The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales Part 9

ONE HUNDRED POUNDS REWARD.

Mrs. Savareen sat up waiting for her lord until long past midnight, but her vigil was in vain. Lapierre, after closing up his inn for the night, dropped in, according to his promise, to see if any news of the absentee had arrived. Nothing further could be done in the way of searching for the latter personage until daylight.

It was getting on pretty well towards morning when Mrs. Savareen sought her couch, and when she got there her slumber was broken and disturbed.

She knew not what to think, but she was haunted by a dread that she would never again see her husband alive.

Next morning, soon after daylight, the whole neighborhood was astir, and the country round was carefully searched for any trace of the missing man. Squire Harrington went down to town and made inquiries at the bank, where he ascertained that the story told by Savareen to old Jonathan Perry, as to his altercation with Shuttleworth, was substantially correct. This effectually disposed of any possible theory as to Jonathan and his wife having mistaken somebody else for Savareen.

Squire Harrington likewise learned all about the man's doings on the previous afternoon, and was able to fix the time at which he had started for home. He had ridden from the door of the Peac.o.c.k at about a quarter to eight. This would bring him to the toll-gate at eight o'clock--the hour at which Perry professed to have seen and conversed with him. There was no longer any room for doubt. That interview and conversation had actually taken place at eight o'clock on the previous evening, and Savareen had ridden northward from the gate within five minutes afterwards. He could not have proceeded more than a hundred--or, at the very outside, two hundred--yards further, or he must inevitably have been encountered by Lapierre. How had he contrived to vanish so suddenly out of existence? And it was not only the man, but the horse, which had disappeared in this unaccountable manner. It seemed improbable that two living substances of such bulk should pa.s.s out of being and leave no trace behind them. They must literally have melted into thin air.

No, they hadn't. At least the black mare hadn't, for she was discovered by several members of the searching-party a little before noon. When found, she was quietly cropping the damp herbage at the edge of the cranberry swamp at the rear of Squire Harrington's farm. She was wholly uninjured, and had evidently spent the night there. The bit had been removed from her mouth, but the bridle hung intact round her neck.

The saddle, however, like its owner, had disappeared from her back.

Then the men began a systematic search in the interior of the swamp.

They soon came upon the saddle, which had apparently been deliberately unbuckled, removed from off the mare, and deposited on a dry patch of ground, near the edge of the mora.s.s. A little further in the interior they came upon a man's coat, made of dark brown stuff. This garment was identified by one of the party as belong to Savareen. It was wet and besmirched with mud, and, in fact was lying half in and half out of a little puddle of water when it was found. Then the searchers made sure of finding the body.

But in this they were disappointed. They explored the recesses of the swamp from end to end and side to side with the utmost thoroughness, but found nothing further to reward their search. The ground was too soft and marshy to retain any traces of footsteps, and the mare and saddle furnished the only evidence that the object of their quest had been in the neighborhood of the swamp--and of course this evidence was of the most vague and inconclusive character.

Then the party proceeded in a body to the missing man's house. Here another surprise awaited them. The coat was at once recognised by Mrs.

Savareen as belonging to her husband, but IT WAS NOT THE COAT WORN BY HIM AT THE TIME OF HIS DISAPPEARANCE. Of this there was no doubt whatever. In fact, he had not worn it for more than a week previously.

His wife distinctly remembered having folded and laid it away in the top of a large trunk on the Sat.u.r.day of the week before last, since which time she had never set eyes on it. Here was a deepening of the mystery.

The search was kept up without intermission for several days, nearly all of the farmers in the vicinity taking part in it, even to the neglect of the harvest work which demanded their attention. Squire Harrington was especially active, and left no stone unturned to unravel the mystery. Lapierre gave up all his time to the search, and left the Royal Oak to the care of its landlady. The local constabulary bestirred themselves as they had never done before. Every place, likely and unlikely, where a man's body might possibly lie concealed; every tract of bush and woodland; every barn and out building; every hollow and ditch; every field and fence corner, was explored with careful minuteness. Even the wells of the district were peered into and examined for traces of the thirteen stone of humanity which had so unaccountably disappeared from off the face of the earth. Doctor Scott, the local coroner, held himself in readiness to summon a coroner's jury at the shortest notice. When all these measures proved unavailing, a public meeting of the inhabitants was convened, and funds were subscribed to still further prosecute the search. A reward of a hundred pounds was offered for any information which should lead to the discovery of the missing man, dead or alive, or, which should throw any light upon his fate. Hand-bills proclaiming this reward, and describing the man's personal appearance, were exhibited in every bar room and other conspicuous place throughout Westchester and the adjacent townships. Advertis.e.m.e.nts, setting forth the main facts, were inserted in the princ.i.p.al newspapers of Toronto, Hamilton and London, as well as in those of several of the nearest county towns.

