by Ellen Wood
If you chanced to read the first series of these papers, it may scarcely be necessary to recall certain points to your recollection — that Mr. Todhetley, commonly called the Squire, had two estates. The chief one, Dyke Manor, lay on the borders of Worcestershire and Warwickshire, partly in both counties; the other, Crabb Cot, was a smaller place altogether, and much nearer Worcester. Sometimes we stayed at one place, sometimes at the other. By an arrangement with Mr. Brandon, my guardian and the trustee to my property, I, Johnny Ludlow, lived with the Todhetleys. Mrs. Todhetley, the Squire’s present wife, was my stepmother, my father having married her after my own mother’s death. After my father’s death — which took place speedily — she became the second wife of Squire Todhetley, and the stepmother of his only son and heir, Joseph. Two children were subsequently born to them, Hugh and Lena, to whom Joseph was of course half-brother. Joseph, unlike myself, had been old enough to resent the advent of a stepmother when she came. Indulged and haughty, he did not like the gentle control she brought; though she was good as gold, as loving to him as he would let her be, and kind to everybody. I don’t say but that she was tall and thin as a lamp-post, with a mild face, given to having aches in it, scanty light hair, and kindly blue eyes; so she had not much to boast of in the way of appearance. Joe and I grew up together like brothers. He was several years the elder, and domineered over me absolutely. At school he was always called “Tod;” and I fell into the same habit. Perhaps that is sufficient explanation.
“And if you don’t come back to-night, you had better send me a five-pound note in a letter,” said Mrs. Todhetley.
“All right,” replied the Squire.
This was said on the platform of Timberdale Station. We were staying at Crabb Cot, and were taking the train at Timberdale instead of that at South Crabb. The Squire was going to Worcester, and was taking Tod and myself with him. It was a fine morning in April, and Mrs. Todhetley and little Hugh had come with us through the Ravine for the sake of the walk. Our returning at night, or not, was left an open question, contingent upon the Squire’s business at Worcester being over.
“Bring me a whip, and a new bird-cage for my thrush, and a pot of marmalade, papa,” called out Hugh.
“What else would you like, sir?” retorted the Squire.
“You bring ‘em, Joe.”
“I dare say!” said Tod.
The train puffed off, drowning Hugh’s further commands. We saw him throw his cap at the train, and Mrs. Todhetley holding him back from running after it.
“That young gentleman wants to be sent to school,” remarked the Squire. “I’m afraid you two boys make him worse than he would be.”
We reached Worcester about twelve, and went to the Star and Garter. The Squire had no end of matters on hand that day: but the two chief things that had brought him to Worcester were — to draw some money from the bank, and to negotiate with Mr. Prothero, a corn-dealer, for the sale of a load of wheat. Mr. Prothero was a close man to deal with: he wanted the wheat at one price, the Squire said it should only go at another: if he held out, the Squire meant to hold out, even though it involved staying the night in Worcester.
It was Wednesday; market-day. Not so large a market as the Saturday’s, but the town looked pretty full. The first thing the Squire did was to go to the Old Bank. At the door he turned round and said there was no need for three of us to crowd into the place. However, we were then inside, and so went on with him.
He had something particular to say to Mr. Isaac, and asked for him. They were talking together in private for a minute or two, and then the Squire took out his cheque for fifty pounds, and laid it on the counter.
“How will you take it?” asked Mr. Isaac.
“In five-pound notes.”
Mr. Isaac brought the money himself. The Squire put it in his pocket-book, and we said good-morning, and departed. There were shops to call at and people to see: and of course the market to walk through. You wouldn’t get the Squire to keep himself out of the market-house, when in Worcester on market-day: he’d go about asking the price of butter and fowls like any old woman. A little after four o’clock we got back to the Star; and found Mr. Prothero had not made his appearance.
“Just like him!” cried the Squire. “His appointment was for four o’clock sharp. He means to hold out against my price; that’s what he thinks to do. Let him! he won’t get the wheat at less.”
