FIVE HUNDRED POUNDS REWARD.

Tuapeka Times, Volume III, Issue 196, 2 November 1871, Page 8

FIVE HUNDRED POUNDS REWARD.

(Frmn " Tinsley's Magazine." )

" How horribly annoying ! Bnt what a blessing that the wretches did uot discover that the diamonds were in the jewel-case !" It was the morning after a grand ball at the British Embassy in Paris, and Mrs. Foljambe de Vere, who had, during the last few hours, been the victim of as daring a robbery as ever distinoniVied the police annals of La Q-rande Villc, was despairingly lamenting over her loss. " Well, I must say that you rather brought it on yourself," remarked one of the gentlemen present (he was the brother of the agitated lady, and therefore in some sort privileged to speak bia mind). '' The idea of leaving valuable jewels on your dresaing-table in an hotei !" "

" But the door was locked ; you heard me tell the detective so. Who in the world would have imagined they were not safe ?"

" Any one with common sense," retorted Major Fielding; (relations are so rude, and t-iis one in particular was provoked at the moment by the prospect of being detained, through his sister's carelessness, in Paris, when the frost had. broken up, and his horses were eating their heads off in ' the shires'). ",Any one with a grain of common sense. What can be easier, as that Monsieur Dupont said, than for a man employed in one of these hotels to take an impression in wax of a bedroom, key? Probably, too, they have accomplices in the house, which makes everything serene."

" The wretch !" exclaimed pretty, not over-wise Mrs. de Vere. " How Ido hope he will be punished ! Nothing would be too bad for him. But O, dear ! 0, dear ! What shall I say to aunt Catherine ? I do believe she loves those bracelets better than she does anything else in the world. How I wish I had not worn one of them last night ! But it is a blessing that I did not do as she wished me to, and put them both 'on." " Let us hope," suggested a middleaged, much made-up Countess, who bad spent the chief portion of her life in Paris, and set up for an esprit fort, " that Lady Catherine will see, as you se.sm to do. my dear Nellie the finger of Providence in this affair."

Before the puzzled little woman could reply, the door of the salon was thrown noisily open, and in walked (or rather stalked) a tall, dignified-look-ing, elderly lady, whose black eyes and nearly open brows made singular contrast with the ina^s of powdered hair which rose up from the narrow but lofty forehead. Although expected by the party of some half-dozen friends and. acquaintances whom the UeWS of the robbery had gathered together, the entry of Lady Catherine Fairfax produced a decided sensation amongst the group. From the expression of her countenance — one which betrayed no feeling beyond her customary impassible composure — ifc was evident to Jill present that the direful news of the jewel-robbery had not yet reached the ears of dignified Lady Catherine.

"My dear," she said to her niece, whose white forehead she had just touched with the chilly lips of a^, 'I have come to ask how much you liked your ball. I have {jiven up <*oin» to such e;ay things myself, but — Ah, Lidy Brixham, .how d'ye do? Why, Nellie, you have quite a leveo ! Pei'haps as the rooui is so full, I—"I — "

" O, no, dear aunt," broke in Mrs. de Vere, who, feeling "that fiere was safety in a multitude, dreaded iwtMn« more than a confession en tete-a-tete with her aunt of her own carelessness in the matter of the jewels. "Do sfay ; such a dreadful thing has hap- i pened ! The jewels I wore last night—" " Not lost ! Not the emerald-and-'| diamond bracelets!" half shrieked her Ladyship. " Really, Nellie — "

"But "I have not lost them aunt Cath Tine. "W"hv will you fancy such thinca ?"

" Not lost, but stolen, whiph I fear ia pretty much the same thing/ put in Major Fielding.

"And so," said the family autocrat, after listening in portentous silence to the plain unvarnished fact that a daring and evidently practised theif bad, during the past night (ov rather morning), entered her niece's sleeping apartment, and thence, with felonious fingers, abstracted all the jewels with which Mrs. Foljambe de Vere had, on the previous occasion, adorned her person — "and so you really had the egregious folly to leave all that valuable jewellery — jewellery the chief part of which was not your own — pray do me the favour to remember that— on your dressing-tabW in an hotel! A public hotel — a place frequented bj all descriptions of people ! A place—" . " But, my dear aunt," pleaded Mrs. de Vere, v the door was locked, so how could I suppose, — "

"Suppose a-fiddle3tirk! ' Such absurdity! As if no one had a key but yourself! Such egregrions want of common sense and forethought I never saw ! You should bave placed the ornaments under lock and key in a trunk, or — "

"My dear Lady* Catherine," broke in the Countess, " I really t-iink you are too hard upon Nellie. Accidents will happen—"

" You call having your most valu.able jewels stolen an accident, doyou ?"

snorted Lady Catherine ; " now I call it — but never mind, I suppose I must put up with the loss. All I can say ivS, that such a tiling never happened to me. I never was robbed, or cheated, or taken in during the whole course cf my life, and I defy any one to prove the contrary. Robbed, indeed! A person is a fool who allows himself to be robbed. I have always said so ; and I am near upon seventy, and ought, I should think, to know a little of the world."