All to no purpose. Days--weeks--months pa.s.sed by, and furnished not the shadow of a clue to the mysterious disappearance of Reginald Bourchier Savareen on the night of Monday, the 17th of July, 1854.

CHAPTER VI.

SPECULATIONS.

For a long time subsequent to the night of the disappearance a more puzzled community than the one settled along the Millbrook and Spotswood road would have been hard to find in Upper Canada. At first sight it seemed probable that the missing man had been murdered for his money. On the afternoon of the day when he was last seen in Millbrook the fact of his having four hundred pounds in bank bills in his possession was known to a great many people, for, as already intimated, he told the story of his dispute at the bank to pretty nearly everyone with whom he came in contact during the subsequent portion of the day, and he in every instance wound up his narration by proclaiming to all whom it might concern that he had the notes in his pocket. But it was difficult to fix upon any particular individual as being open to suspicion. There had been no attempt on the part of any of his a.s.sociates on that afternoon to detain him in town, and his remaining there until the evening had been entirely due to his own inclinations.

So far as was known, he had not been followed by any person after his departure from the Peac.o.c.k at 7.45. Anyone following would have had no prospect of overtaking him unless mounted on a good horse, and must perforce have pa.s.sed through the toll-gate. According to the testimony of Perry and his wife, n.o.body had pa.s.sed through the gate in his wake, nor for more than an hour after him. But--mystery of mysteries--where had he managed to hide himself and his mare during the two or three minutes which had elapsed between his departure from the gate and the arrival there of Lapierre? And, if he had been murdered, what had become of his body?

Had it been at all within the bounds of reason to suspect Stolliver, suspicion would certainly have fallen upon that personage. But any idea of the kind was altogether out of the question. Stolliver was a boorish, uncompanionable fellow, but a more unlikely man to commit such a serious crime could not have been found in the whole country side.

Again, he could not have had any conceivable motive for making away with Savareen, as he had been working all day in the fields and knew nothing about the four hundred pounds. Besides, a little quiet investigation proved the thing to be an absolute impossibility. At the time of Savareen's disappearance, Stolliver had been sitting at his own table, in the company of his wife, his family, and a grown-up female servant. He had sat down to table at about a quarter to eight, and had not risen therefrom until several minutes after the town bell had ceased to ring. On rising, he had gone out with his two boys--lads of thirteen and fifteen years of age respectively--and had barely taken up a position with them on the front fence when Lapierre came along and questioned him, as related in a former chapter. So it was certainly not worth while to pursue that branch of enquiry any farther.

The only other persons upon whom the shadow of suspicion could by any possibility fall were Lapierre and Jonathan Perry. Well, so far as the latter was concerned the idea was too absurd for serious consideration.

To begin with, Jonathan was seventy-six years of age, feeble and almost decrepid. Then, he was a man of excellent character, and, notwithstanding his humble station in life, was liked and respected by all who knew him. Finally, he could not have done away with Savareen without the knowledge and concurrence of his wife, a gentle, kindly old soul, who found her best consolation between the covers of her bible, and who would not have raised her finger against a worm. So that branch of the enquiry might also be considered as closed.

As to Lapierre, the idea was at least as preposterous as either of the others. The jovial landlord of the Royal Oak was on the whole about as likely a man to commit robbery or murder as the bishop of the diocese.

