Complete Story. The Testimony of the Corpse.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXIII, Issue VI, 6 August 1904, Page 54

Complete Story. The Testimony of the Corpse.

fThe writer can vouch for the facts rd the following story being substantially what t.hev are Stated to be here. The lad y, whom they chiefly eoncerneed, had io give him her fullest confidence when later on she sought his advice as to flow she could best make restitution for a fraud while avoiding a publicity ,which could harm none save the innocentj It happened not so long ago, and the place of its happening was in this colony somewhere between the North (Jape and the Bluff—l have my reasons for not being more precise than that as to locality- She was a delightfully simple, frank and friendly young creature. Everybody who knew her said that. Everybody also said that life should have -something good in store for her to counterbalance what she had already been through. And everybody who knew anything about the matter »vas inclined to think that Vincent tamers was going to be that ‘•something good.” She was only 22, and she had been a widow for a year and a-half. and her S wo painful years of married life had been brought io a close in a particularly ehocking fashion. Her husband, who Wid not often return sober from his .Visits to the near township, one night did not‘return at all. And next morning he was brought home to her a corpse, mutilated almost past recognition. Having lamed his riding horse badly, ■he had walked, when going to the township late on the previous afternoon, (taking the short ent along the railway line. And those with whom he had been drinking testified that he had left the hotel al ten o’clock to return by iihe way he had come- They- also test! lied that he had been partly intoxicated when he set out. It was conjectured that, overcome by a drunken sleep in the tunnel he had. unknowingly, lain down on the rails, to be crushed almost out of the semblance of a man by the early express. - Ilia death was a great shock to his wife, though less in itself than by the manner of it. For the love which Bernard liuclstock’s passionate wooing had persuaded the girl of IS to feel for him. •had been killed by the ill-treatment iwhieh he had begun to lavish on her soon after their marriage, when his previous ‘‘slight unsteadiness” rapidlydeveloped into shameful drinking habits. Htill, she had been a good wife to him. and had striven with all her might to keep him from what was working his ruin in soul, body and purse. Her conscience could reproach her with no failure in her duty to him in those searching moments when she sat alone,-regarding through her tears the familiar watch and chain and the pathetically prosaic little heap of various odds and ends taken out of the dead man’s pockets. (She had not ben left so badly off as might have been expected. For, though I he sale of the farm and stock only managed to clear the heavy mortgages on them, young Kuelstoek hftd. in the days of his passionate wooing, insured his life for a comparatively large amount which provided his pretty little widow with a modest but sufficient income. She was an orphan with no near relatives, so she went with her sufficient little income and took up her Hbode with some friends of her unmarried days in another part of the colony. It was here that she met the cousin of her friends', Vincent Camers, who fell in love with her with admirable promptitude. He was an honest, attractive young fellow, thoroughly nice* in every way; and. as he was also in a fiosition to maintain a wife handsomely, ■Mrs liuclstock’s friends, who wished her the best of destinies, thought they could wish her nothing better than to lie that wife. Mr Camera’ own wish in that respect was exceeding strong, and Mary Kuehtock's innocent frank pleasure in Ibis society led him to hope that bis wish would not go unfulfilled. 1 He had no reason to hope otherwise one bright spring afternoon when he was taking her a lang drive out of town. Waver before had they seemed tq come

