Johnny Ludlow, Second Series

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-book, 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.