He was of a cheery, open nature; was not greedy or grasping; had a fairly prosperous business, and was tolerably well-to-do. On the night of the 17th, he had undertaken to go down town and bring home the absent man, but he had done so at the pressing request of the man's wife, and out of pure kindness of heart. When setting out on his mission he knew nothing about the altercation at the bank, and was consequently ignorant that Savareen had any considerable sum of money on his person. His first knowledge on these subjects had been communicated to him by Perry, and before that time the man had disappeared. It also counted for something that Savareen and he had always been on the most friendly terms, and that Savareen was one of his best customers. But, even if he had been the most bloodthirsty of mankind, he had positively had no time to perpetrate a murder. The two or three minutes elapsing between Savareen's departure from the toll-gate and Lapierre's arrival there had been too brief to admit of the latter's having meanwhile killed the former and made away with his body; to say nothing of his having also made such a disposition of the black mare as to enable it to be found in Cranberry Swamp on the following day.

After a while people began to ask whether it was probable that any murder at all had been committed. The finding of the coat was an unfathomable mystery, but it really furnished no evidence one way or the other. And if there had been a murder, how was it that no traces of the body were discoverable? How was it that no cry or exclamation of any kind had been heard by old Jonathan, sitting there at the door in the open air on a still night? It was certain that his ears had been wide open, and ready enough to take in whatever was stirring, for he had heard the sound of Count Frontenac's hoofs as they came clattering down the road.

Such questions as these were constantly in the mouths of the people of that neighborhood for some days after the disappearance, but they met with no satisfactory answer from any quarter, and as the time pa.s.sed by it began to be believed that no light would ever be thrown upon the most mysterious occurrence that had ever taken place since that part of the country had been first settled. One of the constables, discouraged by repeated failures, ventured in all seriousness to express a suspicion that Savareen had been bodily devoured by his mare. How else could you account for no trace of him being visible anywhere?

By an unaccountable oversight, Shuttleworth had kept no memorandum of the number of the notes paid over to Savareen, and it was thus impossible to trace them.

CHAPTER VII.

"A WIDOW, HUSBANDLESS, SUBJECT TO FEARS."

The position of the missing man's wife was a particularly trying and painful one--a position imperatively calling for the sympathy of the community in which she lived. That sympathy was freely accorded to her, but time alone could bring any thing like tranquillity to a mind harra.s.sed by such manifold anxieties as hers. After a lapse of a few weeks Squire Harrington generously offered to take the farm off her hands, but to this proposal she was for some time loath to a.s.sent. In spite of her fears and misgivings, fitful gleams of hope that her husband would return to her flitted across her mind. If he came back he should find her at her post. Meanwhile the neighbors showed her much kindness. They voluntarily formed an organisation of labor, and harvested her crops, threshed them out and conveyed them to market for her. Her brother, a young man of eighteen, came out from town and took up his abode with her, so that she would not be left wholly desolate among strangers. And so the summer and autumn glided by.

But this state of things could not last. The strange solitude of her destiny preyed sorely upon her and when the first snows of winter arrived, bringing with them no tidings of the absent one, the fort.i.tude of the bereaved woman broke down. She gave up the farm, and with her little baby boy and such of her household belongings as she chose to retain, went back to the home of her parents in Millbrook. She was a few hundred dollars better off in this world's goods than she had been when she had left that home about thirteen months before, but her spirit was sadly bent, if not altogether broken, and the brightness seemed to have utterly faded out of her life.

In process of time she became in some degree accustomed, if not reconciled to her lot. But her situation was, to say the least, anomalous. Her parents were, on the whole, kind and considerate, but she was conscious of being, after a fashion, isolated from them and from all the rest of the world. She felt, as one who was, in the language of the proverb, neither maid, wife nor widow. She knew not whether her child's father was living or dead. She was barely twenty-three years of age, but she was not free to form a second marriage, even if she had had any inclination for such a union, which, to do her justice, she had not, for she cherished the memory of her absent lord with fond affection, and persisted in believing that, even if he were living, it was through no fault of his own that he remained away from her. She lived a very quiet and secluded life. In spite of her mother's importunities, she seldom stirred out of doors on week days, and saw few visitors. She was a regular attendant at church on Sundays, and sought to find relief from mental depression in the consolations of religion. Her chief consolation, however, lay in her child, upon whom she lavished all the tenderness of a soft and gentle nature. She fondly sought to trace in the little fellow's bright features some resemblance to the lineaments of him she had loved and lost. To do this successfully required a rather strong effort of the imagination, for, to tell the truth, the boy favored his mother's side of the house, and was no more like his father than he was like the twelve patriarchs. But a fond mother often lives in an ideal world of her own creation, and can trace resemblances invisible to ordinary mortals. So it was with this mother, who often declared that her boy had a way of "looking out of his eyes," as she expressed it, which forcibly brought back the memory of happy days which had forever pa.s.sed away.

