Complete Story. The Mysterious Robberies at Ashtonville.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXI, Issue XVIII, 31 October 1903, Page 54

Complete Story. The Mysterious Robberies at Ashtonville.

It was after 3 p.ui., and the little bank in the budding town of Ashtonville had been closed for the day to the public by the message boy, who was now playing cricket vigorously in an adjoining paddock. The rest of the bank staff, consisting of the manager and one clerk, were still at work inside the modest building. Suddenly the manager’s busy pen stopped. He looked across at the clerk with self-accusation In his mild eyes. “I’d nearly forgotten that I promised Flora at dinner-time to let you off the moment the bank closed,’’ he said. “She wants to see Bessie Swan, and thinks of riding to the Mill this afternoon. No, don’t stop to finish those entries, Harry. I’ll fix everything up. You get away as fast as you can, if you don’t want to have Flora scolding her dad for not keeping his promise." So Harry Dunquerque grabbed his hat, and nothing loath slipped out into the sunshiny afternoon. Half an hour later he and pretty Flora Furnival were cantering along the road to Sloan’s Timber Mill, very happy in each other’s company. For they were engaged lovers. And though Harry’s present circumstances placed the prospect of their marriage somewhat indefinitely in the future, that did not trouble them. They were both very young, and could afford to wait. They returned home early in the summer evening, Flora bubbling over with the exciting news she had to impart. Only think, father, what has happened!” she cried, bursting into the sitting-room upon her parents, without waiting to remove her riding-skirt. “Jack Sloan rode into Ashtonville this morning and drew the usual money for the mill hands’ wages to-morrow, didn't he? Well, just imagine, he lost all the money on his way home!” Mr Furnival. whose gentle face wore an unwonted look of trouble, roused himself with a start from a fit of abstraction to echo his wife’s exclamation : “Lost it ’ My dear Flora. I don’t see how he could! I myself gave it him, and saw him put it carefully into that strong linen bag of his. and then place the bag in the inside pocket of his coat.” “It’s the strangest thing imaginable, Mr Furnival.” put in Harry Dunquerque. “Jack declares that he remembers feeling the bag in his pocket, heavy and bulky, just as he was passing Bassett’s farm, and that he was getting near the Mill when it suddenly struck him that the weight and bulk in his pocket were no longer there. Putting in his hand he found nothing but the empty bag that had held the money. There wasn’t so much as a hole the size of a pin’s head in either bag or pocket, yet the cash had vanished to the last shilling of it.” “I’ve always thought Jack Sloan a silly young fellow,” said Mr Furnival, with angry incredulity, “but still 1 would have credited him with more sense than to try to impose such an absurd cock-and-bull kind of story as that up n people. It would have sounded more believable to have said that he’d been bailed up in broad daylight by a masked highwayman with a pistol! I hope, to goodness the foolish lad hasn’t been playing any dishonest tricks.” “Oh, Dad. you surely can’t think that Jack has st"len the money himself’” cried Flora, aghast and reproachful. “He couldn’t, he wouldn’t! And if you only saw the poor boy! He is really half distracted about losing the money, and his father has been abusing him terribly for his carelessness.” “I can’t think that Jack Sloan has been careless, and I’m certain he is telling the truth as far as he knows it,” •aid Harry thoughtfully. “But his story makes the whole thing very incomprehensible. Jack, when he found the money gone, rode slowly back as far as Bassett’s farm, searching the road carefully in the expectation of finding H strewn with gold and silver, though