so near tn each other in thought and feeling. There had been one or two dangerously sentimental passages between them, and Mr Camers thought it highly probable that his momentous question would be asked and answered before the drive came to an end. They had gone a considerable distance into the country before they thought of returning. As it was then getting rather late in the afternoon Vincent went to a solitary farm-housin and ah sinsceben solitary farm-house, in a lonely side road, to inquire about a short cut back to the main road. He left Mrs. Ruelstock holding the reius in the dog cart, a picture of radiant health and happiness 110 was not two minutes away, but when he got back to the buggy he found the girl in it, a trembling, white-lipped creature, with wide blue eyes that stared at him in a sort of piteous affright. The long empty road showed nothing to account for her state, and, in reply to his eager, anxious questions, she said nothing had frightened her—nothing at all. Only she thought that she must be a little, ill, she felt so very cold. He heaped wraps upon her, and drove back to town as fast as he could. On the way, he overwhelmed her with tender little attentions, but these seemed only to add to her fright strangely enough. He was perplexed and hurt. But she looked such a helpless, suffering child- as she sat trembling beside him, that his wish to have the right to take care of her grew too strong to remain unspoken, and, there and then, his momentous question was put. She answered it with a violent burst of tears. Oh no! not that!” she cried. ‘■You can be my friend, my dear, dear friend, but nothing more, nothing more!” He pleaded, as a man pleads for what he cannot do without, but to no avail. Yet, he was glad to remember afterwards that she had not said she did not love him; and he felt oddly convinced that, had he made his declaration before her mysterious sudden illness fell, upon her, she would have promised to be his wife. / She went to her room as soon as he brought her home. She did not want a doctor, she protested to her anxious friends. She -would be better in the morning. Nothing .really was the matter with her, and all she wanted was a good night’s rest, and to be left quite to herself. She spoke hurriedly and sharply, and kept her eyes downcast. This was all so unlike her sweet, frank-eyed self that her lover and friends fell very uneasy about her. But they respected her wishes, and she escaper to her bed-room, after forcing herself to drink a cup to tea. Two hours later, Ethel Dawson, the daughter of the house, was-passing the door of . Mrs. Ruelstock's r oom, when she heard the sound of stilled weeping within. This was more than Ethel could stand, for she had been Mary Ruelstock’s dearest friend ever since t heir earliest schooldays. She opened the door and went in. Mary was lying, face downwards, on the bed, crying bitterly, and clutching the pilows as if in great anguish of mind. She had not taken off the things she had worn on her afternoon drive. “’Mary, darling, what is the matter?” cried Ethel, hurrying to the bedside. Mary, clinging to Ethel instead of the pillows, broke into unrestrained weeping. but she still persisted in declaring that nothing was the matter. , ‘.‘That is nonsense,” said her friend decisively. “Mary, is it about Vinecut? He said something that told us what happened when you were driving home. Oh, Mary, how could you be so unkind io Vincent? You know he loves you with all his heart. And wc nil thought you cared for him.” ‘‘You musii’t blame me, .Ethel —you don’t know!” cried Mary wildly. “I’m not a bad, heartless girl—not that. Only the most miserable creature on God’s earth this night.” - ' • "But. if you do care for Vincent, why don't you make him and yourself happy, by saying so and promising to marry him?” askfcd perplexed Ethel, j

“I can’t —oh, I can’t,” sobbed poor Mary. “It passes my understanding,” sighed her friend. “When you went away with Vineent, after lunch, one had only to look at your two faces to feel sure that you would be coming back promised man and wife.” “When we went away to-day! That was years ago!” and Mary’s tears burst out afresh. "Ethel ask me no questions if you love me. But pity me, oh, pity me!” And Ethel asked no questions, but caressed and made much of this new Mary Ruelstoek, incomprehensible though she was. She helped her to undress and get into bed, and bathed her face with eau-de-Cologne, and coaxed her to eat something and drink a cup of tea. Then she left her to the night’s rest which Mary had declared was to make her herself again. But, when her senses had made her aware of the complete retirement of the early-retiring household, Mary Ruelstock rose softly and dressed herself again. Putting a shawl over her head, she noiselessly opened her window, which was only three feet from the ground, and got out of it, and stole down through the darkness of the night to the arbour at the bottom of the garden. Something moved within the arbour as she reached it. “Is that you?” came in a cautious whisper. > "Yes,” said Mary Ruelstoek, and she went inside the arbour. The Dawson family decided by their kindly critical examination of Mrs Ruelstoek, as she sat at breakfast with them next morning, that her night’s rest had certainly not made her herself again. She looked wretchedly ill, and she could not eat. Motherly Mrs Dawson suggested that she must have caught a chill internally when out driving yesterday, and Mary eagerly seized upon the suggestion and offered it again herself as a satisfactory explanation of her manifestly unsatisfactory state of body and mind. But several days passed by, and she showed no signs of getting better. Indeed, she seemed to be losing flesh rapidly, and her appearance, was pale