After this vehement outburst of her wrath, Lady Catherine condescended (as a rule she objected to listening to any voice save her own) to ask and receive some information regarding the measures which had been taken for the recovery of the ingeniously abstracted property. It was a source of secret satisfaction to her Ladyship to learn that the detectives of Li Rue de Jerusalem were on the alert, and that one of the most experienced of Pi6tri's celebrated body had declared his tielief that the delinquent could not long escape detection.

" They are wonderful fellows, these emplojes of La Police de Burele\" remarked Major Fielding; " and I shouldn't be surprised if they were on the rascal's track now."

The days went on — not slowly, they never did m the Paris of those days ; the Paris of which it has been said that e'etait le lieu dv monde ou on pent le inievtx se passer dv bonheur — the days went by, and in spite of all the efforts of Monsieur Pietn's perfectly 'organised police, the villain wbo had appropriated to himself, amongst other minor treasures, at heirloom in the Fairfax family, valued at seven hundred pounds, had hitherto managed to escape detection. At last, when nearly a fortnight after the famous robbery had elapsed, a card — one on which was inscribed the name of Monsieur Belot — was presented, in the salon of her own hotel, to Lady Catherine Fairfax. She was alore ; it was five o'clock in tLe evening, the season winter, and the gas was burning brightly, as only Paris gas can or could burn, in the daintily, if not comfortably furnished little room.

Lady Catherine incontinently desired that Monsieur Belot might be ushered into her august presence. Once there, the visitor, whom her Ladyship described a few hours later as a gentleman of highly distinguished manners and address, lost no time "in explaining the object of his visit. He was, he said, the secretaire privatissimo — it' l may be allowed to coin the word — of the great Monsieur Pietri, and his mission from that dignified official was to request Lady Catherine Fairfax to kindly allow the authorities a sight, in furtherance of the ends of justice, of the fellow bracelet to the one of which the zealous Paris detectives were in search. It would not be detained more than a day — the time to photograph it, and to put v the employes thoroughly aw fait of their business. It is needless to particularise the interview, which did not last many minutes, and terminated, as most of Lady Catherine's acquaintances in Paris before the end of the following day knew, by her Ladyship's placing, with many thanks, her mut-h-prized treasure into the keeping of high-bred, fashion-able-looking Monsieur Belot.

" Such a delightful man ! and so .hrewd! There is nothiug like having to do with sensible people. The moment he opened his lips, I felt that Monsieur Belot and I understood each other."

The fact of having intrusted the companion of her missing treasure to the keeping of the gr^at Pletri's secretary «/as, during the space of eight-and-forty hours, a source of constant self-congratulation to Lady Catherine ; and so .often and with so uiut'h unintentional broclerie did she repeat the particulars of her interview, that, as Major Fielding waggishly (when out of his aunt's hearing) remarked, it was very clear that Monsieur Belot had, onthat occasion, endeavoured to "profit by her Ladyship's counsels and experience.

But great as was Lady Catherine's \ coufidence in her late visitor, she i could* not quite succeed in inspiring her nephew with t^e same unreasoning trust ; and therefore it was that, on the day but one following to (to the old lady) hope-inspiring visit, Major Fielding strolled off to the Rue 'de Jerusalem, and, sending in his card, requested an interview with the Chef de la Police de Surete. Once in the cabinet particulier of that important functionary, the English officer touched upon the subject of the second bracelet. Lady Catherine, he said, was all atuiety to know whether, as Monsieur Belothad led her to hope, the temporary possession by the detective officers of the bracelet which she had placed in that gentleman's bands had led, or was likely to lead, to any discovery of the stolen property. As he spoke, the eyes — tolerably keen ones — of Major G-eorge Fielding were I fixed upon the face of his companion.! The latter heard him to the end in silence, and then an oath, not loud, but, deep, followed by a short burst of*! cynical- laughter, escaped his lips., "Le &acre coquin!" he exclaimed;and then the truth — a suspicion of which had already obtruded itsßlf on the Major's mmd — became at once apparent. It was ' no. emissary from ,t"lTe Rue de Jerusalem — no accredited searcher after stolen goods — who had, \

with his bland respectability of manner, imposed upon the English "milady." The man who had wiled away from this wise -in - her - owu - conceits old woman her so-dearly-cherished gaud, was most probably — as the Chef de la Police did not hesitate to say — the very individual who had, . less than a week previously, entered Mrs. de Vere's bedroom and taken from it the braclet* t, on obtaining the fellow of which he had doubtless subsequently set his hsart !

To describe Lady Catherine's state of mind, when she became aware of the trick which had been played upon her, would be impossible. At first she seemed positively stunned by the magnitude of the blow, and refused to believe that through her own folly and self confidence she had merely doubled her loss, had parted with her prestige, and abdicated the right of reproaching her niece with the shortcoming* of which she had been guilty. Notwithstanding all the well-directed efforts of the Paris police, and' the offer of areward of five hundred pounds for the recovery of the missing jewels, the thief remains to this day undiscovered. The subject is so sore a one to Lady Catherine Fairfax, that any allusion to it is carefully avoided by her friends. She is, however, many a year too old to be permanently improved by the rude lesson which she on that memorable occasion received.