Complete Story. The Spanish Doubloon.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXIII, Issue XVIII, 29 October 1904, Page 56

Complete Story. The Spanish Doubloon.

THE STORY OF A MISSING WILL.

By

NORA C. FRANKLIN,

Neidenhain says that “even when all memory of what hus passed during the hypnotic sleep is absent on awaking, it may be aroused by giving the subject a clue. ... This clue may consist of a single word.”

The old Gaspar Bank was a low stone structure, with its face to the street and its back to the river. From the rear window you could look across the stream and almost touch with a long fishing line the flat roof of the banker's residence on the other side; but to reach it by land you had to follow AlamedaStreet to Velita, and down this to a footbridge which spanned the river and brought into direct communication the two main streets of the city. Just above this bridge the river doubles on itself and forms a great open lasso, in the loop of which was situated the Gaspar homestead. A broad stone coping, topped by an iron railing, extended along the front of the premises, and a high wall, wide enough for two to walk abreast, ran the whole length of the river front. The broad cemented walk leading up to the door was set on both sides with rare shrubs and flowers. Michael Gaspar loved plants as some women love children—with an intensity that has in it the pain and rapture of passion. The house itself was built flat on the ground, of stone, two stories high, the entrance hall and rear hall retaining, in the midst of modern furnishings, their original pavements of stone. The rear hall, which ran across the width of the house, was divided into three compartments by movable Venetian screens. The central division was used as a sittingroom. In the one to the left two stairways led up on either side of a partition to a small landing, from which only one continued on to the upper floor. To the right of the sitting-room was the servants’ dining-room, and opening out of it innumerable closets and a short staircase, which ended in the old-fashion-ed kitchen, a half story above to the rear. A flight of steps in the kitchen led to the second floor of the main building. into the same narrow entry which received the front stairs.

Tn the extreme left of the partially elevated rear .addition was a small room lighted from above and fitted up as an oratory. Two entrances led into it. one from the landing where the double staircase met. the other from a closet under the kitchen stairway. The swing door leading into this latter recess was concealed by heavy gjirtains. A small door opened from the closet into the kitchen, but it was nailed up and never used.

The space under the stairs was dimly lighted by a narrow section of stationary blind, set high in the partilion wall. One of the square blocks of the naved floor was loose, and embedded in it was an iron ring. This block was said to cover the entrance to a secret passage leading to the priest’s house adjoining the chureh opposite.

Under the altar in the oratory was a similar slab with an iron ring in it, whieh gave access to the tomb of Father Andros, the head of an early order of Jesuits, who had spent many hours of prayer and penitence nt the foot of this altar, with the naked floor for his only prie-dieu. Both the Gaspar Bant: and homestead had at one time belonged Io the Catholic Church. The land had been originally n grant to the ancestors of Manuel Torres, but the title was lost, mid the property, in some way, passed into the hands of the Jesuits. Who'., Torres learned of his family’s claims he instituted suit ami recovered almost the entire inheritance. The Church never forgave the courts fje decision, and vl<ited her displeasure upon Manuel. Tie was a rambling, restless sort of fellow. and sold out to Michael Gasnar. as much to get away from the silent reproach of the Holy Church as anything

From " Short Stories,"

But who can evade the “Company of Jesus . . . . a naked sword whose hilt is at Home, and whose point is everywhere?” Manuel Torres died in an insane asylum.

On the afternoon of the 29th of April, 1880, Michael Gaspar sent for his lawyer, Martin Carruth, and had him draw up a new will, reversing entirely the old one, and leaving the bulk of his property to his ward,. Valerie Nourse. The homestead ami annuity were still to go to his sister Frances, but the clause, that “after her death the property income of Frances Gaspar should revert to the Catholic Church,” was to be eliminated. A piece of land and a sum of money for a hoys’ school were the sole bequests to the Church.

Mr. Carruth knew his client as a very eccentric old gentleman. He had known him for 40 years, but he had no mental data upon whieh to draw for an explanation of this latest change of mind. However, as the orphan girl was Hie affianced wife of his son Adrian, and the wedding arranged for the next day, the lawyer asked no questions, but proceeded to draw up the document in due form and affix his name as witness beneath the cramped characters of the banker’s signature. When the latter put down his pen, he stepped across the room and paused in front of a copy of the Sistine Madonna which hung on the north wall.