and drooping. She had also acquired a nervous, apprehensive way of glancing about her and of starting at every unusual sound, which greatly puzzled her friends the Dawsons. The doctor, whom they had insisted on calling in, prescribed rest and a tonic for young Mrs Ruelstock. Mrs Kuelstoek would not take rest, but she took her dose of the tonic whenever Mrs Dawson or Ethel reminded her of it. She refused to see Vincent Camers when he came to the house. “What good would it do?” she asked Ethel, sadly. “I cannot marry him. It would not be right, and—oh, Ethel, don’t ask me questions!” she broke off imploringly. • Ethel loyally continued to ask no questions, but her love for her friend made her eyes keenly observant. It. was not long before she was convinced that Mary Kuelstoek had some heavy burden on her mind, and that the secret cause of her wretchedness, though it had clearly altered her attitude towards Mr Camers, was not otherwise' connected with that young man. As the weeks went on, Ethel noticed, that her friend’s nice little stoek of jewellery was disappearing piece by piece, and she vaguely associated its disappearance with certain visits Mary paid from time to time to the busiest part of the town—visits which were rendered mysterious by the poor little woman’s embarrassment when any reference was made to them. Miss Dawson’s suspicion that her friend had some secret need of ready money which was leading her to sell the pretty trinkets she prized so much received apparent confirmation from an unexpected source. She had occasion one day to see the family solicitor, who was also Mrs Ruelstock’s man of business. He was an old friend, and, in the course of his conversation, he asked, with a chuckle, when he was to be permitted to offer his congratulations to Mrs Ruelstoek. Ethel Dawson’s look of surprise made him explain. He had fancied Mrs Ruelstock was engaged to Mr Camers. “I expect I am a rather indiscreet old. person,” lie apologised-, “but I had heard the engagement spoken of as a foregone conclusion, and when Mrs Ruelstoek

directed >ne a few days ago to sell out the greater part of her uncle’s little legacy, invested in the City and Suburban Building Society, not for purposes of re-investment, 1 made sure that the money was to be transmuted into the trousseau finery you ladies all adore.” "But there is no engagement,” said Miss Dawson, “and I am surprised to hear t hat Mary has been selling out her Building Society shares.” "What! you did not know? Then I’ve been indiscreet again, mentioning the matter to you,” said the old lawyer with a rueful grimace. “But 1 have always ■thought of you and Mrs Ruelstoek as twin souls with the most intimate knowledge of each other’s concerns.” Ethel Dawson returned home greatly troubled in mind about her friend. It was so unlike Mary to go and sell out shares without talking the matter over beforehand with the family, whose advice she always sought in matters of any importance. Then again the legacy, which Mrs Ruelstoek had inherited from an uncle in England since her husband's death, was not a very large one, but “the greater part of it” must mean at least three hundred pounds. What could Mary be wanting secretly with such a big sum? She did not like to broach the subject to Mrs Ruelstoek, who seemed to shrink ■with fear from any approach to the old, unreserved confidence between them. But Mary herself unintentionally made the way easy for her to speak. “Ethel,” she said nervously that same afternoon, “I have not been myself of late, as of course you all know well, and I believe if I got some constant ■work to occupy me 1 should be a great deal better. So I am thinking,” she went on hurriedly, “of going back to teaching again.” She had been governess to the children of a neighbouring well-to-do farmer when young Ruelstoek had met and married her. “Going back to teaching!” cried Ethel amazed. “Mary, why you hated teaching even the little time you had of it. And there is no need you should do it now with your income.” “Oh, I don’t know,” said Mrs Ruelstock, keeping her glanee down and fid-

getting with the ends of h’er lace scarf, "bomething might happen some time to the income. Money has a way, you know, of taking wings to itself and disappearing.” “Well I think yours at any rate is likely to disappear fast enough if you often draw lump sums of three hundred pounds out of your capital,” said Ethel bluntly. Mary’s blue eyes flew up to her friend’s face in affright. “You have heard? Oh, why did I not tell Mr Ancell not to mention it.” “But why should you wish me not to know?” asked Ethel directly. “What do you want such a big sum of money for?” Then she changed her tone and pleaded. “Mary, my own, dear Mary, won’t you tell me what it is that is troubling your mind and making you ill? Who is it that dares to pretend they have got a hold over you, and drive you to sell your shares and your rings and bracelets to keep them supplied with money? Oh, I have guessed more than you have supposed.” “Ethel!” And Mary sank half-faint-ing on to a chSir, staring at Miss Dawson with eyes of miserable fear. “Oh, don’t look at me like that, dear,” the other cried; “I don't really know anything. Besides, I’m your friend and wouldn’t hurt you for all the world. But two heads are better than one, and between us two no one else knowing a thing I believe we can outwi| your enemies. Only tell me, darling, all your trouble” “I can’t! I can't!” sobbed Mary. “I wish I could. Oh, Ethel, how I wish I could! ” As she lifted her streaming eyes, a picture of woe, she looked, despite her years of marriage and widowhood, ns young and innocent and helpless as the little governess in her teens whom Bernard Ruelstoek had persuaded tn marry him. Ethel’s heart was strongly moved and she determined that she would try to learn Mary’s secret and help her, in spite of herself. That night, as" Miss Dawson lay awake in bed pondering how she might best disever the cause of her friend’s troubles, she heard the sound of a window being

