in reply to an interpolated protest by the visitor outside. Mr Davis snapped the panel fast anu returned to his chocolate, and the descending iootsteps of the late caller sounded on the wooden stairs. “ That infernal fellow in the blue waistcoat,” muttered the moneylender, in high dudgeon. “ I’ll finish him off to-morrow/’ And Mr Davis meditated darkly, before despatching his last slip of toast, as to the exact means by which his troublesome client was to be ‘‘finished off” on the morrow. But from this point things went altogether topsy-turvy. Mr Davis did not finish his toast, he did not smoke that big cigar, he did not “ off ” the man in the blue waistcoat. A little later Mrs Willetts, the housekeeper, heard a kind of thud which she described as resembling the fall of a flat-iron on to the floor. She attached no importance to that; indeed, it did not reear to her mind till the next morning, when she was summoned by a batch of early clients at Mr Davis’s office, who, finding the outer door still shut at eleven o'clock, and obtaining no response to their knockanga, wanted explanation of so unusual an occurrence. Mrs Willetts did not know what to think. “ He’s so very punctual and busi-ness-like as a rule,” she said ; “ perhaps the spoor gentleman’s ill.” The suggestion was an excuse for more knocking and calling, without result, however ; and then, ultimately, a short ladder was fetched and ■erected against the rear of the house, and .•some one mounted to the back window. Then it was discovered why Mr Davis had mot opened the door. The money-lender s=atin his chair, with a waxen face and wide-open He was palpably dead. There was a

dark stain on, his left breast, and another on the carpet, and closely clutched in his right hand was an old-fashioned revolver, one barrel of which, it was subsequently ascertained, had been fired. The police came, and one or two doctors to gravely assert that which every one knew, that the man was dead ; and an hour after the Evening Spark was full of “ The Mysterious Death of a Gentleman.”

For the next few days Mrs Willetts enjoyed a magnificent popularity, to the supreme height of which she rose when the summons arrived for her to attend the coroner’s inquest. “It might ’ave been accident, it might ’ave been suicide,’' said Mrs Willetts, darkly ; “ but he was most partickler to tell me that very night that no one wa3 to come after hours, if I could stop them ; especially a lumbering fellow in a blue waistcoat. 1 never see such a man,” said Mrs Willetts, “ but I do recollect ” —and she babbled away of ancient, half-remembered suicides and tragedies, to the huge entertainment of the garrulous womenfolk of the neighbourhood constituting her audience. The inquest was held at the Vestry Hall on the following Thursday, and the reporter of the Evening Spark was early in attendance on the scene of “ revelations.” At one o’clock the jury, who had been “ viewing the body,” filed into court. They had looked upon the peaked features of Ephraim Isaac Davis, whose mortal remains lay closely shrouded on a slab intheadjoiningmortuary, and were so little the wiser for their pains that the big, strong-chinned man, who had

elected himself foreman, declared audibly that the whole formality was a piece of preposterous nonsense, an expression of opinion to which his colleagues gave an obvious tacit concurrence. Then the coroner assumed the air of business-like expedition he usually affected when forty minutes late, and the inquiry began. The evidence of identification by a distant relative aroused no interest, nor did that of the witnesses who ascended the ladder and found the body. The details were too well published to be attractive. But Mrs Willett’s reference to the blue-waistcoated personage sent a flutter through the court, and the statement of the police-inspector that, despite the most careful search, no money I had been found, made (in the Language of the Evening Spark) a profound impression. 11 Sensational nonsense ! ’ said the foreman in a loud hectoring undertone to the fee’olelooking juryman next to him. “ A man of that type buries his money or hides it well enough to baffle police stupidity. Of course, it’ll turn up next week.” At which point the coroner broke in with a dignified “ Sfl-—!” and the medical evidence was taken. It commenced in an awful welter of technicalities, but when the- doctor had disencumbered Ills scientific mind of these, it became pretty clear that Mr Davis had succumbed to a bullet which passed through the apex of the heart, and ultimately lodged againt one of the vertebra of the spine. It had taken a downward direction, which was a little unusual in a self-inflicted wound. Questioned by the coroner, the doctor gave off the view that the revolver tightly and naturally clutched in the deceased’s right hand was certainly strong presumptive evidence of self-infliction. Had the deceased been murdered, the pistol must have been instantly and forcibly squeezed into the man’s hand before the least stiffening commenced, which would require an iron nerve from a man who had just committed such a crime. In answer to questions by the foreman, he agreed that the appearances were not inconsistent with th« theory that the deceased was polishing the pistol-barrel on his sleeve, and that it was accidentally discharged, only in that case he should have expected the revolver to be dropped on the floor. Pressed on this point, he admitted it might have been retained in the deceased’s grasp. Then the detective came up to say the pistol was an old one and nothing could be learned on application to the maker, who had now retired from business ; and after the detective, the coroner listened with a sapient gravity to irrelevant and useless evidence from policemen on the beat in Gray’s Inn road, who had seen nothing, and neighbours at the back of Brown’s buildings, who knew nothing, but who were anxious to be “ in the case,” and to take up the public time with imaginary legends of footsteps heard and strange men seen—-their tales, as usual, not tallying in the least with the known facts of the inquiry. Finally, the coroner sunmvd ur> in u '■ <r 'hy and not very perspicuous resume, pm. ucully giving the jury a