it did seem impossible that the contents of the bag could have found their way to the ground without his knowing it. But not a solitary coin was to be seen anywhere. And the two or three people he met coming from the direction of Ashtonville —decent men whom he knew well —all declared that they had seen nothing of the missing money. Now, had it fallen on the road anywhere—a lot of loose gold and silver—they could not have failed to have seen it. for two of them had been riding only a mile or so behind Jack all the way from Ashtonville.” “Well, as it can’t have evaporated into air in his pocket, it comes to this—it must have been stolen from him!” exclaimed Mr. Furnival, with an irritability quite foreign to his mild nature. “But Jack declares he never met anybody, or so much as drew rein, from the time he left Ashtonville until he missed the money,” replied Harry Dunquerque. “Really, the affair seems an utter mystery.” “Like .ill similar mysteries, you’ll find it capable in time of a rational solution,” rejoined Mr. Furnival impatiently. And lie relapsed into silence, while the others continued to discuss, with considerable excitement, the surprising disappearance- of the mill employees’ wage money. Mr. Furnival’* abstraction and irritability was explained later on when he accompanied Harry to the gate, on the latter’s departure home to the house where he boarded. “Harry,” said he abruptly, “who came into the bank when I was away at dinner to-day ?" Hurry’s undisguised surprise at the question was visible enough on his face in the bright moonlight. "Let me think!” he answered. “Why, nobody came in. Not a solitary soul. I had the place to myself all the time. For, you remember, Bobbie went off to his dinner before you, and he didn’t come back until you returned.” “I didn’t wish to speak about it before Flora and her mother," said the manager in a low voice, “but, after you left this afternoon, 1 found that th“ hank had been robbed to-day of nearly a hundred pounds.” “Robbed? To-day?” cried Hany in consternation. “Surely there must be some mistake. Why, to-day lias been such a particularly quiet day for a Friday. There hasn't been half-a-dozen people inside the bank doors all day, and none of them people you could dream of suspecting. Besides, it would be a sheer impossibility for any one to get at any money unknown to you or me, and one or the other of us has always been behind the counter.” “Impossibility or not. the thing has happened. Do you think I'd have spoken unless I’d made absolutely sure that there was no mistake? that the money was gone without the faintest doubt?” asked Mr. Furnival a little impatiently. “Old Brown of Pokorua came in just before 1 went out to my dinner, you remember. and he paid into his account £117—£26 in small cheques and the rest in gold and notes. He had sold some heifers at the cattle sale over at Marston’s Flat yesterday, he told me. I duly counted and noted the money, and put it into one of the drawers before I went out—a parcel by itself. It was only after I had sent you oil’ to your ride with Flora that, happening to open the drawer, I found only the small cheques. The rest of the money had disappeared—every oiin of it. A glance at the books showed me that there was no way of avoiding the natural conclusion —the money has been stolen. Stolen during the time I was out at midday. For it was in the drawer when I left the bunk, and it was certainly not taken out of the drawer after I returned.” “But it most assuredly was not taken while you were away,” cried Harry decidedly. ‘T was behind the counter all the time, and, as I told you, not even so much as a cat came inside the bank.” Then, as he suddenly remembered his companion's remark of an hour ago about Jack Sloan, ho cried out horrified,

