HOW SCOTT BACKED THE WINNERS?. (Prize Story in Titbits.)

Otago Witness, Issue 2375, 7 September 1899, Page 38

HOW SCOTT BACKED THE WINNERS?. (Prize Story in Titbits.)

"Back in ninety-six," jsaid my friend, Detective-Inspector Westwood, "Matthews, an old comrade of mine, who ie now chief constable of Rockbridge, wrote and invited me to spend a portion of my holiday with him at his place, a sleepy little town, whose only claim to distinction is that some rather important races are held there for a week every year, and they are patronised by Royalty. The racecourse is on a ridge of hills forming a sloping tableland some three miles to the north-west of the town, so that it is quite easy for the inhabitants to go on the roofs of their houses and watch the racing by the aid of a field glass. ' I accepted Matthews invitation, for he's a jolly good fellow, and keeps a good cellar. Besides I wanted a rest. But I wasn't destined to get much. It happened that . the races began two days after I got there, and on the night preceding the first day of the racing, the post office — which is just opposite the police station and chief constable's house — was burglariously entered, but remarkable to relate, no attempt had been made to open the eaf<? or tamper with the mails, or take anything whatever. The object of the entry certainly did not apear to be plunder " The most careful examination of the premises by Matthews and myself failed to reveal any clue, and but for the forced lock and bolts, and the ' jemmy ' marks on the door, it seemed difficult tc realise that burglary had been committed at all ; so empty-handed had the perpetrators gone away. "We could make nothing of the matter o gave it up, for Matthews's men had plenty to do in looking after the swarm of rogues who follow every race meeting and make honest people rather nervous as to the safety of their pwaons and valuables. "As I said,. l wanted a rest, so did not go to either of the races ; but, as the weather was gloriously fine. I amused myself by going on the roof of my host's house, and watching the racing through my glass. I got a splended view of the proceedings on the whole, but occasionally the rays of the sun were reflected in my eyes by a mirror of some kind on the racecourse. This was rathei disconcerting jO my /ision ; so I turned my attention oppoiite, to the roof of the house adjoining the post office, tke occupant of, .wbicb^ I ojMßtvedj