Of course Savareen's relatives in the old country received due notice of his strange disappearance, and of the various circ.u.mstances connected with that event. Mrs. Savareen had herself communicated the facts, and had also sent over a copy of the Millbrook _Sentinel_, containing a long and minute account of the affair. A letter arrived from Herefordshire in due course, acknowledging the receipt of these missives, and enquiring whether the lost had been found. Several communications pa.s.sed to and fro during the first few months, after which, as there was really nothing further to write about, the correspondence fell off; it being of course understood that should any new facts turn up, they should be promptly made known.

The stars do not pause in their spheres to take note of the afflictions of us mortals here below. To the bereaved woman it seemed unaccountable that the succeeding months should come and go as formerly, and as though nothing had occurred to take the saltness and savor out of her young life. Ever and anon her slumbers were disturbed by weird dreams, in which the lost one was presented before her in all sorts of frightful situations. In these dreams which came to her in the silent watches of the night, she never seemed to look upon her husband as dead. He always seemed to be living, but surrounded by inextricable complications involving great trouble and danger. She sometimes awoke from these night visions with a loud cry which startled the household, and proved how greatly her nerves had been shaken by the untoward circ.u.mstances of her fate.

In the early spring of the ensuing year she sustained another painful bereavement through the death of her mother. This event imparted an additional element of sadness to her already cloudy existence; but it was not without certain attendant compensations, as it rendered necessary a more active course of life on her part, and so left her less time to brood over her earlier sorrow. No Benvolio was needed to tell us that

"One fire burns out another's burning: One pain is lessened by another's anguish."

Most of us have at one time or another been forced to learn that hard truth for ourselves. This forlorn woman had probably never read the pa.s.sage, but her experience brought abundant confirmation of it home to her at this time. She was driven to a.s.sume the internal management of the household, and found grateful solace in the occupations which the position involved. She once more began to take an interest in the prosaic affairs of everyday life, and became less addicted to looking forward to a solitary, joyless old age. So that, all things considered, this second bereavement was not to be regarded in the light of an affliction absolutely without mitigation.

It might well have been supposed that the place she was now called upon to fill would have been the means of drawing closer the ties between her surviving parent and herself. For a time it certainly had that effect. Her presence in his house must have done much to soften the blow to her father, and her practical usefulness was made manifest every hour of the day. She carefully ministered to his domestic needs, and did what she could to alleviate the burden which had been laid upon him. But the old, old story was once more repeated. In little more than a year from the time her mother had been laid in her grave, she was made aware of the fact that the household was to receive a new mistress. In other words, she was to be introduced to a stepmother. The event followed hard upon the announcement. As a necessary consequence she was compelled to a.s.sume a secondary place in her father's house.

It may be true that first marriages are sometimes made in Heaven. It is even possible that second marriages may now and then be forged in the same workshop. But it was soon brought home to Mrs. Savareen that this particular marriage was not among the number. Her stepmother, who was not much older than herself, proved a veritable thorn in her side. She was made to perceive that she and her little boy were regarded in the light of enc.u.mbrances, to be tolerated until they could be got rid of.

But not pa.s.sively tolerated. The stepmother was a rather coa.r.s.e-grained piece of clay--an unsympathetic, unfeeling woman, who knew how to say and to do unpleasant things without any apparent temper or ill-will.

The immortal clockmaker, when he was in a more quaintly sententious humor than common, once propounded the doctrine that the direct road to a mother's heart is through her child. He might have added the equally incontestable proposition that the most effectual method of torturing a mother's heart is through the same medium. The mother who has an only child, who is all the world to her, is actually susceptible to anything in the shape of interference with her maternal prerogatives. Such interference, by whomsoever exercised, is wholly intolerable to her.

