The Storyteller. SAFELY DEPOSITED.

Waikato Argus, Volume II, Issue 103, 6 March 1897, Page 1 (Supplement)

The Storyteller. SAFELY DEPOSITED.

Some twenty years ago, when I was enabled to rotire from the Indian Civil Service to the pleasant town of Torquay, I was yet a bachelor, and active. Pedestrianism was then my hobby, and there is little of South and Mid Devon that I have not tramped over. 1 had left Bovey Tracey early one fine March morning, intending to make a long day of it. The weather was surprisingly warm for the time of year ; so much so, that—my route being all up-hill for the first hour— I had to moderate my pace, and began to wish for a lighter overcoat. And this was the first link in a curious chain of circumstances, for If I had walked at my usual rate, I should probably not have noticed—two miles from Bovey— an object entangled in the roadside hedge about seven feet from the ground. It proved to be a small bag, the size and shape of a common tobaccopouch, made of stiff leather, and Bewed up with clumsy stitches, which seemed newly done. There was a broken thong of the same leather attached. I felt in my pocket for a knife to cut the stiches, but found that that implement, as usually happens, was at home, So I reserved it for examination on my return. About midday I sat down to lunch hard by the Vawr Maeu, or • great stone,' degenerated in coiir3e of time to Bawerman's Nose. It is a rude pillar of granite blocks, some thirty feet high, the uppermost being worn, by wind and weather, into the likeness of a human face, with a disproportionate, LordBrougham kind of nose, and an unpleasant grin. This grim object rises from the side of Hayne Down, surrounded by a mass of loose granite blocks of great size, the soil between which has been washed away by rain and burrowed by rabbits. One of these I selected for a seat, and pulled out a sand wish case. But alas ! the pouch, which 1 had quite forgotten, came out with it, and tumbling into a yawning crack, disappeared. I was greatly annoyed, for all sorts of possibilities as to its contents came across me. Not far below was a broken bit of wire-fence, whieh had served to keep cattle out of a boggy spot. I secured a long piece of it, hummered the end with a stone into a hook, and fished for some time, but without success, and went away at last, leaving the wire in the hole, and Bowerman, as I fancied, sardonically grinning at my failure. Next morning, the following advertisement in tho Western Morniug News caught my eye: ' Lost, on the Bth instant, near Bovey Tracey, a Fmall black leather poach, containing mineral specimens. Any one bringing it to George Durgess, The Lodge, Blackston Manor, Bovey, will receive Two Pounds Reward.' So I sent off a note on the spot to inform tho advertiser that 1 believed I could give him some news of his property. It was answered with astonishing promptitude, for the same afternoon, ' A gentleman, name of Durgess, about an advertisement,' was announced and ushered in. The gentleman in question was tall and wiry, about forty years of age, decidedly horsey in appearance, and reminding me forcibly of the portraits of the celebrated Mr Sponge. • I'm Mr George Durgess, sir,' he exclaimed, before ho was fairly in the room ; ' and I shall be uncommon glad, sir, if you can lay me on to this thing of mine, for the loss is very serious to me.' Here he stopped abruptly, with his eye roving round the room, as if to discover his property, and, catching sight of a black tobacco-pouch on the table, he mado a hasty step towards it before he saw his mistahe. 4 Take a seat, Mr Durgess,' I said. ' Would you mind describing the bag as exactly as possible V 'Why,' he said, 'it was black leather like that'—tapping his boot —' about as big as my hand, sewed up all round, and had a leather strap to carry it by. It had in it nineteen bits of red stone, wrapped up in paper. My brother sent 'em 'ome to me from India, to take care of ; and I, like a fool, must carry 'em 'ung round my neck, instead 0' lockin' 'em up. Last Thursday, 1 was out, schoolin' a young horse ; and when I got home I found the thing gone, through the rotten old strap breakin' and lettin' it drop off on tho rod.' Now, this was straightforward and probable enough in. all particulars but one—that was, that the article was not found on the road, but high up on the hedge. But against that was his evident knowledge of the contents, which would have left me no alternative but to hand it over, if I bad possessed it. As I did not, all I could do was to relate to Mr Durgess the state of ths case, which occasioned him to pull a very long face. ' Confound it all!' he exclaimed ; •what a pretty piece of luck! Bowerman's Nose ; yes, I know the place well, though I've never been up to it.—Look here, sir : if you can come over to Bovey, I'd meet vou at the station and drive you out —it's not more than a few 'undred yard off the road—and you can show me exactly where it went down.'