“I’d see him a jolly long way before he should have it at all,” said haughty Tod. “Do you hear, sir?”
“Hold your tongue, Joe,” was the Squire’s answer.
“Anyway, sir, Prothero gives you more trouble than all the rest of the buyers put together. He’s a stingy, close-fisted fellow.”
“But his money’s safe and sure. Prothero is a respectable man, Joe; his word’s as good as his bond.”
Half-past four, and no Prothero. The Squire began to fume a little: if he hated one thing more than another it was to be kept waiting.
“Look here, boys, I’ll send that note to your mother,” he said, taking out his pocket-book. “There’s not much chance of our going home to-night at this rate. Ring, one of you, for some paper and envelopes.”
Separating one of the notes from the roll Mr. Isaac had handed to him, he gave it to me to put up. I asked him if I should take down the number.
“I don’t think it matters, Johnny.”
But I took it down, perhaps through some unconscious instinct — for I don’t suppose I am more cautious than other people. In my pocket was a letter from Anna Whitney: and I pencilled on it the number of the note.
“Write inside the envelope ‘Not home till to-morrow,’” growled the Squire, forgetting that it could not be there till the morning. But he was in an ill-humour.
I wrote it at his bidding, enclosed the bank-note, and addressed the letter to Mrs. Todhetley at Crabb Cot. Tod and I went out to post it, and began laying plans as to how we should spend the evening at Worcester.
The post-office is not far from the Star, as everybody knows: and though we met a fellow who used to go to school with us, a doctor’s son, and stayed talking with him, not ten minutes elapsed before we were back again. And behold in that short time there was a change in the programme. Old Prothero had been in, the bargain about the wheat was concluded, and the Squire intended to start for home as soon as dinner was over. Tod resented the change.
“Johnny and I were going to that advertised séance — or whatever they call the thing — on electro-biology, sir. It will be first-rate fun, they say.”
“Very sorry for you and Johnny. You’ll have to go home instead. Prothero has bought the wheat: and that’s all I should have had to stay here for.”
“At his own price!” cried Tod, rather mockingly.
“No, Mr. Joe; at mine.”
“Well, it’s an awful sell for us,” grumbled Tod. “It’s not so often we get a night at Worcester, that we should be done out of this chance.”
“The fact is, I don’t feel well,” said the Squire, “and should most likely have gone home, whether Prothero had come in or not. I’m afraid I have caught cold, Joe.”
There was not any more to be said. The Squire’s colds were no joke: once he caught one, he would be downright ill; laid up for days. We went back by rail to Timberdale, and took a fly home.
The next morning the Squire did not get up. Sure enough he had a cold, and was feverish. At breakfast Mrs. Todhetley said one of us should go over to South Crabb and ask Mr. Cole to call and see him.
“Why, the pater hates doctors!” exclaimed Tod.
“I know he does,” she answered. “But I feel sure that if he would only take remedies for his colds in time, they would not be so bad as they usually are, Joseph. Who’s that?” she added — for she was seated where she could not see out, and had heard the gate click.
It was the postman: so I opened the glass doors.
“Only one, sir,” said he, handing me the letter we had posted at Worcester the previous afte
rnoon.
Mrs. Todhetley laughed as she opened it, saying it would have come sooner had we brought it with us. Looking to see that the bank-note was safe, she left it in the envelope on the breakfast-table.
“You may as well get it changed for me at Salmon’s,” she said, handing it to Tod as we were going out, “and then I need not disturb your father. But you must make haste back, for you know I want the money.”
She had no money in the house except a few shillings: and this was why the note was to be posted to her if we stayed at Worcester. You are often run short of money in rural country places: it’s quite different from town, where the banks are at hand.
We went through North Crabb, and met the doctor coming out at his door. Tod told him the Squire wanted some physicking.
“Caught a cold, has he?” cried Cole. “If he will only be reasonable and keep himself warm in bed, we’ll soon have that out of him.”