•‘Good heavens! Mr. F un ’- al. y .wy surely can’t suspect that I’ve had anyxmi'g to do with the disappearance of the money “No, Harry, no, my boy; I’d as soon think of suspecting myself!” cried tlia elder man warmly. And, indeed, that candid young face with the clear, steady eyes and strong mouth which confronted him in the moonlight would have quickly dispelled any suspicions he could have harboured of it’s owner’s guilt. “I’m afraid I made a rather long dinner hour of it,” he went on after a pause, following some chain of thought of his own. “But I was out of tobacco and I went down to Carroll’s to buy some, and fell in with that young fellow who’s living just now at ‘The Crown,’ Hudson Savernake, you know. He is an uncommonly pleasant chap, and we got talking, and I turned into the River Reserve to show him the view from the knoll there. And all that wasted a lot of time. I do wish I hadn’t been so long away from the bank.” His tone was deeply self-reproachful. “But it couldn’t signify anyhow,” said Harry Dunquerque. wondering. “As I told you. nobody came in when you were out.” “Yes, yes. But it has struck me as just possible.” went on Mr Furnival, hesitatingly, “that perhaps—it has been such warm, drowsy sort of weather, and the day has been so quiet—that, perhaps, you might have dozed a bit and somebody came in and stole the money while you were asleep.” Harry laughed out right. “Dozed! Not much! I was grafting as hard as I could in order to get away earlier in the afternoon, and I never was more wide awake in my life.” “Then,” said Mr Furnival, with a gesture of hopeless perplexity, “I’m at my wit’s end to conceive how the money has vanished. But vanished It certainly has. and it will be a stiff undertaking for me to make it good to the bank.” ‘•You won’t have too,” Harry assured him cheerily. “Depend upon it, we’ll find out what has become of that £9l and lay hands upon it before long. By Jove! doesn’t it seem odd that there should be two cases in Ashtonville in which a good round sum of money has unaccountably disappeared—Jack Sloan's and this? I wonder if there is any connection between them?” But he did not believe there was, for he was inwardly of the opinion that Mr Furnival must have unwittingly mislaid the sum which he declared stolen. But Harry was forced to give up this private opinion when he and the manager went thoroughly into the matter together at the bank, early next morning. For it was made clear to him that £9l of the sum paid in yesterday by Mr Brown, of Pokorua, was indubitably no longer in the bank. And, side by side with this fact was the apparent impossibility that it could have been removed from the bank by human agency. “It seems like Black Art,” said Harry with a rueful laugh, as he and Mr Furnival gazed at each other helpless and baffled. This sentiment was echoed in connection with his own loss by Mr Sloan, sen., when he himself arrived as soon as the bank opened, to fetch a fresh supply of money to pay his employees“If Jack is telling the truth —and that I can’t but believe—the money couldn’t have been stolen from him on the road yesterday any more than it could have leaked out of the bag and his pocket,” he asserted vigorously.

“That it fairly beats me to make out how all that solid coin was spirited away from the boy. Seems as if th» devil himself must have had a hand n it.” “It would just about clinch that opinion of his if he knew that tnere had been a similar kind of disappearance hard cash here,” remarked Harry to Mr Furnival as Mr Sloan went out. Half an hour later Mr Hawke,bury came in. He was Ashtonville’s principal grocer and draper combined. Just uow he wore a rather worried look. In x lowered voice he explained his enan I He wanted Mr. Furnival and Mr. Dunquerque to be on the look-out for certain marked pieces of gold and silver and certain one pound notes in ease of their raehing the bank. “For the last week my till ia beinu almost daily robbed," said Mr. Hawkey bury. “And I am nearly driven out of my wits, for I can’t imagine now it is done, let alone who is doing it. You know I have nobody serving in the shop except my own family, and, as there are five of us, including my girl, you may be sure that the till has been well watched ever since we discovered what was going on. But the watching lias been no good as far as discovering the thief, <>r preventing the thefts goes.” Mr. Furnival and Harry Dunquerque’s concerned interest was even deeper than their exclamation told. “Yes. though wo are all living with our eyes on that till, the robberies are still going on.” continued the worthy shopkeeper. “It’s just as if an invisibla hand was at work! And, because fliers was nobody else I could psosibly suspect, I—Heaven forgive me! —thought it might be my youngest boy’s doing, for no better reason than that the lad is fond of a good game of billiards, anil I thought that that might be made to spell worse things, though he is as sober and good a lad as could be. But when I taxed Jim with it—Oh. Lord! he made me downright ashamed of myself.” “I should think so!” put in Harry, indignantly. “Why, Jim is as straight a chap as I know!” “Well, I expect the mystery of the confounded business had gone some way to craze me,” said Jim’s father penitently. “But now that I’ve turned detective on my own account, and the un known thief has got a handful of my marked money, perhaps he’ll betray himself before long. And yet, I don't know. It’s the wierdest thing I’ve ever come across. For my common sense tells me that nobody could possibly put his hand till without some of us knowing it.” When the bank door swung to behind Mr. Hawkesbury, the manager and his clerl looked at each other in blank dismay. “What has come to Ashtonville?” groaned the elder man. “A thief gifted with invisibility, it would seem,” responded Harry, trying to speak lightly. “I’m persuaded now that the mysterious agency which is operating undetected on Hawkeabury’s till, is the same that took the mill wage money out of Jack Sloan’s pocket yesterday morning, and Mr. Brown’s gold and notes out of this drawer here—before our very eyes, it must have been though we never saw it. It smacks uncomfortably of the supernatural, does n’t it?” “Oh, there’s a natural solution of ths mystery to be found if we were only clever enough—that I don’t doubt,” re-

turned Mr. Furnival, impatiently. “Our two muddle-headed constables here woil't be any good; but, if Hawkes bury’s marked money doesn't trap the thief in a couple of days, we must send to Wellington for a first-class detec tire.”

