MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE OF MR. COWDRICK.—THE “CRAB.”—“HEAR BOTH SIDES.”—A SKELETON DISCOVERED.—A POWERFUL SERMON. B
EFORE another Sunday came, the community was shocked and startled by the announcement that Mr. Cowdrick, the banker, had suddenly and mysteriously disappeared. What had become of him nobody seemed to know. Even Mrs. Cowdrick apparently did not know. The friends who promptly called upon her, partly for the purpose of offering her their sympathy and partly with an intent to gratify their curiosity, ascertained, during the intervals of her hysterical spasms, that she cherished a wild and rather incoherent theory that Mr. Cowdrick had been brutally assassinated by some person and for some cause unknown. And this theory obtained some acceptance for a time among amiable people, who were disposed to take the most charitable view of the situation. But the number of these speedily diminished when the newspapers, a day or two later,150 revealed the result of an official examination of the affairs of Mr. Cowdrick’s bank. The public then learned that that financial institution was rotten through and through; that Mr. Cowdrick and his partners in crime had not only used, for purposes of private speculation, the money of the depositors, but that they had stolen everything of value that had been committed to their care, and had left the bank an absolute, hopeless wreck, and reduced the innocent and unsuspicious stockholders to beggary.
The public excitement, of course, was great. Mrs. Cowdrick’s friends neglected her. The rich and influential De Flukes actually insulted her by sending to recall an invitation to their reception that had been sent to her. As if Mrs. Cowdrick could have attended the reception at any rate! This was the cruellest thing of all, to Mrs. Cowdrick. She broke down completely and went to bed, where Leonie waited upon her to supply her with almost alarming quantities of camphor and smelling-salts.
As no traces of the fugitive could be found; as no one could testify to having seen him leave the city; and as the detective force, after following out without success any number of what they considered excellent clues, appeared to have relapsed into a normal condition of imbecility and indifference, the conclusion reached by many persons was, that Cowdrick had destroyed himself; and the energetic151 and enterprising coroner, McSorley, who had just been elected upon the Democratic ticket, went to work to drag all the rivers and creeks and ponds in the neighborhood.
Colonel Hoker, the editor of the Crab, the leading daily paper, advocated a dozen different theories in turn, and his indomitable reporters not only secured early and accurate reports of the condition of the bank, but they obtained expressions of opinion from at least thirty eminent citizens who really knew no more about the matter than other people, and they watched Cowdrick’s house so closely, and were so successful in establishing confidential relations with the chambermaid, that they were able to tell how often the doctor called to see Mrs. Cowdrick, what quantity of reinvigorating drugs she consumed, how her medicine agreed with her, and what she had every day for dinner.
A country wherein a tyrant’s power is used to shackle the press, and to rob it of freedom of utterance, does not know how much it misses.
The uncertainty in which the fate of Mr. Cowdrick was involved, made it exceedingly difficult for Colonel Hoker to discuss the bank sensation in his editorial columns. If he could have felt sure that the unhappy fugitive had really slain himself, the course of the Colonel would have been clear; for then he could with safety have directed public attention to the peculiar atrocity of the transactions152 at the bank; he could have held the miserable offender up before the public eye to point to him as an awful example to others, and especially to the young, and he could have preached many eloquent sermons upon the text, “Be sure your sins will find you out!”
But while a chance remained that Cowdrick was still alive and might return, the Colonel knew that it was the duty of persons upon whom it devolved to form public opinion through the instrumentality of the press, to be careful. He had learned from extended observation that an absent offender who has been roughly used as a warning against pursuance of the paths of vice, sometimes comes back, and, after gaining possession of power and riches, manifests a disposition to make things very uncomfortable for the eminent journalists who have used him as a basis for their denunciations of sin. And so the Colonel discussed the matter in the Crab only in a general way; lamenting the loss to the stockholders; expressing regret that “one of our most eminent citizens should be, for a time at least, in some respects under a cloud,” and urging that perhaps the disaster might fairly be attributed to the spirit of wild speculation which seemed at times to animate entire communities, rather than to a deliberate purpose to inflict injury upon confiding and innocent persons.