softly drawn up. It sounded as If it were Mrs Kuelstock’s window, which was on the same side of the house as her own. She quickly got up and pulling aside her blind looked out. There was a sufficiency of starlight to show a darkcloaked figure moving down the garden path to the arbour, and its height and build declared Mrs Ruelstoek. Ethel Dawson put on some clothes and noiselessly made her way to Mrs Kuelstock’s bedroom. It was empty and the window stood open. Miss Dawson got out at it and went straight to the a rbour. The sound of her footsteps brought. Mrs Ruelstoek to the doorway of the arbour. It was possible, in the dim light, to mistake Miss Dawson's tall, cloaked figure for a man's, and Mary Ruelstoek addressed her by a man's name. “I was afraid something had happened when you did not come for the money last night,” she said. Then as she saw it was not her expected visitor, she started back with a piteous cry of alarm. “Don’t be frightened, Mary, it is only T,” said Miss Dawson gently. She drew her trembling friend into her 'arms. “Mary’, dear, you and I arc in this business together now. You must tell >n? all about it.” “Oh. no, Ethel, no. no!” cried Mary shuddering. It is not my secret only’ 1 must not tell.” “Blit you must, for T am going to stay here with yon until the person you are expecting arrives.” “Then he will kill me,” mo.wed Mary, “lie will think that I have told.” "I believe I have already guessed the worst that you have to till,” said Ethel quietly. “My dear, you called me by his name just now. 1 know for whom you are waiting. “Then you know that my husband, Bernard Ruelstoek, lives, a contemptible swindler who dares not show himself in the light of day where he might be recognised” Mary spoke with intense bitternessThen she began to cry softly. "Oh, what I have endured since the day of

that drive which began In swh happiluss and ended in siuh misery.” Ethel encouraged her to go oil with a k iss. “Poor Vincent! had lie asked me l<l be his wife on our way g ing I should h'.ve Sl id ’Yes’ gladly, lint, oh, I was thankful afterwards t'.iat he had not. Fcr, Ethel, while he was inquiring about ti e way’ at the farm 1 saw my husband.” ( i "Poor Mary!” and Ethel gave her an-* other kiss. , > “He had been asleep in the ditch wider the hedge. I hear I something move a-.’ turned round to -co him sitting up am! blinking at the dog-?art. Our eyes net. Ethel, I knew him at once. I did not take him for a ghost. I knew, it was Bernard Ruelstoek in the flesh, tl.i ugh I had seen his dea l body, as I believed, put into its eoTm eighteen months ago. Yet, he is changed to the mere wreck of a man. And lie looked like a tramp. Indeed, lie was a tramp, he had no money and was tramping his way to this town where he had heard 1 was living wnh you people. He knew me at once, of course, ind he spoke. Oh, Ethel, I Iqnt I.now what he said. It was all a hid sons nightmare. And it passed so quickly, for he heard Mr Camers coming back and hid again miller the hedge- But T had given him my purse and promised to meet him in your arbour after you had all gone to bed that night—he knew the place, of course- through our being here with you those three days on our wedding trip. We met here that night. He had a great deal to say. He told inc how ho had worked his abominable fraud. Ife was not ashamed. He was rather proud because he had been clever enough to swindle the insurance company. He told me that I must give him money to take him to America, and that I must at once realise all my investments of the insurance money and follow him with it by the next boat. He swore he would make a fortune, out of that, money in America, and that we should live there in luxury and safety, under a changed name.” “And you said?” asked Ethel breathlessly.