“Come over here, Carruth. I want to introduce you to a bit of the Arabian Nights. See this panel here behind the picture?” lie drew the frame to one side and indicated a certain portion of the woodwork. “By pressing the centre of this groove, the panel will slip apart and disclose a narrow recess.” He suited the action to the word, and showed a small aperture, wide enough for the entrance of a man’s hand. Lying in the square space was a dis-

coloured package of papers, hold down by an odd looking coin. Lifting the coin, he said: “Every man has his superstition. This is mine. For 40 years this pieee of money, a Spanish doubloon, has been my mascot. I keep it here for luck.”

Mr. Carruth examined it with interest. “Where did you come across it, Gaspar? I never saw one before. It’s worth about sixteen dollars in our money, isn’t it?” “I believe it is—and where did I get it? Weil, I should have to go back to my old Mexican prison days for that. I won it at play, the first and only time I ever gambled.” “It is certainly a very unique paper weight,” said Mr. Carruth, as he handed it back.

“Yes; I am foolishly fond of my lucky penny. It once saved my life. But another time for that. Notice, I put the new will in here with these other papers, and the Spanish doubloon on top to mount guard over them all. When I am dead, Carruth, I want yon to open this recess and take out these papers. The will must be read to my assembled household—the other papers by yourself alone. Your discretion will guide you as to the public disclosure of their contents. Perhaps, old friend,” with a wistful smile, “I shall be more worthy in my death than in ray life.” “Tut! tut!” sard the lawyer, “who’s talking about death? It doesn’t follow because a man makes a will one day that his family will hear it read the next. Why, good gracious, Gaspar, if the making of wills were fatal, yon would have been dead a dozen times over.”’

Mr. Gaspar laughed nt his friend's explosion, but his tone was sr.d when he answered: “I shall be 7(1 tomorrow, Carruth ... a ripe old ago . . . but,” taking his hat, “we are getting too serious. Let’s go across to dinner—old Barbara has a choice bit of veuieon—• and we’ll drink Valerie’s and Adrian's health in a glass of shorrv and drive dull care away. Come!”

It was past banking hours, and Hie two men left by the private entrance, Mr. Gaspar locking the door and putting the key in his poeket. He drank heavily at table, bnt neither the rich, red port nor the amber sherry could lift from his spirits their strange depression. As he parted from the lawyer at the gate he pointed a trembling finger towards the church across the street, whose cross, with its outstretched arms, was silhouetted against the evening sky, and whispered brokenly, ‘’Carruth, I go now to pray for the greatest sinner upon earth!”

A few hours later, on this same evening, Valerie Nourse and her lover were taking a late stroll on the parapet overlooking the river. “Adrian,” said Valerie, “will you laugh at me if I tell you something very silly about myself?”

“My dear little girl, don’t you know that nothing about yourself could be silly to me? Play I am Father Claudio, and tell me all your sins. I wager a single ‘Hail Mary’ will do penance for them all.”

“O, hush,” the girl whispered, looking timidly around, “it is about Father Claudio that 1 want to tell you. His eyes frighten me so. They seem to draw the ME out of me.”

“Why, Valerie, what do you mean?” her lover asked, almost roughly.

“O, Adrian, I don’t know. When he looks at me I lose my brain-sight and can’t see to follow my own thoughts.” “Why, sweetheart, you are nervous. There is nothing the matter with Father Claudio's eyes. They’ are really very handsome.” “Yes, but you can’t see back of them. It is like it is with a minor, you look in, but you can’t see into—not like yours, where you ean look down and see into your soul. No one would ever be afraid of you, Adrian.”

She looked up at him in her radiant innocence and youth. This, with the moonlight, which De Maupassant says “God perhaps has made to clothe with the ideal the loves of men,” went to his head, and he forgot Father Claudio and the entire Jesuit priesthood, and remembered only that this exquisite creature loved him, and that to-morrow would be their wed-ding-day. Later, the words came back to him, and with a new significance.

When Valerie parted from her lover she went to Miss Gaspar’s room- It was 11 o'clock. Miss Gaspar was sitting by

the window, with a light shew! throw* over her nightdress. “Valerie, dearest, I am waiting far you. I thought Adrian would never go. I wanted to have you a few moments to myself this last night. Come here, my child.”

There was no light in the room except the glorious splendour of the moon, but the woman in the chair needed none—she was blind. She drew Valerie's head to hei- knee.

“Little one, you are happy to-night, are you not?”

“Oh, auntie, so happy!” the girl replied.

