HIDDEN TREASURE.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 3340, 15 December 1883, Page 2

HIDDEN TREASURE.

A detective recently related the following :—“ I had a curious case a few years ago. A wealthy man had been attacked with partial paralysis, and his speech and the greater part of his memory had failed him. He wrote out the question : “Where did I put my money?’ The amount was large, £32,000 in bonds, which he had been about to take to a safe deposit building. The heirs were wild. I stopped all the tearing up and cushion-pricking business for the man was not a ‘ concealer,’ though it was supposed by the doctors that he had felt the fit coming on and had pat the money in some out of the way place. Just how or in what spot in his library ho had fallen could not be made out. After a day’s reflection my partner and I had to conclude that he had been robbed. Two courses were open to us:—We could make sudden arrests without real evidence (always a hateful course for a good detective to take), or we must find the exact spot where the man fell, and ‘ line’ up from that. The doctors helped us here. They suggested that we examine tho gentleman’s body. We did so, and found a long horizontal mark on the hip, and blue marks on the knee and elbow. He had fallen sideways over some object not more than sixteen inches high, and having a narrow rounded edge of metal, for an iron mark was found on the clothing. Every piece of furniture in tho house was inspected, but to no purpose. We took all night to think the matter over. Then my partner spoke of the cellar. They all laughed. ‘He hasn’t been there for a year,’ they said. Wo went down. My partner glanced quickly around, and then gave me a look which rather puzzled me. But I soon understood its meaning. He had discovered some common household articles which had not been used since the family had searched the fireplaces. He was, in fact, looking over a lot of coalscuttles. He turned tho scuttles carefully, and from out a mass of waste paper there rolled at last the £32,000 worth of bonds. The paralytic had fallen over the scuttle, and the money had dropped into it among his waste papers. My partner and I divided £IOOO between us that night.”