第82章

At Number Thirteen Rutherford Street, Soho, there is a stationer's shop.It is kept by one Mr.Yatman.He is a married man, but has no family.Besides Mr.and Mrs.Yatman, the other inmates in the house are a lodger, a young single man named Jay, who occupies the front room on the second floor--a shopman, who sleeps in one of the attics, and a servant-of-all-work, whose bed is in the back kitchen.Once a week a charwoman comes to help this servant.These are all the persons who, on ordinary occasions, have means of access to the interior of the house, placed, as a matter of course, at their disposal.Mr.Yatman has been in business for many years, carrying on his affairs prosperously enough to realize a handsome independence for a person in his position.Unfortunately for himself, he endeavored to increase the amount of his property by speculating.He ventured boldly in his investments; luck went against him; and rather less than two years ago he found himself a poor man again.

All that was saved out of the wreck of his property was the sum of two hundred pounds.

Although Mr.Yatman did his best to meet his altered circumstances, by giving up many of the luxuries and comforts to which he and his wife had been accustomed, he found it impossible to retrench so far as to allow of putting by any money from the income produced by his shop.The business has been declining of late years, the cheap advertising stationers having done it injury with the public.Consequently, up to the last week, the only surplus property possessed by Mr.Yatman consisted of the two hundred pounds which had been recovered from the wreck of his fortune.This sum was placed as a deposit in a joint-stock bank of the highest possible character.

Eight days ago Mr.Yatman and his lodger, Mr.Jay, held a conversation on the subject of the commercial difficulties which are hampering trade in all directions at the present time.Mr.

Jay (who lives by supplying the newspapers with short paragraphs relating to accidents, offenses, and brief records of remarkable occurrences in general--who is, in short, what they call a penny-a-liner) told his landlord that he had been in the city that day and heard unfavorable rumors on the subject of the joint-stock banks.The rumors to which he alluded had already reached the ears of Mr.Yatman from other quarters, and the confirmation of them by his lodger had such an effect on his mind--predisposed as it was to alarm by the experience of his former losses--that he resolved to go at once to the bank and withdraw his deposit.It was then getting on toward the end of the afternoon, and he arrived just in time to receive his money before the bank closed.

He received the deposit in bank-notes of the following amounts:

one fifty-pound note, three twenty-pound notes, six ten-pound notes, and six five-pound notes.His object in drawing the money in this form was to have it ready to lay out immediately in trifling loans, on good security, among the small tradespeople of his district, some of whom are sorely pressed for the very means of existence at the present time.Investments of this kind seemed to Mr.Yatman to be the most safe and the most profitable on which he could now venture.

He brought the money back in an envelope placed in his breast pocket, and asked his shopman, on getting home, to look for a small, flat, tin cash-box, which had not been used for years, and which, as Mr.Yatman remembered it, was exactly of the right size to hold the bank-notes.For some time the cash-box was searched for in vain.Mr.Yatman called to his wife to know if she had any idea where it was.The question was overheard by the servant-of-all-work, who was taking up the tea-tray at the time, and by Mr.Jay, who was coming downstairs on his way out to the theater.Ultimately the cash-box was found by the shopman.Mr.

Yatman placed the bank-notes in it, secured them by a padlock, and put the box in his coat pocket.It stuck out of the coat pocket a very little, but enough to be seen.Mr.Yatman remained at home, upstairs, all that evening.No visitors called.At eleven o'clock he went to bed, and put the cash-box under his pillow.

When he and his wife woke the next morning the box was gone.

Payment of the notes was immediately stopped at the Bank of England, but no news of the money has been heard of since that time.

So far the circumstances of the case are perfectly clear.They point unmistakably to the conclusion that the robbery must have been committed by some person living in the house.Suspicion falls, therefore, upon the servant-of-all-work, upon the shopman, and upon Mr.Jay.The two first knew that the cash-box was being inquired for by their master, but did not know what it was he wanted to put into it.They would assume, of course, that it was money.They both had opportunities (the servant when she took away the tea, and the shopman when he came, after shutting up, to give the keys of the till to his master) of seeing the cash-box in Mr.Yatman's pocket, and of inferring naturally, from its position there, that he intended to take it into his bedroom with him at night.

Mr.Jay, on the other hand, had been told, during the afternoon's conversation on the subject of joint-stock banks, that his landlord had a deposit of two hundred pounds in one of them.He also knew that Mr.Yatman left him with the intention of drawing that money out; and he heard the inquiry for the cash-box afterward, when he was coming downstairs.He must, therefore, have inferred that the money was in the house, and that the cash-box was the receptacle intended to contain it.That he could have had any idea, however, of the place in which Mr.Yatman intended to keep it for the night is impossible, seeing that he went out before the box was found, and did not return till his landlord was in bed.Consequently, if he committed the robbery, he must have gone into the bedroom purely on speculation.