' Very well, But mind you, Mr Durness, unless the things »re very valuable, it won't pay you to- try a:id recover them. In the first place, you must have the leave of the Duchy before you can do anything; and in the next, it will moat likely be a job for -a large gang of quarryraen to shift those rocks ; and t may run to hundreds of pounds.' ' Bother it all !' he exclaimed again. ' If only you'd put it in another pocket,—But I must see the place, any'ow.' It was arranged that he was to write to me fixing a day and hour for us to drive out together to the Bowerman and inspect the crevice into which the bag had disappeared. Next day a snow-storm had made the country from Exeter to Land's End a section of Siberia. Under these circumstances, I was not surprised at hearing no more for the present of Mr Durgess. But a thaw quickly set in, with a good deal of rain ; the roads—except across Dartmoor—were all open again, and still no tiding 3 from him, though the last vestiges of the • blizzard' were melting away. At this time came a letter from a schoolfellow of mine, Dr Collins, a demonstrator of something at a London hospital, asking me if I would put him up for a week, as he had 0116 of his rare holidays, and wanted to get as far from London as possible. The doctor's notion of a holiday was to exert himself as much as possible j and the morning after his arrival he proposed visiting Bovey, to collect what he called ' Mioceno flora,' which, it appeared, could be obtained nowhere else. To Bovey, then, we repaired, where he spent a considerable time in the clay-pits belonging to the pottery works, and loaded his pockets and mine with the said Miocene flora, resembling to my eyes bits of decayed stick and brown paper embedded in lumps of clay, When we had as much of this as we could carry, it occurred to me that we might as well look in on Mr Durgess. As I did not know the exact situation of the Lodge, I inquired of Sam Hext, foreman of the clay-pits, with whom I was well acquainted. Sam was a stout, mas sively built man of sixty, who had once been a famous exponent of the art of ' wraxling,' or wrestling, now nearly extinct in Devon, and disappearing from Cornwall. He was a shrewd, intelligent man, and a perfect mine of information about the neighbourhood, in which he had spent all his life. The Lodge, zur,' he said; ' I'll be plazed to show it to 'oe, vor we'm jast knackin' off vor Saturday, an' I do live almost tichin' of it,' As we tramped along the muddy lanes, over-hung with thick-grown banks, from which the young fern was beginning to shoot, I inquired of Sam whether he knew anything of Mr Durgess. * Durgess,issfai,'he replied ; 'but they goed awai, zur, yesterday marnin,' vest train, zeed 'n to station.' Further questions elicited that two men of that name had rented the Lodge six or seven months before, one of whom was clearly my visitor. They hunted a good deal, and were very ' knowing ' men about horses, especially hunters, of which they had always five or six standing at the inn stables in Bovey. They had no servants except a sort of groom ; and a woman, described by Sam as a • cranky-tempered ould toad.' The Lodge, which was now shut up, with a ' To Let' notice, referring intending tenants to some one residing in Exeter, was a substantial building of granite, standing behind huge, rusty, iron gates of elaborate hammered work. It was, as its name indicated, the lodge of Blackston Manor, once the seat of the Mann family. Sir Thomas Mann, the last male representative, has be?n dead many years ; and the two old ladies who alone survived lived in Exeter; while the Park was let out for grazing, and the mansion stood deserted and falling to ruin. ' Let's look at the house,' said Collins ; and accordingly we walked up what had once been a fine beech avenue, cut clown by Sir Thomas's executors. The house itself was a plain, rectangular block of building, three-storeyed, stone, covered with stucco which had fallen off in great patches ; and, except a massive granite porch, there was no ornament. In front was an extensive lawn, relapsed into pasture ; and the stone basin of a fountain, with a broken image of Neptune, apparently taking a footbath in the slimy green water. The lower windows were boarded up; but the upper ones had been breached by ' the devil's army,' as the Hindu unkindly terms sportive youth. We walked round to the back, where was an extensive range of stabling and ' offices,' surrounded by a high stone wall. The wooden doors of the yard had been blown down in the late gale, which had also blown off a number of slates from the house-roof* A cow had found her way in, to luxuriate on the rank grass which grew in great tufts against the walls ; and a family of stoats, disturbed by our entrance, darted under the coach-houso door, which, like all the rest, was secured with rusty chains and staples. But, to our surprise, the back door of the hall was ajar. ' Zome trampin' rogues have a doed that,' said Sam, ' They'll be vor lightin' vires an' burnin' 'ouse down zome. naight, I zim [think]. — Cooui inzaide, sur; 'tea twenty jear