The dexterity displayed by Colonel Hoker, in153 keeping the Crab in such a nice position that while it apparently conceded much to public sentiment and the requirements of morality, it yet left a very wide margin for the contingency of Cowdrick’s vindication and restoration to prosperity, was really marvellous.
But the nicest ingenuity sometimes will not avail against accident, or rather against that Fate which ordains catastrophe with ironical contempt for human foresight.
The Colonel was compelled to leave town for a few days, and in order to make the Crab entirely safe, he penned two editorial articles, one to be used in the event of the discovery of Cowdrick’s dead body during his absence, the other to be inserted if Cowdrick should return alive to face his accusers and his fate.
The former article ran in this wise:—
“The Way of the Transgressor.
“It has not often been our lot to present to our readers more striking proof than that which is found in our columns to-day of the fact that Satan makes hard bargains. It is now positively ascertained that Cowdrick the swindler, forger and thief, driven by desperation at the exposure of his awful crimes, and, let us hope, for the sake of human nature, by the stings of a conscience which could not hearken with indifference to the cries of the widows154 and orphans reduced at one fell blow to beggary, took his own life, and so ended a career of crime which honest men shrink from contemplating. It is, perhaps, for the best, however much we may regret that this wretched felon, burdened with guilt and shame, should have robbed the law of its right to punish, and should have gone into eternity unshriven, with the guilt of self-destruction added to the mountain of sins for which already he was required to give account. We shrink from discussion of the dreadful details of this shocking and sickening tragedy; but it will not have been enacted in vain if it shall seem to warn those who are tempted, as this man was, to surrender honesty at the demand of greed, and to permit the maddening thirst for gain to persuade them to trample in the dust their obligations to society, to their families, and to those who had given them their trust.”
The second article pursued rather a different line of thought. It was to the following effect:—
“A Demand for Fair Play.
“We take a great deal of pleasure in announcing that Henry P. Cowdrick, Esq., the well-known banker, whose name has been before the public for some days past in connection with some unpleasant, but not yet positively authentic, rumors, has returned to the city in the enjoyment of excellent health. It is understood that an immediate further155 examination into the affairs of the bank will be made with the assistance of Mr. Cowdrick, and we merely express the general wish when we say that we hope to have some of the transactions that have excited severest comment explained in such a manner as to vindicate Mr. Cowdrick of every suspicion of wilful wrong-doing. Meantime, while this inquiry is pending, and while Mr. Cowdrick is preparing his statement of the case, it is only just to him to ask that there shall be a suspension of public opinion. His former high standing, his services to this community, the obscurity in which the recent operations of the bank are shrouded, and the most ordinary requirements of fair play, all combine to make it desirable that public opinion shall not pronounce a final verdict before the case is made up. We need not say how earnestly we trust that Mr. Cowdrick will emerge from his troubles with his honor unstained, and his reputation as a faithful guardian of the trusts confided to him, untarnished.”
As a precautionary measure, the preparation of these articles appeared to be in a high sense judicious; and the Colonel naturally felt that the Crab might be depended on to keep nicely upon the right track until he should come home. But, alas! upon the next day but one after his departure, the foreman of the Crab composing-room, either mistaking his instructions, or being too much in haste in arranging his material, placed both articles together156 in the form, and the Crab came out in the morning to provoke the mirth of the town, to excite the contempt of its enemies, and to drive the unhappy associate editors of the paper to madness and despair. The manner in which the rival journals commented upon the occurrence was both brutal and infamous; and when the subject became a little stale, the editors of the rival journals put the Crab articles carefully away in scrap books, so as to make sure of having them ready for irritating and badgering Colonel Hoker upon every favorable opportunity during all the years to come.
The Colonel himself, upon discerning the catastrophe in a copy of the paper which he picked up at his hotel, ............