was evidently doing the same as myself — watching the racing. "But the "flashing of the mirror seemed to upset him a bit, too, for presently he descended from the roof in a hurry, and a moment or so later I heard the door bang, as if he had left the house. Mrs Matthews informed me that the house he lived had been unoccupied for over a year, but was rented by this old gentleman and his son a little while back. She had ascertained that the tenant's name was Martin. "He had the reputation of being feeble and eccentric, and certainly seemed the latter, for ' on" two consecutive days I saw him on his roof watching the racing, until the flashing of the mirror seemed to fill hini with rage, when he occasionally went behind the chimney slack and waved his arms — perhaps -to relieve his feelings. Then he hurriedly left the roof ' again, and a minute or so later I heard the door slammed as before. " On the evening of the third day's racing, Matthews entered the house and said to me : ' I wish you would come into my private office a minute, old man. Old Monty Read, the bookmaker • and money-lender of North • Street, wants to see you badly. Says he's been swindled (though how anyone cair swindle a' bookmaker passes my comprehen- • sion), and has pitched a long, ramshackle tale • into ma about being ruined, and all that sort . of thing. Come and hear what he's got to say i just to oblige me." | "I followed Matthews into his office, and there saw an ugly, wizened little man with a hooked nose : greed and cunning stamped on every line in his brown-paper-ooloured face. He commenced at once : — '"Ah, Mr Westwood ; I heard you were here. Do help me — you are a clever man. - 1 am old and poor, and have been swindled three times this weok : I am positive of it. I I shall be ruined and die in the workhouse ! No I one has ever bested me of a penny before, and to think I should come to this ! ' and than h« fairly commenced to sob. After great trouble I elicited the following : — " Toat he was _a bookmaker and commission agent, who accepted bets or sums of ! money from his clients to put on such horses • las they should direct. He sometimes did , business by telegraphic instructions sent to the ; racecourse (where the post-office wires ran direot from Rockbridge, and some operators were stationed to receive and dispatch messages , during race week), provided the time the mesF.xs?e Vv'as handed in at the receiving office was at' least four minutes before the particular race it referred to was run. "The day before the first race, a young tourist, named Scott, who was staying at the George Hotel, had deposited £200 with him, i instructing him to use it as directed, Scott to wire instructions each day. Read pointed out that this course was somewhat unusual, I but veadiiv accepted the commission, and gave i a receipt for the deposit upon Scott explain- ! ing thai he dared not attend any race meet- ! ing, under penalty of forfeiting a very substantial legacy which had been left him under i the will of an anti-racing relative, who, how- | ever, had fortunately nob forbidden him to ! make bets ! . I " Perhaps yon can remember that m that ! particular year all the important events were I won by rank outsiders. As you osiu, imagine ! there was a lot of money dropped over it, and ! people got riled. The winner of the Mcli ville Cup was Saucy Jane, against whom the | odds were 50 to 1. No sooner bad the race I (which was run at two o'clock) concluded, ! than a telegraphic message from. Scott ln- ; atructocl Pv-a'd as follows : ' Put £50 at start- ! ins; price on Saucy Jan 1 ? for me. — Scott.' "The message wis inscribed : 'Handed in at the Rockbridsrn ouice at 1.54 p.m.' That I W as siv minut" bpforo the race - was run, I though Read did not &,et it until after. Read was furious, having already lost heavily, but, as the instructions were in perfect order, he had to pay the sum of £2500, less commission, to the lucky Scott. "The next day the unexpected again happened. The Larries Purse was won by another 1 outsider, who was guaranteed nob to win by 50 to 3. Again after tho race Read received from Scott a telegram, dated this time seven minutea before the horses ran, instructing him to put £50 on Doctor Jack, who proved tho winner, and that evening Scott was richer by another huge sum, while the unfortunate bookmaker was in despair. " But when the fame thing happened the next day he was almost demented, and refused to pay. He vowed that the messages had bpen tampered with ; that some of the post-office officials were in collusion with Scott, helping him falsify the telegrams ; and alleged nil sorts of wild and improbable things. The old fellow seemed quite crazy ! over his enormous losses, and begged us with i tears in his eyes to expose the swindle and recover his money for him. i "'lt is absurd as well as libellous ior you to make unproved charges against post-office officials, Mr Read,' I said. 'Possibly there was an error in timing the telegrams, or the stewards' watches and post-office clock may not tally. Come over to the office, and we'll ' see.' So over we went, when, Matthews interviewed the post-master and explained the matter to him. " ' As moFt people were at the races there was only one clerk in the office at the time, and in him I have -unbounded confidence,' said the postmaster. ' However, you can question him, if you like.' We did so. He most emphatically declared that the times at which ho received the meß3ages were those to a minute stated on them, and to thfs he adhered like a rock. That the time at the post-office and racecourse tallied almost to a second was verified by telegraphic inquiry, and the idea of collusion between Scott and either of the post-office clerks was dispelled by the landlord of the George, who said that Scott kept to his -rooms sketching and writing each day, only going out to the post-office; just before the times of the races. , " The whole charge of fraud seemed a baseless one, conjuTed by the exciting brain of R«ad, when Matthews strongly admonished, telling him to be careful he didn't stir up a hornet's nest of libel cases. "The next day I again went on the roof to' watch the racing as before, and again the bothering mirror on the racecourse diitraoted me. Suddenly I became aware of a distinct order in the flashes of light, and then the truth dawned upon me.' The flashes constituted a message, sent by a heliograph in the' Morse code of telegraphy, which, luckily, I knew quite well Yes, that was it— clots and dashes of light, and — yes ! they spelt the name of a horse ; ' Pride of the South,' and that horse was entered for the big event of the day I That was all ; merely the name of the horse repeated twice. Perhaps it denoted that that was the favourite, or the jdnner. If so, to whom was the mesage sent ? "After all, there might be something in Read's declaration that he had beeD -swindled. But then how ibout the timee -he v^egrams had been handed in ? " Just then on looking down T. .'lappeind n see a young man leave the house ipposite «md enter the post-office. SJo presently I descended, and going over to the almost leserted fiVSt-fiffiSi m^gg my fturobw^ jtiii