an' more zinco I zee thicky door open.' We entered a long, narrow, lofty hall, when! the only light came through the broken fan-light over the front door ; and a flavour of damp and decay, between that of new-turned earth and a bad nut, pervaded the whole place. Sam tried a large double door on the right, which opened easily enough, and showed the dinner-room, a huge apartment, running the whole depth of the house. ' But what's that in the corner, Sam V 'Testhowai to zellir, zur,'replied Sam. ' They wanted wine near by.' This was a very steep and narrow flight of steps, descending from a railed-off corner. We looked down it, and perceived at the bottom a small door wide open, but revealing nothing but darkness Out of curiosity, I twisted up a sheet of newspaper into a torch, lighted it, and stepped inside. Nothing more than a good-sized cellar, opening into another, the door of which was shut; but just as the paper went out, 1 caught sight of a large heap of straw, with two horse-rugs in one corner, also a jug and a broken plate, I called to the others, and lighted a fresh paper. Sam took the articles and carried them up to the din-ing-room. ' 'Tes just so as I teller! 'ee,' said he. ' Zome 0' they tramps a got in.' « Surely,'said the Doctor, ' tramps don't carry rugs about with them, much less crockery.' « No, zur,' said Sam ; ' but they maight 'a staled 'n here. Zo they have; vor they rugs be vrora the White Hart to Bovey.—Lookee zee, zur; ould Pearce's name on 'em, 'Twas strangers, vor sartnin. No one round here wudn' zleep here, vor Thomas walks by times.' ' Does he indeed!' said the Doctor. 'He can't be very well pleased with what he sees, I should think. Did you ever see him, Mr Hext, and what shape does he take V '. No, zur ; I never zeed 'n ; but plenty here has ; though, if you was to ask 'n, they'd zay No. Look'd zame as if he wur alaive. They do zay, if zo be a man do show like himself 'tes not zo bad ; but if he do look like a black dog, zame as Lady Howard to Okehampton, it have gone hard weth 'n ; a black pig wust of all.' ' That is really worth knowing,' said the Doctor. ' I will make a note of it, for the benelit of my family.—But I think we ought to be getting on now, to see Mr Bowerman— eh, Jack ! —and try to induce him to restore the lost property.' Hext's cottage, though described by hiui as ' toucliin'' the Lodge, was really about a quarter of a mile farther along the road. As we approached it, we were aware of a small boy, Sam's grandson, sitting on the doorstep blubbering. 'What be it now woth 'ee, Jarge?' inquired his grandfather. ' A wacked little toad, 'a be,' replied Mrs Hext senior, coming to the door. ' I zet 'n to watch an' kate vowls off the pays, an' directly minnit I vinds 'n down road, with they young 'osbirds 0' Gidley's hainen' gruot [throwing clods] at a ould man to come an' zet down ; but I can't make out no word 'a zayed. Maybe the gentlemen can V We entered the little back room, clean and blindingly whitewashed, which served as kitchen and diningroom, and found the ' furriner' seated there. He was an elderly man, of about sixty, apparently, with face and hands nearly as brown as an Arab's, and his thick gray tweed suit and black billycock hat—were good, and almost new, though the former were dirty and rumpled, and the latter had its brim broken. Bits of straw and flue were stiking in his hair and beard ; and ail together he *as as grimy and dishevelled a spectacle as could be imagined ; but still, no one would have taken him for a vagabond or ' masterless man,' ' Escaped lunatic ' was the first impression of us all. He looked up as we entered, with a curious, puzzled expression, like a man who tries hard to remember something. Then he addressed us with much fluency, pointing to himself and the surroundings, and evidently asking