It lacked three minutes of five by the big clock in the tower when the east-bound Chicago express rumbled into the station at Buffalo. The train had not yet come to a standstill when a hatless man jumped from the platform of the rear sleeping-car and ran across the tracks into the depot restaurant. A few minutes later he reappeared, carrying a cup of coffee in one hand and a small paper bag in the other.
With these he hurriedly made his way back
to the car through a straggling possession of drowsy tourists who were taking
advantage of the train’s five minutes’ stop to breathe the crisp morning
air. The last of these had already
resumed his seat when the man without a hat again appeared at the lunch
counter, returned the borrowed dishes, and ordered coffee for himself. He had just picked up the cup and was raising
it to his lips when the conductor’s “All aboard” rang through the station.
Leaving the coffee untouched, he thrust a
five-dollar bill at the attendant, grabbed his change, and started in pursuit
of the moving train. He had almost
reached it when an unlucky stumble sent the coins in his hand rolling in all
directions along the floor. Quickly
recovering himself and paying no heed to his losses, he redoubled his efforts,
and though losing ground at every step, kept up the hopeless chase to the end
of the station. There he stopped,
panting for breath. The slip had proved
fatal He had missed the train!
As he stood staring wildly through the
clouds of dust that rose from the track, a young woman, evidently deeply
agitated, suddenly appeared in the doorway of the vanishing car. Upon seeing him, she made frantic attempts to
leap from the platform, when she was seized by a man and pulled back into the
car. When the door had closed upon the
two the bareheaded man in the station faced about and philosophically muttered:
---
“It’s fate!”
Then, after pausing a few moments, as if
to collect his thoughts, he slowly retraced his steps to the scene of his
mishap and began searching for his lost change.
Circling closely about, his eyes scanning the floor, he succeeded in recovering
first one and then another of the missing coins, until finally, after repeated
rounds, he lacked only one dollar of the whole amount. At this point he paused, clinked the
recovered coins in his hand, looked at his watch, and then started on a final
round. As this failed to reveal the
missing piece, he gave up the search, transferred the contents of his hands to
his trousers/ pocket, and started in the direction of the telegraph office.
He had proceeded perhaps twenty paces when
it occurred to him to turn about and east one more look along the floor. As he did so his eye fell upon a shinning
object lodged in an opening between the rail and planked floor, a few feet from
where he stood. He stopped to examine
it, and, seeing that it was the missing coin, reached for it, but found the
opening too narrow to admit his fingers.
He tried to recover the piece with his pocket-knife, and failing in this
attempt, took his lead pencil, with which, after repeated attempts, he
succeeded in tossing it upon the floor.
With an air of subdued satisfaction he
walked away, and was about to convey the coin to his pocket when a sudden
impulse led him to examine it Holding
it up before his eyes, he stopped, scrutinized every detail, and as he turned
it over and over the puzzled look on his face changed to one of rigid
astonishment. For fully a moment he
stood as if transfixed; then rousing himself and looking anxiously about as if
to see if any one had observed him, he hurried to the cashier’s desk in the restaurant,
and, producing the bright silver dollar, asked the girl if she happened to
remember from whom she received it.
She didn’t remember, but would exchange it
for another, she said, if he wished.
Politely declining the offer and apologizing for having troubled her, he
said that, as the coin he held in his hand was separating a living wife from
her husband, he wished very much to find some trace of its former owner. “The girl looked up, thought for a moment,
then, pulling out the cash drawer, and examining its contents, said she might
have received it from the conductor of the Lake Shore express which had left
for Cleveland at 3.15. She now recalled
that when she came on duty at midnight there was no silver dollar among the
change in the cash drawer, and that the only one she remembered receiving was
from the sleeping-car Conductor Parkins.
The man thanked her and hastened to the
telegraph office, where he sent this message: ---
“Conductor, East Bound
Chicago Express, Utica, N.Y.
“Please ask lady in section seven of
sleeping-car Catawba to await her husband at Delevan House, Albany.
“A.J. Hobart.”
After requesting the operator to kindly
rush the dispatch, he proceeded to the ticket office, procured a seat in the
5.45 fast mail for Cleveland, and with his hand clutching the coin in his
pocket and his eyes fixed upon the floor meditatively paced up and down the
platform, waiting for the train to arrive.
As he did so he was disconcerted to find
himself the object of wide-spread curiosity; even the newsboys with the morning
papers favored him with a inquiring stare as they passed. Wondering what was amiss, he suddenly put his
hand to his head, which furnished an instant explanation. He was hatless.