The next day was Sunday, and, on Monday morning, Ashtonville was thrown into a state of excitement by the news that there had been a most mysterious robbery at “’The Crown Hotel.”

Mr. Furniva! and Harry Dunquerque had kept the knowledge of the bank robbery strictly to themselves. Messrs. Sloan and Hawkesbury had been discriminating in their choice of the ears to which they confided the tale of their losses. But poor Mrs. Pettifoy. the landlady of ‘’The Crown,” invoked the sympathy of all Ashtonville with a loud cry of indignant consternation. She had had seventy pounds in notes and loose cash locked up in her strong box at eleven o'clock on Saturday night; and when she opened it on Monday morning she found that fifty pounds had disappeared. The key of the strong box iiad never left her person in the interval; the lock, which was of a very unusual make, had clearly not been tampered with; and the strong box itself had been locked up in her own wardrobe.

Ashtonville pounced upon this fine mystery with avidity. It would furnish food for talk to the township for many days. The stream of custom that at once set in towards “The Crown” bar might be held to suggest a laudable attempt on the part of the townsfolk to make good to the landlady the loss she had just sustained.

Mr. Furniva! and Harry Dunquerque heard the details of “The Crown” robbery with a feeling almost like panic. “The invisible thief, again!” cried Harry. “Good gracious! if this sort of thing is going to go on, Ashtonville will be cleaned out of cash pretty soon. Shall wo ever find the solution of those mysterious robberies!"

The solution was nearer than he could have ims cd. Early in the afternoon, while “The Crown" robbery sensation was still smoking hot to the good folks of Ashtonville, they were treated to another—bigger this one, but with the sobering touch of tragedy in it. News came that there had been a terrible accident at Sloan's mill, and that the victim was Mr Hudson Savernake, the pleasant-spoken stranger, who had been staying for the last ten days at “The Crown” on a fishing holiday.

The particulars of the accident were somewhat meagre and confused, but it was understood that Mr Savernake had taken a ride out to the mill, and was being “shown round” by young Jaek Sloan when some careless gesture of his brought his clothing in contact with the teeth of the great circular saw then in motion. The next instant the saw was whirling him round with it. As swiftly as possible the poor torn and battered body had been released from its frightful position, but, even before the doctor galloped out from Ashtonville and gave his verdict it had been realised at the mill that Mr Savernake’s injuries must prove fatal.

Curiosity almost got the better of sympathy in Ashtonville when, early in the evening, a messenger rode in front Sloan’s Mill, in hot haste. And presently Mrs Pettifoy. of “The Crown,” in company with Mr Furnival. of the bank, and Mr Hawkesbury. and a valise, which wes said to belong to the dying man, were seen to drive away very rapidly in t i ■ direction of Sloan's Mill. The interested public of Ashtonville decided, on the spot, that Mrs Pettifoy. kindly’ old soul, who had been rather “mothering’ Mr Savernake during his stay at Hie Crown,” was now on her way to nurse him. Not being thoroughly conversant with the range of a bank manager s duties, they concluded, after a little hesitation, that Mr Furnival must have been summoned by the dying man on business. But, when it came to accounting for Mr Hawkesbury’s being sent for to the death-bed, Ashtonvillers declared themselves completely nonplussed. What could Mr Savernake want at that time with the flourishing tradesman with whom, as likely as not, he had never exchanged a single word! But Ashtonville could not be more puzzled in the case of Mr Hawkesbury than were all the trio, who occupied Mrs Pettifoy’a big dog-cart, in regard to the reason which had made Mr Savernake