• “What could I say but one thing. That since tic was still alive the money did not belong to me but to the insurance company, and that I should find a way of secretly returning it to tiio company without touching another penny of it ” “You are a brave little thing, Mary, to have spoken out so plainly to him,” said Ethel warmly, pressing her friend’s hand. “I can imagine that he was furiously angry.” “He was, said Mary, simply. “You see he was in desperate straits, and he had been so certain of getting hold of the insurance money when onee he got into communication with me. It had never struck him as possible that I should object to lei his disgraceful fmud go on. And yet I had been his wife for two years!” she added, bitterly. He raved and stormed at me. He even threatened to kill me,” she continued. “Then he tried entreaties, and cried like a child. But, of course, there eould be no giving in for me in such a matter. I told him 1 would share with him every shilling that was honestly mine, and beyond that he got no other promise out of me, save that 1 would never breathe to a soul that lie was alive and would not attempt to refund the insurance money to the company until he was out of the colony. But he has not seemed in a hurry to leave the colony, and he has been in the habit of coming here at, night, once or twice a week, to try and talk me over to his swindling views about the insurance, and to get money for his daily needs. I gave him all the ready money I could gather together, and afterwards I sold my useless bits of brooches to keep up the supply. The last time he was here he seemed to have given up all hopes about the insurance money, and I wift. able at last to make an agreement with him. I am to give him the bigger half of uncle’s legacy, and he is going to America, never to come back again.” “Are you sure he won’t ? ’.’ asked Miss Dawson, doubtfully.

“Yes, for he knows the insurance money will be refunded, and that I will .be earning my living again as a governess,” said her friend simply. “I expected him to come for the legacy money last night, but he did not. He will surely come to-night.” “We can wait. And, Mary, it will be my duty io make Bernard Ruelstock understand that this is to be your last interview with him,” said Miss Dawson Very firmly.

As they waited together in the dark-»l-ss she heard the particulars of the fraud which Bernard Ruelstock had practised so successfully on one of the ®est managed insurances in the colony.

On that afternoon when Bernard lluelSfock last left his home to seek the solace of whisky in the neighbouring town, he knew himself to be a ruined man. The immediate foreclosure of the mortgages on his over-mortgaged stock and farm was inevitable. And the two five pound notes in his pocket, which the sale of 1 wo young steers had brought him that day, he knew to be the. only money he was eVer likely to handle again unless he earned it by the sweat of his own brow —a proceeding to which he. had grown much averse. He was brooding bitterly on his position us he walked along the railway line in the glow of sunset. He laughed a grim laugh as lie contrasted his impecuniosity with the value of his life to a Certain insurance company. He wished he now had the two premiums that he had already paid for the policy, which, of course, he would have to let lapse in the near future. “And if 1 were to die Within the next few months, Mary, that pale-faced fool, would have all those solid thousands to her name,” he mutitered savagely. “Oh. if there were only some way that I could get at that money myself and be alive!” ft would have remained nothing but a futile wish, except for a strange chance. A* lie entered the tunnel, a tew minutes later, his foot struck Against something. He dragged it back into the light. It was the body of a man with Ids face and head terribly crushed —crushed beyond possible recognition. From his clothes Bernard Rui'lBtock concluded that he must be the tramp whom he hud seen sleeping by the roadside near Ids farm that morning. Ruelstock was momentarily impressed b, the shocking sight. “It might have hi *en me stumbling home through the tunnel from the hotel,” he thought with a shudder. And he noticed that the dead sign’s hair was exactly the colour of liis own, and that he was of a similar build and size. Then, ns he stood starlbs at the corpse, it suddenly leapt