Looking at the big clock, he saw that it
lacked ten minutes of train time, and, hastily crossing over to the farther
track, he disappeared through the west end of the station.
Among the passengers who boarded the 5.45
fast mail for Cleveland when it thundered into the station, ten minutes later,
was the bareheaded gentleman of a few minutes ago, now wearing s stylish
derby. Once in the train, he settled
himself in his seat with a sigh of relief and satisfaction. Not until then did the really remarkable
character of the situation dawn upon him.
On the very day which he had hailed as one of the happiest of his life
he was traveling at the rate of about sixty miles an hour away from the girl he
loved devotedly and to whom he had been married just seventeen hours. A queer opening of his honeymoon! In his anxiety to get a cup of coffee for his
wife, he had lost his hat, then lost his change, and, lastly, lost the train.
Why did he not follow his bride at
once? What mysterious spell had come
upon this seventeen-hour bridegroom that he should fly from her as swiftly as
the fast express could carry him? His
hand held the solution of the problem---simple, yet unexplainable---a silver
dollar! It held the secret he must
unravel before he could return to her; it was not then that he loved her less,
but that this bit of precious metal had suddenly developed an occult power that
had turned their paths, for the present, in opposite directions.
At the first stopping place he sent
another message, which read as follows:---
‘Mrs. A.J. Hobart,
Delavan House,
Albany, N.Y.
“Cannot possibly reach Albany before
to-morrow morning.
“Ansel”
With his brain filled with excited
thoughts, the young man entered the sleeping-car office at Cleveland four hours
later and asked for Conductor
Parkins. He was told that this official would not be
on duty before night, though possibly he might be at his home on St. Clair
Street.
To the address given him the indefatigable
young man repaired at once, and found the genial gentleman for whom he sought
breakfasting with his family. He kindly
gave audience at once to his visitor.
“This coin which you gave the cashier of
the restaurant in Buffalo,” said the latter, revealing it in the palm of his
hand; “can you tell me from whom you received it?”
Parkins remembered receiving cash from but
two customers the night before, one a traveling man who got off in Cleveland,
and the other a woman whose destination was Erie. The stranger might ascertain their names by
consulting the car diagram at the ticket office. “You seem interested in the coin,” he added,
smiling.
“I am for a good reason,” laughed the
young man in reply. “It is separating a
man from his wife.” And with these
enigmatical words he made his adieu, with thanks, hastened to the ticket
office, and an hour later was scouring the city for one Richard Spears.
The register of the Stillman House
contained the freshly written name “Richard Spears, Providence, R.I. but that
gentleman, when found in his room showing samples of hardware to a prospective
buyer, regretted that he could not throw any light on the particular dollar his
visitor held up to his gaze, and remembered distinctly that he had given the
conductor a two-dollar bill in payment for his birth. He came from a section, said he, where people
took no stock in silver dollars.
It was three o’clock in the afternoon when
a man got off the train at Erie and inquired of the cabman and depot master
regarding a lady who had arrived on the early train from Buffalo. An hour later he was driving along a country
road some miles south of the town inquiring for the Wickliffe farm.
As he finally drove up to the house which
was his destination he was conscious of a strange excitement. This, he realized, was probably his only
remaining chance to trace the coin by whose mysterious power he had been drawn
into this wild chase with the hope of identifying its former owner. He took a hasty note of the general features
of the place. It had a comfortable,
well-to-do look; a two-story house, white, with green blinds. Most of them were closed, as is customary
with country houses, but the windows at the right of the big front door,
opening on a sun porch, were shaded only by white curtains. There was a sound of voices within as he
stepped up to the door and rapped.
Mrs. Wickliffe, a pleasant-faced little
woman, sat surrounded by three children and a neighbor’s wife, to whom she was
displaying some purchases. One of the
children opened the door admitting the stranger into this animated scene, she
was standing before a mirror trying on a new bonnet, which was eliciting extravagant
praises from the neighbor.
After listening to his story, Mrs.
Wickliffe said that her memory was so treacherous that she really couldn’t say
for certain whether or not she gave the conductor the shining dollar, but that
if she did she must have received it from her son in Germantown, Pa., from a
visit to whose house she had just returned, and who before her departure had
exchanged some money for her. She added
that, as she took no interest in coin collecting, a dollar was simply a dollar
to her and that she thought a woman was very foolish to take up with a fad
which might ruin her happiness.
Her unknown caller thought so, too,
admired her taste in millinery, took the address of her son, and, clutching the
metal coin more firmly than ever, drove back to Erie, where he boarded the New
York night express.