This susceptibility may perhaps be a feminine weakness, but it is a veritable maternal instinct, and one with which few who have observed it will have the heart to find fault. In Mrs. Savareen's bosom this foible existed in a high state of development, and her stepmother so played upon it as to make life under the same roof with her a cross too hard to be borne. After a few months' trial, the younger of the two women resolved that a new home must be found for herself and her little boy. The carrying out of this resolve rendered some consideration necessary, for her own unaided means were inadequate for her support.

Her father, though not what could be called a poor man, was far from rich, and he had neither the means nor the will to maintain two establishments, however humble. But she was expert with her needle, and did not despair of being able to provide for the slender wants of herself and child. She rented and furnished a small house in the town, where she found that there was no ground for present anxiety as to her livelihood. There was plenty of needlework to be had to keep her nimble fingers busy from morn till night, and her income from the first was in excess of her expenditure. She was constrained to lead a humdrum sort of existence, but it was brightened by the presence and companionship of her boy, who was a constant source of pride and delight to her.

Whenever she caught herself indulging in a despondent mood, she took herself severely to task for repining at a lot which might have lacked this element of brightness, and which lacking that, would, it seemed to her, have been too dreary for human endurance.

No useful purpose would be served by lingering over this portion of the narrative. Suffice it to say that the current of the lonely woman's life flowed smoothly on several years, during which she received no tidings of her lost husband and heard nothing to throw the faintest scintilla of light upon his mysterious disappearance. Little Reginald grew apace, and continued to be the one consolation in her great bereavement--the solitary joy which reconciled her to her environment.

CHAPTER VIII.

A GUEST ARRIVES AT THE ROYAL OAK.

It was getting on towards the middle of the month of August, 1859. The harvest all along the Millbrook and Spotswood road was in full progress. And a bounteous harvest it was, even for that favored region.

Squire Harrington confidently counted upon a yield of fifty bushels of wheat to the acre. True, he was a model farmer, and knew how to make the most of a good season, but his neighbors were not far behind him, and were looking forward to full granaries when threshing should be over. For once there was little or no grumbling at the dispensations of Providence. The weather had been as propitious as though the local tillers of the soil had themselves had a voice in the making of it, and even gruff Mark Stolliver was constrained to admit that there were fewer grounds for remonstrating with the Great Disposer of events than usual at this season of the year. Every wheat field in the township presented an active spectacle throughout the day. The cradles were busily plied from early morn till nightfall, and the swaths of golden grain furnished heavy work for the rakers and binders. The commercial crisis of 1857 had made itself felt in the district, as well as in all other parts of Upper Canada. Many of the farmers had fallen considerably behindhand, and had for once in a way felt the grip of hard times. But the prolific crops which were now being gathered in bade fair to extricate them from such obligations as they had been compelled to incur, and the prevailing tone was one of subdued though heartfelt satisfaction.

On the evening of Sat.u.r.day, the 13th of the month, sundry of the yeomen who lived thereabouts a.s.sembled at Lapierre's, after a hard week's work, to congratulate one another on the prospects of the harvest, and to discuss a few tankards of the reaming ale for which the Royal Oak was famous throughout the township. The landlord himself was on hand as usual, to dispense the hospitalities of his bar and larder. The five years which had rolled over his head since that memorable night of Savareen's disappearance had left but slight traces of their pa.s.sage upon his jovial countenance. He had never been able to fathom the impenetrable secret of that strange July night, but he had all along been wont to remark that the mystery would be cleared up some day, and that he confidently expected to hear some tidings of the missing man before he died. As for his guests, though most of them had resided in the neighborhood at the time of his disappearance, they had long ceased to give themselves any particular concern about the matter. So long as there had seemed to be any prospect of getting at the bottom of the affair they had taken a vigorous part in the search, and had exerted themselves to bring the mystery to light; but when month succeeded month without supplying any clue to the puzzle, they had gradually resigned themselves to the situation, and, except when the topic came up for discussion at their Sat.u.r.day night meetings, they seldom indulged in anything more than a pa.s.sing allusion to it.