into Ms mind how he might coinpass the fulfilment of his wish of the moment before. He took his resolve and made his plans with instant rapidity. Carefully dragging the body back into the darkness of the tunnel, he placed it where no chnnee foot was likely to stumble over it, and then he went on his way to the township hotel. The danger of the game he was going to play, and largeness of the stakes he played for, brought out his cunning and his powers of self-control to their fullest extent. He did not drink much that night, hut he pretended he did, while he liberally “treated” others; and he simulated a state of semi-intoxication so well that, when he left for home, the landlord suggested to him the risk of going through the tunnel. Before he left the precincts of the hotel he had managed to stealthily possess himself of a lantern from the stables. This lie lighted when he had got well into the tunnel; and, by its light, he went through the gruesome business of exchanging every stitch of his clothing for the soiled anil ragged garments on the dead body that awaited him there. Then he dressed the ghastly object in his own clothes, and placed it carefully across the line again, to be further mutilated by passing trains. The ill-dressed man, who, all the night, steadily continued on foot to increase the distance between himself and the district, in which Bernard Ruelstock was well known, had nothing of Bernard Ruelstock’s on his person, excepting two five pound notes. These enabled him to take train to a distant town on the coast, and to live there in a remarkably unobtrusive fashion, while he grew a beard and waited until his wife should be in full possession of the fruits of his fraud,, arid he could secretly claim his own from her. But, while he waited, a new bar-room acquaintance, a young man, endowed with more money than morals, took him a fancy to him, and gave him a trip to Sydney, and treated him there to a good deal of riotous living. Then the rich young man took a fancy to somebody else, and the riotous living came to an end with Bernard Ruelstock, and a very serious illness took its place. Three months later, he came out of the hospital a feeble, bro-ken-down man, friendless and penniless. He thought of his wife across the Taiman Sea, living in the ease and comfort secured to her by his clever scheming, while he, profiting nothing by it, starved in Sydney. He was filled with impotent wrath against the injustice of fate. He dared not try to communicate with his wife by writing, for he did not know where she was now living', and he feared lest his letter might get into the wrong hands and betray him. So he. endured months of hardship and suffering, and, in the end, only managed to reach New Zealand as a stowaway. His inquiries had to be made so cautiously, for fear of betraying his identity, that it was some time before he was able to discover her whereabouts in New Zealand.

And still more time had to elapse before •he was able, in his destitute and ailing state, to cover the distance between them. Then, when, at the long last, he felt himself just on the point of grasping the money for which he had so astutely schemed, the money that was to make up to him for all the miseries he had endured, he found himself baulked! Completely baulked by the idiotic scruples of a little woman for whom he had always believed his will must be law. “The way of transgressors undoubtedly is hard,” was Ethel Dawsons comment on the story told by her friend. “Oh. yes,” assented Mary sadly,* ’‘and lie looks such a miserable, broken-down wretch. You would pity him if you saw him.”

“Well, it seems evident, at any rate, that I am not to have a chance of seeing him to-night—so I think we had better get back to our beds,” said Miss Dawson drily. “After all, Mary, the scoundrel can’t be said to have met with

liis deserts, since he is to be allowed to go off scot free to America with three hundred pounds in his pocket.” “His strange that he has never come, for the money,” said Mary, as they walked up the path to the house. “Can it be that he is too ill to come?”

’That question was answered by a certain letter, which the post brought next morning to Mrs. Ruelstock. It was written from a mean lodginghouse in the poorest .part of the town, and was signed “George Stevens.” It contained only a few shakily written lines.

“J shall be dead when you get this.

‘lf you don’t believe it, come and see for •yourself. So there will be no call for you to give up that money now. It’s a comfort to know, even though I haven’t benefitted a stiver myself, that roy clever little trick isn’t to serve no purpose after all.” Mary and Ethel went at once to the grimy lodgings. “It was newmoniar-—acute newmoniar the doctor said it was.” the landlady told them as they stood by the bedside, on which lay the worn body of Bernard Ruelstock, his face as peaceful in death as if it had belonged to a good man in life. “It took him suddint-like, and he was only ill three days. Yesterday, when he knew he couldn’t live through the night, he wrote a letter, and sent niy boy Dicky out to post it. He told me,” continued the woman with a greedy glance at the visitors, “as he’d wrote to a lady in this town who’d be sure to pay for the funeral and all the extra expense I’d been put to, for that he had been her husband's best friend.” There eould be no doubt this time that Bernard Ruelstock was Really dead, and, when “George Stevens” was laid in his unmarked grave, Miss Dawson felt that her friend’s troubles belonged wholly to the past, Mary Ruelstock recovered her health and spirits so quickly that good Mrs. Dawson never ceased to talk of the marvellous effect of the doctor’s tonic. For no one ever knew the secret of Mary’s mysterious illness except Ethel

Dawson and one other. That other wars Vincent Gamers, and he learned it from Mary’s own lips on the happy day when she confessed that she returned his love, and promised to be his wife. But, loug before Hutt day, the secretary of a well-known insurance company had been the recipient of a not Very considerable amount of conscience money. This, though he never knew it, represented the exact sum of which the company had been defrauded by the fact that Bernard RuelstoCks’ death dill not take place until more than a year after the policy on his life had been paid. (The End.)