Cole lived close upon South Crabb — I think I’ve said so before. A few yards beyond his house the shops began. Salmon’s was the fifth from the corner: a double shop, grocer’s and draper’s. The savings’ bank was at Salmon’s, and the post-office: he was the busiest tradesman in South Crabb, rather conceited over it, but very intelligent. His brother was in business at Timberdale. This is what occurred.
“Will you be good enough to change this five-pound note for me, Mr. Salmon?” said Tod, laying the note down on the grocer’s counter, on the left of the door, behind which Salmon stood, his grey hair carefully brushed and a white apron on.
Salmon took the note up for a moment, and then unlocked the inner drawer of his till, where he kept his gold. He was counting out the five sovereigns when he paused; put them down, and picked up the note again quickly. I had seen his eyes fall on it.
“Where did you get this note from, sir?” asked he of Tod.
“From the Old Bank at Worcester.”
“Well, it’s one of them notes that was lost in the robbery at Tewkesbury, unless I’m much mistaken,” cried Salmon, beginning to turn over the leaves of a small account-book that he fetched from the post-office desk. “Ay, I thought I was right,” he adds, running his finger across some figures on one of the pages. “I had the numbers correct enough in my head.”
“You must be out of your mind, Salmon,” retorted Tod, in his defiant way. “That note was paid to my father yesterday at Worcester Old Bank.”
“I don’t think it was, sir.”
“You don’t think it was! Why, I was present. I saw Mr. Isaac count the notes out himself. Ten; and that was one of them.”
“Mr. Isaac never counted out this note,” persisted Salmon.
He smoothed it out on the counter as he spoke. I had not noticed it before: but it struck me now as I looked at it that it was not the note I had put into the envelope at Worcester. That was a new, crisp note; this was not crisp, and it looked a little soiled. Tod turned passionate over it: he was just like the Squire in some things.
“I don’t understand your behaviour, Salmon. I can swear that this note was one given with the other nine at the bank yesterday, and given by Mr. Isaac.”
Salmon shook his head. As much as to say he knew to the contrary.
“You’d better accuse Mr. Isaac of dealing in stolen notes — or me,” cried hot Tod.
“You’d neither of you be likely to deal in them, Mr. Todhetley. There’s a mistake somewhere. That’s what it is. Mr. Isaac would be too glad to get this note into his possession to pay it away again. No people are more severe against money-robberies than bankers.”
Salmon talked, and Tod talked; but they could not agree. The apprentice behind the counter on the drapery side listened with admiration, evidently not knowing which side to take. I spoke then, saying that the note did not appear to be the same as the one I had enclosed in the letter; and Tod looked as though he could have knocked me down for saying it. I had changed my clothes and had not Anna Whitney’s letter with me.
“Tod, it is of no use your taking it up in this way. If the thing is so, it is. And it can soon be proved. I say I don’t think it is the same note, or the same numbers.”
“If I had taken down the numbers of a bank-note, I could remember what they were; so would any one but a muff, Johnny,” said he, sarcastically.
“I don’t remember what they were. But I do seem to remember that they were not these.”
Tod flung out of the shop in a passion: to him it seemed impossible that anything could be wrong with a note had direct from the bank. As to its not being the same note, he scouted it utterly. Had it dropped through the envelope and changed itself en route from Worcester? he sarcastically demanded — coming in again to ask it.
Salmon was quietly going over the circumstances of the Tewkesbury robbery to me. About three weeks before, a butcher’s shop was robbed in Tewkesbury — the till carried off in open day. It had gold and silver in it and two five-pound notes. The numbers of the notes happened to be known, and notice of them was circulated, to put people on their guard against taking them.
“Look here, Mr. Ludlow,” said Salmon, showing me the numbers of the stolen notes written down in his book, and comparing the one with the bank-note we had taken to him. “It’s the same, you see. Reason’s reason, sir.”
“But I don’t see how it’s practicable,” cried Tod, coming round the least bit in the world, as he condescended to look himself at the numbers.
“Well, sir, neither do I — the facts being as you state them,” acknowledged Salmon. “But here’s the proof to stagger us, you observe. It’s in black and white.”