summon them, each and all, with such surprising urgency to his death-bed. But they lost sight of their bewilderment in a great access of sympathy and awe when they entered the room in which the frightfully injured man had been placed to die. Swathed in ghastly suggestive bandages, he lay flat on his baek in the bed. and as the door opened to admit the three for whom he had sent he turned his eyes towards it. ‘‘Furnival, Hawkesbury, Mrs Pettifoy and Sloan—yes. that’s ail of them.” he murmured as if speaking to himself. Except that the peculiarly piercing quality of the gaze of his black eyes remained unaltered, he was no longer recognisable as the fine, handsome young fellow of whom Ashtonville had had approving knowledge for the last ten days. The circular saw had. indeed, been very cruel to him. Mr Fundsal. who had found Mr Hudson Savernake. on more than one occasion. a very pleasant and interesting companion, approached the bedside, and tried to find words to express his painful feelings of sympathy. The piercing eyes fixed themselves on the bank manager’s face. “Don't waste your sympathy on me," said the faint voice. "1 am a scoundrel.” Before those in the room could quite realise that the words were not the outcome of delirium, he went on, speaking slowly and with painful stoppages. “Perhaps it was the Power Who sees that scoundrels get their deserts that sent me oil’ here to-day on an i le hi n —to this end! .. . Anyhow, 1 have been given time to repent. . . . and to undo the petty villainies which I have practised in Ashtonville—never elsewhere before in my life, believe me. .. . 1 haven’t always been a scoundrel.” He broke off to take a stimulant from the doctor, and then proceeded with his confession to the group of utterly amazed people around the bed. "In yonder valise, which I asked Mrs Pettifoy to bring, here with her to-night——-She will find the fifty pounds she missed from her strong-box this morning. The money that disappeared from the bank is there too, Mr Furnival, .. . and the money Jack Sloan couldn’t think how he lost on his way home on Friday morning. The greatest part of the cash I’ve been supplied with from your till is there also, Mr Hawkesbury But I’m afraid I’ve spent some of it. ... I was frightfully hard up. I came to Ashtonville clutching aimlessly at the skirts of chance, .... hoping that something good might turn up for me somehow. But nothing did. And to keep my head above water .... the thought came to me to turn to account the power that I’ve .... always known I’ve had. My villainy was the meanest of its kind . . . utterly despicable. . . . But it answered well, and when I found I could get money ... so easily and safely out of Hawkesbury’s till. I . . . tried for bigger sums. And yesterday I took fifty pounds from you, Mrs Pettifoy, . . . and vou have been very kind to me.” Mrs Pettifoy’s over-strained feelings had found vent in subdued sobs, that were oddly punctuating the dying man's utterances. “But I seemed to have lost my conscience. I only thought of scooping as much as I could out of Ashtonville, and then going . . . elsewhere to try the game afresh. I thought ” “But what was the game? However did you manage to get money out of my till with all of us watching so close?” burst out Mr Hawkesbury, so curious to learn this secret as to be oblivious of everything else for the moment. “I made your son, J»i, give it me,” replied Savernake. “No, don’t swear! the lad is all right ... a good lad. He . . . doesn’t know. ... I hypnotised him.”

Then, in accents growing ever feebler, he went on to speak of the remarkable mesmeric powers which he had known to be his ever since he was a boy—• power so great that in the course of an ordinary interview he was able to send his subjects into a hypnotic trance, even without their knowledge or volition; and, while in this trance, to lay upon them his commands to do a given thing at a given time, and to forget all about it after it was done, and even up to the moment of doing it. It was a terrible power for a man to possess,