questions ; but not one word could we understand, though I thought some of the words sounded like Hindustani. At last he seemed to give it up in despair, and turning away from us, got up and walked to the other end of the room. As he did not so, a broom lying on the floor came directly in his way. lie stopped short, and lifting his leg at least two feet high. ' Hullo !' exclaimed the Doctor ; ' d 'ye pee that ? The man's drugged with something, some strong narcotic poison. There's several kinds have that effect; they 1 make everything seem unnaturally large.' ' Bain't 'n mad then, zur 1 ?' inquired Sam, who was evidently prepared for a ' wraxling' bout, if the ' furriner ' should become violent. 'Mad; why, yes.' replied the Doctor. ' The best thing you can do is to send for the police to take him in charge. He won't give any trouble,' ' I will, zur, to once,' said Mrs Hext. ' Jarge ! layve oil thee scratch hi', an' hum [run] to' Bovey, an' tell constable to come an' take awai a mad man.' We left, the unfortunate man, seated in a corner, and the worthy couple regarding him with half alarm

and half sympathy. On our way we discussed him, but. enne to tu> conclusion on the subject during the two hours of steep hills and winding lanes that brought us to Manatoti, and then to Bowerman's Nose. Here Collins was glad of a rest ; and while he enjoyed the brisk moor air and the strange prospect westward of tumbled hills, piled with fantastic gray ' clatters,' with the long black ridge of Hamildon behind, I searched for my place of involuntary deposit. I found the wire, and drew it out with a gasp of astonishment, for, firmly jammed on the hooko I end was the mysterious pouch. I seized it, and hastily retreated to a place of safety. We had it open in a trice, and found, exactly as Mr Durgess had said, nineteen balls of paper, each enclosing a piece of dark-red crystal, about the size of a Windsor bean, excepting one, which was the size, and nearly the shape, of a Mar-tini-Henry oullet. ' What are they, d' you think V I asked. ' Well,' said the Doctor, ' my line's not mineralogy ; bu*. I had to cram it up at one time ; and they look, from what I recollect, most decidedly like corundum—that's rubies, you know. There's the six sides in the big one, and that one, and that.' 'Anyhow, the "furriner" can have no connection with these, for you found then over a month ago.' ' 1 suppose not,' I said. 'At the same time, there's something very fishy about tho way this man Dur gess has disappeared, for he clearly possessed these things, if he didn't own them. Rather hard luck for him, if there's anything wrong, for if it hadn't been for that snowstorm, he'd have got 'em to a certainty. Now, if he turns up, he'll have to prove his title.' Next morning, we submitted the stones to a" fashionable jeweller on the Victoria Parade, who at once pronounced them Oriental rubies of uncommon size. ' But,' he said, ' it's very difficult to give you any idea of'their value, gentlemen, because rubies of any size are so very apt to have flaws, which only show in the cutting. Still, I think, any of the big firms, like Streeter's, would give a couple of thousand for them, as they might cut to ten times that.' ' Hullo ; been choosing the ring '(' interposed a voice at my ear ; and turning round, I found Colonel Kelway, and old acquaintance of mine, also settled in the tewn. The colonel was a little man, with large sandy whiskers, whom it was very difficult to associate with the setting of a squadron in the field, and, in fact. I believe his dulies had been mostly confined to the Pay Department. ' Let me introduce my friend, Dr Collins, Colonel,' I said.—' No ; it's not come to that yot; it was something rather more out of the common took me into Parson's, —Look here ;' and I was about to produce the stones. 'Afraid I can't stop now,' said the Colonel. ' I've to attend a case at the town hall as witness.