Miss Gaspar gently stroked the soft blonde head. After a little she said:; “Go to my escritoire over there and look in the first lower drawer, away back in the right-hand corner. You will find a small writing desk, with a velvet cover to the lid. Bring it to me.” Valerie placed in her hands the quaint, old-fashioned article. The blind woman fingered it tenderly with light, sensitive touch while she talked. “This belonged to me when I was a girl, your age, Valerie. I embroidered the name on the lid myself. I learned to do it at the convent. One day I opened this little desk and put into it my first love letter. As I closed the lid I laid my cheek against my dumb confidante and wondered if God ever made even the angels any happier, ■ . . Then there came another day.”

She paused here for a long time. The girl beside her thought she had forgotten. When she did continue it was with a deep-drawn sigh. “The silk of the letters is dim and discoloured with tears, Valerie. It was there I put my head the night my heart broke. I had just laid away in here, as we lay away our dead, the last written words of my false lover. . . . But you are crying, child! I feel your tears on my hand. You must not do that to-night. Look, I am not sad. It all happened so long ago—and we forget, we old people, even our sorrows after a while. I tell you this on your wedding eve because you are a woman now, quickened into knowledge by the touch of love. You will understand why, I have kept these letters all these years; why I entrust them to you to destroy for me after I am dead. There is no lock to the desk—it opens with a spring. Promise me, Valerie, that no hand but yours shall touch it when I am gone.” Valerie whispered, solemnly, “I promise.” On her way out Valerie passed old Bar-

bara eomiug up from the kitchen with her bedroom candle.

•‘Has Uncle Gaspar retired, Barbara!” she asked.

“Yes, child, Gonzales has just come down. He says master's sleeping like a baby. Sure, but that old Mexican is as faithful as a dumb beastie.” This was at ten minutes to twelve. At half-past twelve Antonio Valdez, a bank clerk, returning a day sooner than expected from a business trip out of town, let hiiuseli’ into his sleeping apartment, next to the private office of the bank, and proceeded to retire for the night. Fancying he heard a noise in the adjoining room, he went to the glass door separating the rooms, drew aside the heavy curtains, and peered cautiously in. Two great shafts of moonlight from the uncurtained windows high in the rear wall filled the central space with a weird, unearthly radiance. What he saw ’.Cist have been of another world. Tie did not move until the cathedral clock, striking the quarter, roused him from his tranee. He then dropped the curtain and went to bed, shivering as ■with an ague.

The next morning Michael Gaspar was found dead in his bed. and his will gone from its place of deposit in the secret recess. Medical testimony certified that death had been the result of heart failure; but the most thorough investigation could not unravel the mystery of the missing document. So the old will—which was found among the papers scattered on Mr Gaspar’s desk, and which endowed the Catholic Church with his vast estate—Went into effect in due course of legal procedure. Mr Carruth, as party to the drawing up of the missing paper, and sole witness thereof, was not satisfied. He felt convinced that his friend had not changed his mind, and destroyed it later, as some argued. He had not returned to the bank after dinner, and the doors were found locked, as he had left them. And then the package of papers and the Spanish coin? Where were they?

Anatole Lcroux was at that time the Cleverest detective outside the city of

New York. When Mr Carruth’s despatch reached him in New Orleans, he came at once. Installed as guest in the Gaspar mansion, ho began* operations by making a diagram of the office. The drawing showed a room twelve by fourteen, with two windows in the rear, and a glass door, protected by heavy shutters, opening on to the street; a door on the right leading into the bank, and one on the left into the sleeping room of Antonio Valdez.

The next thing was to study the house and grounds. Irish Barbara was of great assistance to him here. He triad won her heart the first morning, when he lifted his hat and called her “madam.”

“Miss Valerie, it's the French what have the fine manners,” she said. Under her willing guidance he became acquainted with every nook and corner of the queer old place. He was charmed with the quaint and original plan of the house, and especially did his interest seenr to revolve about that bit of transplanted mediaevalism, the oratory—almost he felt he could say prayers there himself. The day he found the slab in the closet floor with the iron ring in it, he was as excited as a boy. “Why, this is like a fairy tale, Mrs Barbara. I must sec where it leads.” “Faith, Mr Lurry, it leads to nowhere, It’s nothing but a bin for- jprtaties and apples, and sich like garden truck. Those old priesties —■ the Holy Virgin kapa their souls!—what lived here in the early times, I warrant ye, they were fonder of the feast days than of tho fasts, or for why did they build a fireplace in the kitchen big enough to roast an ox? Folks do say as how this here be the entrance to a secret passage over to the Brothers’, but I don’t belave it. When folks can walk on top the earth whativer do they want to go into its inside for?”