free hand, and expressing the hope that tii would have no difficulty in arrivin'! at

decision. Upon which the. jury, looking, with the exception of the foreman, supremely silly, clustered together in a corner, and began to consider their verdict. None of the others having apparently any opinion at all, the foreman, in the same loud masterful whisper, put the points before them. Afterwards the jury agreed there never was such a clever-headed fellow. What simply bewildered their naturally torpid brains was to him simple as daylight, lie pointed out to them that the death was a palpable accident, and the element of mysterv had

merely been introduced by halfpenny newspapers and local sensation-mongers. Of coarse a moue3 7 -lender would hide his money ; of course he would keep a pistol close at hand for the purpose of defence. It wasn’t suicide, for that he was in the middle of his supper, and a man of known cheerfulness and prosperity. Jt wasn't murder, for that meant they must believe a man crept up the wall like a cat, shot the deceased from behind, squeezing the pistol into his hand almost in the same action, found and stole the money, and went down the wall again without leaving a single sign of bis entrance or exit or a singe indication of the disturbance of the contents of the room. Such a man would be too wonderful a criminal, and they 7 could not believe that such a man existed. The old woman Willetts was a silly tattler, and most of the witnesses just idle gossips, it was a clear case of accidental death, and their duty in the matter seemed to him the simplest part of the case. One or two of the jury, rousing from their native torpor, interjected one or two feeble arguments against this, but the clangorous sotto voce of the foreman carried away their opposition in a perfect torrent of inductive logic. It was a case of the survival of the fittest. The strongest mind subjugated the weaker intellects. And when the coroner asked if the gentlemen of the jury were agreed, the foreman promptly told him they were ; that their verdict was death by the accidental discharge of a pistol, and that they wished to add a rider to the effect that there ought to be more stringent legislation as to the sale of old and insecure firearms. The sensation-mongers were of course disappointed, but the coroner, to whom a verdict of homicide might possibly have meant the ta.sk of writing out depositions for an Old Bailey judge, was rather pleased than otherwise , and after he had obtained the customary illegible signatures to the inquisition, dismissed the jury with suave compliments on the attention they had given the case and the expedition with which they had arrived at a verdict. Outside the Vestry Hall the jury gathered in little groups, loth to mix with the multitude and be divested of their all too brief

particularity. But the foreman walked leisurely down Holborn, meeting a newsboy at the Viaduct loudly vociferating the verdict.

“ A very curious coincidence, my being summoned on that jury,’' soliloquized the foreman, “and very curious that 1 should have attended. ’ He stepped and laughed. “ A heaven-born jury,' 1 he chuckled to himself, “ and a beautiful verdict to lull Scotland Yard to sleep.” He continued smiling as he walked on into Newgate street and Oheapside, and was still radiant when he stopped at certain shipping offices in Leadenhall street. There he booked passage for himself and wife in the s.s. Garibaldi, bound for Nicaragua, and paid the passage money with notes taken from an ample sheaf in his breast-pocket. In the evening the various jurymen were dilating at their tea-tables on the distinguished parts they had played. The undertaker’s men were seeing to all that was left of Ephrarn Isaac Davie. And the foreman of the jury was busy in his house at Grant street. Gray’s Inn. He had a fire lighted, despite ilie summer warmth, and burnt many letters and memoranda signed in a vulgar hand in the name of E. 1. Davis. And then lie cut to pieces with a pair of scissors, and committed to the fin*, a long knitted waistcoat of a violent indigo blue.— Pall Mall Gazette.