The City of Masks Part 29

"Now we know how the estimable Mrs. Jacobs came to have softening of the heart," exploded M. Mirabeau, pulling at his long whiskers.

Mr. Bramble, abandoning the shop downstairs, shuffled into the room.

"Did I hear you say 'moths'?" he demanded, consternation written all over his face. "For G.o.d's sake, don't turn them loose in the house.

They'll be into everything--"

"What is this?" cried de Bosky, peering intently between the crumbling edges of the rent, which widened hopelessly as he picked at it with nervous fingers.

St.i.tched securely inside the fur at the point of the shoulder was a thin packet made of what at one time must have been part of a rubber rain-coat. The three men stared at it with interest.

"Padding," said Mr. Bramble.

"Rubbish," said M. Mirabeau, referring to Mr. Bramble's declaration. He was becoming excited. Thrusting a keen-edged knife into de Bosky's hand, he said: "Remove it--but with care, with care!"

A moment later de Bosky held the odd little packet in his hand.

"Cut the threads," said Mr. Bramble, readjusting his big spectacles. "It is sewed at the ends."

The old bookseller was the first of the stupefied men to speak after the contents of the rubber bag were revealed to view.

"G.o.d bless my soul!" he gasped.

Bank notes,--many of them,--lay in de Bosky's palm.

Almost mechanically he began to count them. They were of various denominations, none smaller than twenty dollars. The eyes of the men popped as he ran off in succession two five-hundred-dollar bills.

Downstairs in the shop of J. Bramble, some one was pounding violently on a counter, but without results. He could produce no one to wait on him.

He might as well have tried to rouse the dead.

"Clever rascal," said M. Mirabeau at last. "The last place in the world one would think of looking for plunder."

"What do you mean?" asked de Bosky, still dazed.

"It is quite simple," said the Frenchman. "Who but your enterprising friend, the cracksman, could have thought of anything so original as hiding money in the lining of a fur overcoat? He leaves the coat in your custody, knowing you to be an honest man. At the expiration of his term, he will reclaim--"

"Ah, but he has still a matter of ten or eleven years to serve," agreed de Bosky. "A great deal could happen in ten or eleven years. He would not have taken so great a risk. He--"

"Um!" mused M. Mirabeau, frowning. "That is so."

"What am I to do with it?" cried de Bosky. "Nearly three thousand dollars! Am I awake, Mr. Bramble?"

"We can't all be dreaming the same thing," said the bookseller, his fascinated gaze fixed on the bank notes.

"Ah-h!" exclaimed M. Mirabeau suddenly. "Try the other shoulder! There will be more. He would not have been so clumsy as to put it all on one side. He would have padded both shoulders alike."

And to the increased amazement of all of them, a similar packet was found in the left shoulder of the coat.

"What did I tell you!" cried the old Frenchman, triumphantly.

Included among the contents of the second bag, was a neatly folded sheet of writing-paper. De Bosky, with trembling fingers, spread it out, and holding it to the light, read in a low, halting manner:

"'Finder is keeper. This coat dont belong to me, and the money neither. It is n.o.bodies buisness who they belonged to before. I put the money inside here becaus it is a place no one would ever look and I am taken a gamblers chanse on geting it back some day. Stranger things have happened. Something tells me that they are going to get me soon, and I dont want them to cop this stuff. It was hard earned. Mighty hard. I am hereby trusting to luck. I leave this coat with my neighbor, Mr. Debosky, so in case they get me, they wont get it when they search my room. My neighber is an honest man. He dont know what I am and he dont know about this money. If anybody has to find it I hope it will be him. Maybe they wont get me after all so all this writing is in vain. But Im taken no chance on that, and Im willing to take a chance on this stuff getting back to me somehow. I will say this before closing. The money belonged to people in various parts of the country and they could all afford to lose it, espes.h.i.+lly the doctor. He is a bigger robber than I am, only he lets people see him get away with it. If this should fall into the hands of the police I want them to believe me when I say my neighber, a little forreigner who plays the violin till it brings tears to my eyes, has no hand in this business. I am simply asking him to take care of my coat and wear it till I call for it, whenever that may be. And the following remarks is for him. If he finds this dough, he can keep it and use as much of it as he sees fit. I would sooner he had it than anybody, because he is poorer than anybody. And what he dont know wont hurt him. I mean what he dont know about who the stuff belonged to in the beginning. Being of sound mind and so fourth I hereby subscribe myself, in the year of our lord, September 26, 1912.

"HENRY LOVELESS."

"How very extraordinary," said Mr. Bramble after a long silence.

"Nearly five thousand dollars," said M. Mirabeau. "What will you do with it, de Bosky?"

The little violinist pa.s.sed his hand over his brow, as if to clear away the last vestige of perplexity.

"There is but one thing to do, my friends," he said slowly, straightening up and facing them. "You will understand, of course, that I cannot under any circ.u.mstances possess myself of this stolen property."

Another silence ensued.

"Certainly not," said Mr. Bramble at last.

"It would be impossible," said M. Mirabeau, sighing.

"I shall, therefore, address a letter to my friend, acquainting him with the mishap to his coat. I shall inform him that the insects have destroyed the fur in the shoulders, laying bare the padding, and that while I have been negligent in my care of his property up to this time, I shall not be so in the future. Without betraying the secret, I shall in some way let him know that the money is safe and that he may expect to regain all of it when he--when he comes out."

"Good!" exclaimed Mr. Bramble warmly.

M. Mirabeau suddenly broke into uproarious laughter.

"Mon dieu!" he gasped, when he could catch his breath. The others were staring at him in alarm. "It is rare! It is exquisite! The refinement of justice! That _this_ should have happened to the blood-sucking Mrs. Jacobs! Oho--ho--ho!"

CHAPTER XIV

DIPLOMACY

MR. SMITH-PARVIS, Senior, entertained one old-fas.h.i.+oned, back-number idea,--relict of a throttled past; it was a pestiferous idea that always kept bobbing up in an insistent, aggravating way the instant he realized that he had a few minutes to himself.

Psychologists might go so far as to claim that he had been born with it; that it was, after a fas.h.i.+on, hereditary. He had come of honest, hard-working Smiths; the men and women before him had cultivated the idea with such unwavering a.s.siduity that, despite all that had conspired to stifle it, the thing still clung to him and would not be shaken off.

In short, Mr. Smith-Parvis had an idea that a man should work.

Especially a young man.

In secret he squirmed over the fact that his son Stuyvesant had never been known to do a day's work in his life. Not that it was actually necessary for the young man to descend to anything so common and inelegant as earning his daily bread, or that there was even a remote prospect of the wolf sniffing around a future doorway. Not at all. He knew that Stuyvie didn't have to work. Still, it grieved him to see so much youthful energy going to waste. He had never quite gotten over the feeling that a man could make something besides a mere gentleman of himself, and do it without seriously impairing the family honour.

He had once suggested to his wife that Stuyvesant ought to go to work.

He didn't care what he took up, just so he took up something. Mrs.

Smith-Parvis was horrified. She would not listen to his reiterations that he didn't mean clerking in a drygoods shop, or collecting fares on a street car, or repairing electric doorbells, or anything of the kind, and she wouldn't allow him to say just what sort of work he did mean.

The subject was not mentioned again for years. Stuyvesant was allowed to go on being a gentleman in his own sweet way.