but the dying Savernake swore to his listeners that he had never used it tn any bad purpose except in the eases they knew of. He was not able to exercise this power over everybody, or to its complete extent over a great many. But still the number was not few of those whom he could make absolute and unconscious slaves of his will. And he had found some of that number in Ashtonville. He had easily established, unknown to the lads themselves, a complete ascendancy over young Jim Hawkesbury and Jack Sloan, the one of whom he had come to know at the billiard table in the “Crown,” and the other when fishing in the river near Sloan’s mill. And when tempted by the devil and his own necessities he compelled Jim, by hypnotic suggestion, to keep him freely supplied with the cash of Hawkesbury pere. while the poor lad retained no knowledge of his nefarious actions beyond the moment of their performance. Then, emboldened by his easy success with Jim, Savernake brought oft his bigger coups. A casual remark, dropped by J ick Sloan, indicating that that week he would have to ride in to Ashtonville early on Friday forenoon to fetch the mill employees wage-money from the bank, sent Savernake, on the morning in question, to a lonely spot on the road beyond Bassett's Farm, to intercept the youth on his way home. Jim, reining up his horse in answer to the scoundrel's friendly greeting, was. in a few instants, completely brought under the spell of the other’s extraordinary mesmeric powers. When requested to do so. he cheerfully emptied the contents of his cash bag into Savernake’s pockets. The latter then sent the lad on his way again with the whole episode of their meeting completely wiped out of his mind. The scoundrel made an unobtrusive return to Ashtonville th rough the scrub along the river bank in good time to keep an appointment which he had made with Mr Furnival on the previous night, when he and that gentleman had been quietly smoking their pipes alone together in the vicarage garden. Trying his marvellous powers on the mild, unassertive bank manager, he found him a 'Lie subject, and. without scruple, he at once proceeded to turn the fact to his own criminal advantage. He told Mr Furnival to bring him tomorrow, in the dinner hour, whatever gold and notes he could conveniently lay his hands on in the bank. The order was certainly not registered in Mr Furnival’s normal consciousness; but, nevertheless. at the appointed time the poor man met his villainous hypnotise, ami, in the privacy of the River Reserve, put into his hands the identical notes and gold, for the disappearance of which he was afterwards so utterly unable to account. The task of getting money out of simple Mrs Pettifoy had perhaps been the easiest of all to Savernake. Living

in the same house with her, he could hypnotise her a dozen times a day if he wished. A whi.-pered suggestion, ou the Sunday afternoon, had sent the mesmerised woman at once to her strong box. and fifty pounds passed from that into bis well-locked valise. It was with the greatest difficulty that Hudson Savernake delivered himself of his shameful confession, and he lay almost as one dead when he had struggled through to the end. Five persons, including the doctor, had listened to his faltering utterances in astounded silence. Four of these five had been fill ed. in addition, with burning wrath and indignation to learn with what humiliating ease they themselves, or their sons, had been made to serve as the unconscious tools of a villain in his acts of audacious dishonesty. But an awful Nemesis had overtaken the villain, and the span of life now remaining to him was too short to be measured by hours. This knowledge kept words of auger or reproach from the lips of those he had wronged so shamelessly. The dying man opened his eyes after a pause and looked feebly from one to the other. “I had to speak the truth before I died." he muttered, faintly. “I don’t ask you to forgive me. . . But I’ve given you your money back again, and . . . Nobody need know the part I’ve made you play. The doctor here knows this deathbed confession isn't for the public ear . . . Furnival and Mrs Pettifoy won’t give themselves away by speaking out. And Sloan and Hawkesbury will hold their tongues, not to make laughingstocks of their boys.” He seemed to be speaking rather to himself than to those about him, and his voice now trailed off almost into inaudibility. "I'm glad all the world won’t know what a scoundrel I’ve been . . . for I haven’t always been a scoundrel. . . . Anri there’s mother and the girls in the Old Country, and . . . and . . .” The voice passed into a silence that it never broke again, and two hours later Hudson Savernake was dead. The strange story of his villainy was buried in the grave with him. The few ■to whom it was known kept the secret—for obvious reasons, since they were - mainly those, whom he had made’ his victims and innocent accomplices by virtue of his abnormal mesmeric powers. So it conies about that the robberies at Ashtonville last summer are still generally regarded as insoluble mysteries in that rising New Zealand township. (The End.)