“There must be two notes with the same numbers,” said Tod.
Salmon smiled: great in his assumption of superior knowledge.
“There never was yet, Mr. Todhetley.”
“Who numbers the notes, I wonder? I suppose mistakes are not impossible to those who do it, any more than to other people.”
“No fear of that, sir, with their system. The note has been changed in the post.”
“Nonsense!” retorted Tod.
They’d have cavilled until night, with no result, one holding out against the other. Tod brought away the note and the five sovereigns — which Salmon offered. We could send over another note at leisure, he said. I examined the envelope after we had hastened home: it was the same we had posted at Worcester, and did not appear to have been tampered with.
Getting Anna Whitney’s letter out of my best clothes’ pocket, I brought it to Tod. The numbers were quite different from the note’s. He stared like one bewildered: his eyes passing from those on the letter to those on the note.
“Johnny, this beats bull-baiting.”
So it did — for mystification.
“Are you sure you copied the figures correctly, old fellow?”
“Now, Tod! Of course I did.”
“Let us go up to the pater.”
The pater was getting up, in defiance of old Cole and Mrs. Todhetley, and was dressed, up to his coat. He had a fire in his room and his white night-cap on. I told him about the note. Tod was outside, telling Mrs. Todhetley. He did not receive the news kindly.
“The note I gave you to put into the envelope was one of those stolen from the butcher at Tewkesbury! How dare you bring your rubbishing stories to me, Mr. Johnny!”
I tried to explain how it was — that it was not the same note; as the numbers proved. He would hear nothing at first, only went on at me, stamping his slippers and nodding his head, the big white tassel of the night-cap bobbing up and down. If Salmon dared to say he had sent him a stolen note to change, he’d teach Salmon what slander meant the next time the magistrates sat.
Tod came in then with Mrs. Todhetley. The Squire had talked himself quiet, and I got a hearing: showing him the numbers I had taken down outside Anna’s letter and the numbers on the stolen bank-note. It brought him to reason.
“Why, bless my heart! How can they have been changed, Johnny?”
Taking the packet of notes out of his pocket-b
ook, he went over their numbers. They were all consecutive, the nine of them; and so was the tenth, the one I had taken down. He pushed his night-cap back and stared at us.
“Did you two get larking yesterday and drop the letter on your way to the post?”
“We took it straight to the post, sir, and put it safely in.”
“I don’t know that I’d answer for that,” stormed the Squire. “Once dropped in the street, there’s no knowing who might pick it up, or what tricks might be played with it. Hold your tongues, you two. How else do you suppose it could have been done? We don’t live in the days of miracles.”
Off went his night-cap, on went his coat. Ringing the bell, he ordered the phaeton to be got ready on the instant, to take him to the station: he was going to Worcester. Mrs. Todhetley quite implored him not to go; as good as went down on her knees: he would increase his cold, and perhaps be laid up. But he wouldn’t listen. “Hang the cold!” he said: “he had no cold; it was gone. People shouldn’t have it to say that tricks could be played on him with impunity, and stolen notes substituted for honest ones.”
“What a way he puts himself into!” laughed Tod, when he had ordered us off to make ready.
“I know somebody else who does just the same.”
“You’ll get it presently, Johnny.”
Away we went to the station, Bob and Blister spanking along and Tod driving; the Squire, wrapped in about a dozen rugs and comforters, sitting beside him. The groom, Dwarf Giles, was behind with me: he would have to take the carriage back again. A train came up pretty soon, and we reached Worcester.
Of all commotions, the Squire made the worst. When he got to the bank, Mr. Isaac was out: would not be in till three o’clock: and that put the finishing stroke to the pater’s impatience. Next he went to the Star, and told of the matter there, gathering half the house about him. The post-office was taken next. They seemed to know nothing whatever about the letter — and I don’t think they did — had not particularly noticed it in sorting: could not have seemed to see less had they been in a fog at sea: except one thing, and that they’d swear to — that every letter posted at the office the previous day, and all other days, had been duly forwarded, untampered with, to its destination.