Lcroux laughed, and agreed with her, but the next day lie procured a dark lantern and a box of noiseless matches.

A few nights later he asked permission to sleep in the private office of the bank. Valdez heard him tapping half

the night, as though putting down a carpet.

lie now turned his attention more exclusively to the people around him. He sought out first the blind lady, but while lending an car to the elder woman, he kept his two keen, bright eyes on the younger. V alerie Nonrse seemed not only physically inert, but mentally depleted. The presence of the priest affected her strangely. She was seized with a nervous tremor whenever he came into the room, and her manner would not become normal until he was out of sight.

Father Claudio, confessor of tlie Gaspar family, was a man of remarkable appearance. The proportions of his head were magnificent. The eyes beneath the lofty forehead were full and prominent. They controlled, they led, they repelled, but they never won. Tlie secret back of them was animal power dominated by intellect. Sympathy and tenderness were chords absolutely soundless. A singularly handsome face, but across the brow that indefinable shadow which marks the self-immolat-ed, whether* they be priest or nun.

Among his order lie was known as the hardest worker, the most zealous apostle of Moly Church.

A mysterious change had come over the bank clerk, also, since the night of the 29th. A look of desperate worry and suspense widened his eyes, and the colour in his check was but a faint semblance of its former rieh red. If the detective had not learned that when you sink a line for deep pools it must ba in smooth waters, he would have pronounced him the guilty man, and returned to New Orleans, his task accomplished. Instead, he made two entries in his notebook on the same page. One was after an evening with Valdez on the parapet ; the other, after a game of chess with Father Claudio.

Valdez had asked him a question as he threw' the stump of h.s cigar far out into the river.

“Mr Lcroux, have you ever seen a somnambulist?”

The priest had tried to checkmate his king with a pawn.

It may not be amiss to turn to the the diary itself. The first entry was: “May Sih. There is a secret pas-age leading from the oratory to the priests’ house. It is entered from tho closet un dor the stairs, and ean be followed up to their very door. It was filled wi’h rubbish, but has been recently used. “9th. There is an underground passage connecting the lank with tic oratory. The panel just below the picture slips aside. “loth. Tho girl, Vab'iie Noursc. is tho victim of shock of some kind. Can she be a hypnotie subject? "11th. Antonio Valdez is seeking information concerning somnambulism. There is some disturbing force at work. A man of mediocre intelligence never seeks to understand natural and spiritual phenomena, without a prrscnal reason. He wants to use the knowledge to effect, an end, or to explain the supernatural. “11th. Three hours liitdr. Have just played a game of chess with Father Claudio. My first theory is wrong. The priest did not abstract the will. lie would not. commit a crime in person. Ho would select the weakest agent at ms command, and ho might handle it with less cause for fear. He tried to checkmate my king with a pawn. “12th. Adrian Carruth has just told me of his fiancee’s singular aversion to Father Claudio’s handsome eyes. lie little know he had given mo my clue. And she is the poor little pawn! But how to find the will? "Later. ‘The memory may sometimes be aroused by giving the subject a single word.’ Chance, my oldtime Iriend, favour me and whisper the mag e syllable!” On the 13th of May. exactly two weeks from tlie date of Michael Gaspar’s death and the disappearance of the will, Anatole Lcroux desired the lawyers and the members of tho family to meet, him in the office of the bank at half-past eleven o’clock.

They assembled in the room in ■’n expectant state. Miss Gaspar, Valerie and Adrian seated themselves on tho sofa, and Mr Carruth in the armchair against the north wall. The others took