To the young man who still clutched the
silver dollar sleep was impossible. A
multitude of exciting fancies crossed his brain. The developments he hoped to bring about, the
curious solution of the problem, its effect upon his future and the future of
one so dear to him, ---
All this murdered sleep
for him as effectually as did the crime on Lady Macbeth’s soul. It drove him into the smoking-car, where he
sank into a seat and planned and conjectured between puffs of Havana smoke
until the train reached Albany. So
completely absorbed had he become in the solution of this knotty problem in
which his accident of the morning had involved him, and so convinced was he
that the information must be for the time kept a secret, that he actually began
to dread what was clearly inevitable, --- the explanation he must shortly make
to his wife.
His inclination was to tell her his duty to
others forbade this. After wondering
over the matter, he decided to explain that he had a happy surprise in store
for her, one that had an important bearing on their future, and which
unfortunately necessitated a change in their plans for a honeymoon in Europe.
This, on reaching the Delavan House, he
expressed to a very pretty and very anxious little woman who was awaiting him,
together with a good many other things not necessary to this story. And, instead of the steamer for Europe, the
reunited pair took a train for Philadelphia.
Early the next day the young man presented himself at the office of Dr.
James Wickliffe, at Germantown, who smilingly admitted having given the shining
dollar to his mother two days before. He
had received the coin from a patient, a letter-carrier named John Lennon, and
remembered it because of the following strange story related to him by Lennon
himself.
A few days before, the carrier was engaged
in delivering mail from door to door along Vine Street, Philadelphia when a
zigzag trip across the street and back again brought him to the narrow stairway
of a dingy brick house, in front of which hung an enormous brass key bearing
the word “Locksmith.” Here he paused to
draw a little parcel from his bundle. As
he did so he heard some thing fall with a metallic clink upon the stone
pavement. He looked and saw that it was
s silver dollar, which rolled toward the gutter and came to a stop close by the
curb. Hastening to pick it up, he
instantly dropped it with a cringe of pain.
The coin was almost red hot!
The letter-carrier stood nursing his hand
and thinking for two or three minutes.
Silver dollars do not commonly drop out of the sky. But that this one should thus fall like a
meteorite in a condition too heated for handling was certainly more than
surprising---it was astounding! The man
looked up at the dingy brick house and examined it attentively, noting the
ground floor was occupied as a green grocery and that all of the windows were
shut save one in the third story.
Then he kicked the mysterious coin into a
puddle, fished it out again with his fingers, and put it into his trousers’
pocket. He was about to investigate
further, when some small boys called his attention to the fact that it was the
first day of April, whereupon he proceeded on his way. He gave no further thought to the matter
until that night, when he found that his thumb and forefinger had been so badly
burned as to require treatment.
The next morning he called upon the
doctor, who dressed the painful hand and received the mysterious coin in
payment for his services.
That night, behind locked doors in one of
the officers’ rooms of the United States Mint in Chestnut Street, two men were
engaged in a long whispered conference.
The wife of one of the men as she sat in her room in the Continental
Hotel, anxiously waiting for her husband, was beginning to wonder whether after
all, marriage was a failure!
Two days later, in speaking of the seizure
of over forty thousand bogus silver dollars and the clever capture of three of
the most dangerous counterfeiters that ever attacked the currency of the United
States, the Daily New said:---
“The most remarkable part of the whole
story is that one of the coins fresh from the machine of one of the
counterfeiters, fell out of a third-story window near which he was working, was
picked up while almost red hot by a letter-carrier, and passed as genuine
through various hands until it reached Buffalo, where, by the merest accident,
I came into the possession of Mr. Ansel Hobart of the Secret Service. That gentleman noticed an imperfection at one
point of its rim, and succeeded in tracing the coin to the headquarters of the
gang on Vine Street in this city, where, under the cloak of a locksmith shop
and green grocery business, six hundred of the spurious coins were turned out
daily. So admirably were these
counterfeits executed as to defy scrutiny save by experts of the
Government. The coins were not cast in
molds after the ordinary fashion, but were struck with a die, and plated so
thickly with silver as to withstand tests by acids. The defect which led to the discovery was
found only in the one coin already spoken of, and it is supposed that it was
this defect that caused the piece to spring from the finishing machine and fall
out of the window.”
And the New York newspaper of three days
ago later contained the intelligence that the White Star steamer “Majestic,”
which sailed for Liverpool that day, had among her passengers Mr. and Mrs.
Ansel J. Hobart, of Chicago, Illinois.