—But if you'll come to dinner this evening with your friend—it's a long time since you've been, you know—you can tell me then.' But neither the dinner nor the story came off at that time, owing to a misunderstanding. I saw nothing more of the Colonel till some days later, when the Doctor had returned to town. Meanwhile, I had made some inquiries, and learned in the first place that the mysterious stranger had been removed to the infirmary at Newton Abbot Union ; and secondly, that tho Messrs Durgess wer/; shrewdly suspected of being concerned in the disappearance of several valuable horses from the north of England, horse-stealing, by the way, being a much more flourishing industry in these days than is generally known. Their real names were, it was said, Dawson and Hearne ; and a warrant had been issued for their arrest on the horsestealing charge ; but these very wary rooks, having their own sources of information, had flown in time, leaving a quarter's rent of the Lodge owing. This, however, gave no clew to the real owner of the rubies, except to make it certain that it was not Mr Durgess, alias Dawson : and nothing was known of any such articles having been stolen. When I again mf.t Colonel Kelway, on the Rock Walk, one afternoon, he renewed the invitation to dinner for that evening—'Nobody but ourselves, y' know.' I inquired after his numerous family. ' All well,' he said, ' but my wife. She's rather upset by something that's happened, or rather, I should say, by something that's not happened. About a month ago she had a letter from an uncle of hers, Tom Morehead by nane. Just two or three lines, to say that he was in England, and she might expect to see him in a day or two. He was something or other in Portsmouth Dockyard, I think , but soon after, he went abroad to Hong-kong ; and it is a good fifteen years since my wife heard from him. For my part, I believe ho is the sort of fellow that generally comes back, like somebody in Dickens, to give you the alternative of half a sovereign or his brains on the premises ; hut anyhow, he has never turned up, and my wife has made up her mind that he has been murdered.' ' Have you made any inquiries f I asked. 1 Well, I was worried into going to Plymouth, for the letter had a

Devonport postmark ; but there was positively nothing to go by. No address, nothing to say when h" bad arrived in England, or by what ship ; and all the description I could give was that he should be a rather tall man about fifty. So tho only result was to make me waste half-an-hour of tin; police-inspector's time.' ' I do believe, Colonel,' I said, a sudden a idea flashing upon me, ' that I can give you some sort of a clew. A man of fifty, or so, and a long time, abroad, you say. Why, I was going to tell you' that very minute when you met mo coming out of the jeweller's.—But I'd better tell you this evening, so that Mrs Kelway may hear it at the same time,' So, after dinner, we adjourned to the 'study,' and I related the particulars to the Colonel and his wife, exhibiting the pouch with the stone. ' It's my uncle Tom—l know it is !' exclaimed Mrs Kelway. ' Good gracious ! and they are worth twenty thousand pounds —We must go over and fetch them away, Edward, the first thing to-morrow morning,' ' But, my dear,' said the Colonel, 'ifit is Tom Morehead, he must at all events know English ; and I don't yet see the connection very clearly between these s< onee and the man of the unknown tongues.' Mr Cattenrole, of the Colonel's regiment, then staying at Tor Bay Hotel, a lean, Roman-nosed individual, far more military in appearance than the Colonel, threw an unexpected light on the matter. ' Morehead,' he said. ' Yes, there was a fellow of that name knocking about our part of the world for years. He came over to us once and wanted to take service; but I couldn't learn much good of his antecedents ; he'd just been turned out of Java. Sol advised the Rajah not to have him. The last I heard of him was that he had joined the Rajah of Kedah, turned Mohammedan, they said. —No ; he didn't drink much, as we reckon it; but he was a beggar for opium and the native drugs.—Oh, certainly ! I'll be happy to do the interpreting.' On arrival at Newton Abbot, we interviewed the infirmary doctor. 'Oh !' he said, ' the man who was brought here from Bovey.—Well, you can see him ; but, he hasn't got his wits yet, and I almost fear he's a hopeless case. Fact is, the man's heen dosing himself with Indian hemp extract—bhang, you know. We found a box of the stuff on him, uearly empty.' In the infirmary wo found the patient, dressed, and seated on the side of his bed, looking, except, for being washed and tidied, very much as I had seen him first, and with the same perplexed expression. ' That's the man !' said Cattermole —'old Murad, as the natives used to call him.—Wake up, old man ! How's the Rajah V and he addressed the stranger in Malay, to which he. at once replied, and they conversed together for some minutes. 