ch.iirs near Hip door, ami Hie de‘rcliv« remained standing. He lm>krd e at *ii* watch it wanted a quait'r to twelve — and ba id he had a few words U say to them in connection with the very interesting case in which he had the honour of being engaged. lie touched briefly, but drama tit ally, up n the inakin-* of the new will, the tragic death if the banker and tin* robbery of the paper 4, when he was interrupted by an exc a.ration from Mr Carruth. ‘‘Well, 1'1! he —— drawn and quartered!” he yelled, “if here isn’t my old friend’s paper weight, in this chair! It is nothing less than Mirhnel Gaspar’s lucky penny, the Spanish doubloon!” At Hie lawyer’s words Valerie rose to her feet with a low cry. Her lover sprang to her side, but the detective motional him away, and imposed silen.e by an imperative gesture. The girl, with eyes wile and immovably fixed, ami cheeks shgally Bushed, moved mevhanically ac.oss the room in the direciion of the Sistine Madonna. When she readied the picture, >h? put back the frame and pre. sod the pane 1 . It moved aside, and into the empty space she thrust her hand, then gliding rapid lingers over the woodwork, touched me same panel al a point lower down. It slipped out of sight, and revealed- a narrow stairway cut into the thick stuiu wall. Motioning Adrian to come with him. the detective followed the swift.’y moving figure down the steps into the low. damp passage, slippery with moisture from the river, through the tunnel, to the opposite sid-, where there was a stairway similar io the one they had left; up to tlris the floor of the oratory, and. by a sliding door, answering t» pressure, into the dim light of the chamber itself. ( ross i ng to the door, she turned the knob and passed through, up the stairs into Miss Gaspar’s room beyond. I hen to the escritoire, where she pulled out the lower drawer and drew forth the velvet writing desk. Pressing the spring, it opened and revealed to the gaze of the astonished men the will and the package of papers lying side by side with the faded love fettersthe brother's confession cheek to cheek with the sister’s innocent memories. . Turning now, with a piteous, bewildered face, the girl gave a frightened moan, and sank unconscious into her lover’s waiting arms. The theory o-f hypnotic suggestioh Advanced by the detective, and c..nfirnird by the night’s revelations, was further unstained by the testimony of the hank clerk, who, now that causa for silence was removed, admitted thathe had witnessiM a similar scene in the banker's office two weeks before. When he. had drawn aside the curtain and looked into the room, he had by the light of the nwm’s rays, Valerie abstract a package .of papers from a recess in the wall, and then vanish, as it were, into .(Ltrkncss. A fleeting glimpse of the basilisk eye-? of Father < laudin shining cat of the gloom added to his. Ih»wild«»rment and paralysed his faculties. When he came to himse’f he know but one course—to guard her secret as In* would his life, hence bis silence. hi the light of the developments that followed. Tier

act became ntturly inexplicable, and then it was his sluggish brain made its superlative effort and divined the supernatural.

Valerie was dangerously ill for many weeks. When she recovered, her memory of the painful experiences of that night was vague, but still sufficient to add a link here and there to the evidence. Upon entering the oratory she had felt the presence of some disturbing force, but seeing bo one, had proceeded to the altar and fallen on her knees. Soon she felt her gaze drawn upward to the lace curtains behind the altar, apd slowly but surely her will responded to a stronger one. At last her fingers loosened on her beads, and she rose and moved in a dream down a dark way into a dimly lighted room, where she put her hand into an aperture and took out a bundle of papers, some hard substance slipping from her lingers as she did so. Of her subsequent acts she knew nothing, until Miss Gaspar’s voice calling out to know who was in the room roused her from her strange sleep. The word, ‘‘Spanish doubloon,” passed on to her mentally, to designate the position of the papers, was the last thing of which memory was conscious. This satisfied the mind of the detective as to the priest’s instrumentality in the deed, but it was not until old Gonzales, on his dying bed, six month.-; later, confessed to having been a spy in lhe household in the employ of Father Claudio, that the chain of facts was complete, and the Jesuit’s crime established beyond doubt. Having been informed of the private interview pending between the banker and bis lawyer, the priest had evidently taken his stand at the door of the passage and became possessed of the information concerning the. contents of the new will and its place of deposit. When he learned that the Chureji was to be debarred from her expected heritage, he laid his plans to circumvent the law. To one of his Order the end justified the means. But in this instance the “means” were so dark that, even ids hardened conscience must have recoiled. That his plans did not carry was duo to the unexpected return of the bank clerk, whose face at the glass door divertk'd his tthoughbs and broke the primary current, destroying irrevocably his influence over his subject. Valerie's mind, in its effort to recover lucidity, returned to its last strong impression, which was Miss Gaspar’s love story, and the commission regarding the letters., lienee her direct return to the blind lady's room and the choice of hiding place for the package. The priest, not daring to follow her, nor to use violence for fear of breaking the spell, was, therefore, as much in the dark as the public in regard to the final disposition of the will. As the detective chuckled to himself, “til-e little pawn outwitted the? wily prelate after all.” ' Mr Carruth was, of course, for “hanging somebody for the vilest piece of midnight work he Jiad ever known in his whole thirty-five years of practice!” Bid as his partner remarked,

“Whom would you hang, and what would you hang him for?”

And that was it., What eye had witnessed the scene in the oratory? And. if witnessed. what then?

There were two s <;rifticant facts of which the public took note. The < hr. reh made no effort to break the will, although thousands of dollars Were involved; and Father Claudio was transferred very .suddenly to a distant station hi Central America.