thinking of the sun-flashed message. ' Funny affair altogether,' thought I ; 'that race ■was timed for three j what is the time now ? ' and. glancing up at the clock on the office •wall I saw something which made m< start and .exclaim^ 'By Jove 1 * " • What's up { ' asked the clerk. " Oh, something niat struck me/ I replied, evasively, '"Then. I went home to think over the matter. There seemed to be some connection b«■tweet the ffaghfng of the <nirrox and what I bad Keen at th« post-office, And the more I thought the taor'e I became convinced that Bead was right, and fraud was rampant. "I took Matthews into my confidence, and both of us had an interview with the postmaster that evening., with the result that during the dead of 'night we all three stealthy entered the post-office, and cautiously removed the clock from the wall Two small and apparently elastic threads came with it, for as we lowered the clock the threads accommodatingly lengthened, and laying it on the counter we silently and almost in darkness opened the glass door. '" Then we noticed ihat the steel minute hand- was not a fellow of the hour hand, but the square in it which fits on the minute wheel stem through the centre of the dial- was much too large, so that the hand was quite sloppy, and shifted from side to side to the extent of nearly thirteen minutes of the clock face's circumference. "Proceeding farther, we removed the dial, and there, underneath, between works and face,- with the wheel stems which hands fit on running through it, was a flat, short ring of iron, like a piece of pipe, wound tightly round ■with Bilk-covered wire, the continuation of ■wh\ch proved to be the obliging ' threads ' I have just mentioned, which ' threads,' or electrio wires, ran through the wall into the house adjoining the post-office. "Then the whole plot was laid bare before ■us. The mysteries of the burglary ,* the flashing of the miror. and Scott's marvellous luck ■were all explained at once. The burglars — Martin, 'son,' and Scott — had confined their attention to the clock when they broke into the post-office, and substituted the large-hand for the proper one : put the short ring of wire-bo^und iron — which was a powerful eleetrcmagnet — behind the dial ; bored a tiny hole through the wall, and so pushed the wires from the .magnet into the next house. Then the clock having been carefully replaced on the wall and set going, everything was ready for their ingenious swindle. ' Now, owing to the minute hand being thirteen minutes lose, it would point to the ■figure VI for thirteen minutes before it commenced to move, and so be that amount slow until it had passed the XII, when it would suddenly fall forward thirteen minutes and show correct time till it again reached the VI. So you see how Scott's telegrams were always thirteen minufes slow, provided he dispatched them after the half-past any hour. ".But .the swindlers did not wish the hand to perform its erratic feat more than once a day — once -YrfSrald only be noticed by the merest chance, as scarcely any person would be about just at the time they desired the clock to be wrong. So to obviate the risk of detection they devised the clever plan of inserting the-powerful electro-magnet, which was connected by the wires to a battery in the house adjoining, jn which they lived When the battery and wires were connected. th« uiagnet powerfully, attracted the end of. thu minute hand, and kept it in position on the square, co that it showed correct time all the way round ' Just before the race, however, • the battery was disconnected and the magnet ceased to attract the hand, which then being about five minutes to the hour fell back thirteen minutes. Consequently the clock was then that much slow. Then when the race was concluded — and it seldom took more that five minutes— one of the gang on the course heliographed the result to the man I had > noticed on the opposite house roof, who in reply ■waved his arms to denote that he understood, which signal the man on the course saw through a telescope. The swindler on the roof then descended, and taking a suitably•worded telegram into the post-office, said to the clerk : Put the time on this and dispatch it immediately, please. It is a bet for the race just to be run, and is most important.' "The telegram dispatched, the man would ■wajt till the hand had dropped over the hour, and then once more connecting up the battery, the clock would show correct time until manipulated next day as required. It was this dropping of the hand after it had passed the XII that I noticed in the post-office. "We obtained a warrant and raided the iiouee next door arresting the occupants on charges of burglary and falsifying telegrams ; we also arrested Scott at the George for complicity. There was much of interest in the house '■ a heliograph disguised as a camera tp escape detection, as well as a lot of elec■tical apparatus, batteries, etc. Martin wasn't fully" dressed when we called. Instead of the ing a feeble old man of sixty-five we found him' to be a hale and hearty young one of thirty years or less, looking very different with the" white locks and beard adorning a table instead of his head. ' Scott * was his twin brother, the two being as alike as peas. Martin s ' son,' the confederate who attended the xaoes, proved to be a well-known ' welsher ' of a few years back. " Of course Scott never went near the postoffice ; but Martin, upon receiving information as to the winning horse, instantly left the roof of his house, took off his false beard and wig, and entered the office as Scott— whose image he was — and thus succeeded in deceiving the clerk as to his identity, as I have told you. "The rascally trio are now in retirement down in Devonshire, well provided for at the country's expense for a period of five years."