'lt's the man you want, Colonel, undoubtedly,' he said, —The Colonel's face by no means expressed this sentiment.—' But what's happened to him I can't make out. He says he's died, and been buried ; and now he's in, well, in the stoke-hole, and he's glad, he says, to see me there. Complimentary, isn't itf ' I wonder now,' I said, 'if this would have any effect;' and .1 exhibited to the late Mr Morehead the empty pouch. Without the least warning, he snatched it like an elderly monkey and thrust it into the breast of his shirt. '• Thieves! Police !' he shrieked, in most unmistakable English ; and starting up made a grab at the Colonel. Cattermole and myself could scarcely hold the indignant Morehead, who strewed on our heads the choicest flowers of speech of the Lower English tongue, till, assistance arriving, he was removed to the refractory ward, where wo presently learned that he had fallen asleep, clutching his recovered treasure, as he imagined. 1 Well, Colonel,' I said, ' I congratulate you on your wealthy relative.' ' By Jove !' exploded tho Colonel, ' it may be a joke to you, but 1 don't see where my share of the fun comes in. If he gets right, I shall have this ruffian quartering himself on the family for life, on the pretext of leaving his money to Julia, And most likely, either ho will muddle it all away, or the Rajah of Whatdyecaliit may send over, and have him arrested for stealing the stones.' The upshot was that' Uncle Tom ' began to recover his scattered ideas, and in about a fortnight was able to give a coherent account of himself. It seemed that on arrival at Plymouth he had put up at some secondclass hotel, the name of which he could not remember. Here he forgathered with the man calling himself Durgess, who was in Plymouth at the time on some business connected with horse-dealing, or stealin". To him, Morehead confided his intention, of which Mr Durgess took instant advantage. He represented himself as a country gentleman, and the intimate friend of the Kelways; and telling the confiding Morehead. who was quite ignorant of tho district, that the Colonel lived several miles from a station, offered to drive him over from Newton Junction. On arrival there, very late at light, they were met by Durgess's partner in iniquity, and driven over to Bovey by a roundabout route, through unfrequented lanes. Towards the end of the journey, some suspicion seemed to have

dawned on the victim, who made a disturbance and a snuffle ensued, which ended in his being over powered and laid, bound and gagged, in the bottom of the vehicle. However, before this, be bad torn off his neck the pouch, containing their expected loot, and flung it away ; and as it had gone into the hedge, and the night was pitch-dark, they were unable to find it. To do them justice, they did not seem to have contemplated murder, but merely to have kept Morehead a prisoner in the cellar at Blackaton until they had got clear off. To this durance he was then consigned, whilst they endeavoured to recover the precious pouch. Unfortunately for him, he had a supply of the pernicious drug about him, and in the solitude of his dungeon, he reduced himself to the state in which he was found, so that he could give no account of how it fared with him during the snowstorm, when he must have been left alone for some days. At last Durges3 and Co., tiespairing of ever getting tl.e jewels from the custody of Bowerman, in which I had so luckily bestowed them, took the alarm and went off leaving the unlucky Morehead to shift for himself. They had too long a start for capture, and are now, doubtless, exercising their talents in the United States. The much-enduring Mr Morehead was eventually removed to Torquay, where, proving impossible as one of the Colonel's household, he was accommodated in lodgings, He never quite recovered from his latest experiences, but always remained a trifle •■mazed ' in his intellect and uncivilised in his habits, though not so much as the Colonel had apprehended. The rubies were disposed of for a handsome sum, though not anything like £20,000 ; and at his death, which happened about three years after, he left the whole of the amount to his niece. As to how he had acquired them, he would never say » word during his life; but a full account was found in writing among his belongings —an autobiographical statement, which, I understand, caused the Kelways some searching of heart as to whether they ought to accept the legacy.—S. Ponder, in Chambers' Journal.