They could only give wild guesses. Nothing has been seen or heard of him from that hour to this. They put advertisements for him in the papers, without result. Then, as they felt that living the sort of life which he probably was living--that is, if he was living at all--it was within the range of probability that a newspaper would never come his way, and that he would never glance at it if it did, they distributed handbills broadcast through the slums of London, beseeching him to apply to a certain address, and offering a reward to any one who could give an account of his proceedings after the night on which he had taken himself away.
To those handbills they did receive answers--in abundance. There were evidently plenty of people who were willing, nay, anxious, to lay their hands on that reward, just as there seemed several Charles Ballingalls with whom they were acquainted. But no one of them was the Charles Ballingall. More than once they thought they had chanced on him at last; the stories told were such very specious ones, and they followed up the trail till it proved beyond all manner of doubt to be a false one. When the Charles Ballingall to whom it referred was unearthed, he proved, in each and every case, to be not in the least like theirs.
And so the presumption is that the man is dead. He was, probably, as the doctor suggested, more than half out of his mind on that eventful night; his sins had brought him suffering enough to have driven the average mortal mad. It is not unlikely that the strange things which then transpired, completing the work of destruction, robbed him of his few remaining senses; and that, at that last moment, when Madge Brodie announced her discovery of what he had sought with so much pain and with such ardour, the irony of fate which seemed to have pursued him, pressing on him still, had driven him out into the night, a raving lunatic, seeking anywhere and anyhow for escape from the burden of life which haunted him.
God alone can tell where and how he found it.
CHAPTER XX
[THE FORTUNE]
And the fortune?
This remark may be made--that had they not found it when they did there would very shortly have been nothing left to find. Mr. Thomas Ossington had chosen for the treasure-chest a simple opening in the wall, to which access had originally been gained by touching a spring. This spring had been concealed under what had probably been a picture of a dog's head; the fifth alternating dog's head on the right-hand side of the bedroom door. When you pressed it a door flew open. But this primitive treasure-chest, if not entirely obvious to the world at large, was open to the rats and mice, and similar small deer, who had their happy hunting-grounds within the wall itself. The result was that, when the contents were examined, it was found that the bundles of bank-notes had been gnawed, in some cases to unrecognisable shreds; that meals--hearty ones of the cut-and-come-again description--had been made of parchment deeds, bonds, share certificates, and similar impediments; that coin--gold coin--had been contained in bags, which bags had been consumed, even to the strings which once had tied them. The coins lay under accumulations of dust, in heaps upon the floor. On several were actually well-marked indentations, showing that sharp, gleaming teeth had applied to them a stringent test before finally deciding that they really were not good to eat. A curious spectacle the whole presented when first brought to the light of day.
However, in but few cases had the damage proceeded to lengths which had rendered what was left absolutely worthless--discovery had come just in the nick of time. The Bank of England was good enough to hand over cash in exchange for the fragments of all notes of which there was satisfactory evidence that there had been once a whole. The various documents which represented property were none of them in a condition which rendered recognition altogether impossible, and when it was once established what they were, for all intents and purposes they were as available for their original use as if they had been in a condition of pristine freshness.
Altogether the find represented a sum of something like £40,000. Not a large fortune, as fortunes go, but still a comfortable capital to be the possessor of. If fate only had been kind to him, and the men and women who formed his world of finer texture, Tom Ossington might have been as happy as the days were long.