The Miser's Hoard

Written by William Shepard

This is what my editor called a “twofer,” a story that has a second act, increasing reader appeal and, he seemed sure, subscriptions to our newspaper, The Clarion. That is why he kept me on the story after the original discovery. That and the fact that aside from his worthless nephew, I was The Clarion’s only reporter.

You remember what happened. Certainly if you are one of our readers, you do. It was at the old Entwhistle place, which used to be a mansion, back in the days when it was kept up well. Old Miser Entwhistle, folks around here had called him. But they also noticed that he seemed to be riding out the Depression pretty well. He never had to put his mansion up for sale, although his business, commercial real estate, pretty much collapsed during the Depression. Still, there had been enough money to support two more generations of Entwhistles, including fancy colleges, until the money ran out.

Then John Entwhistle, Junior, the last owner, had sold the mansion just before he died to a couple with stars in their eyes from Crystal City, Sarah and Bob Parsons, who had always wanted to run a B and B. At least that is what they said. We all thought that while the business was getting started, with extensive renovations needed to make the place over into rooms that people would actually want to stay in, that they had something else in mind. Maybe what they were really up to was looking for the money that Miser Entwhistle was said to have hidden around the house somewhere.

It wasn’t until the renovations had been going on for some six months that the find was made. Now, if you wanted a general contractor around this town, Sam Greenway was your man. Honest and diligent, he would do a reliable job, right up to code specifications. What he couldn’t do himself, he’d subcontract to trustworthy people, local mostly. Sam did all the drywall work himself, and when he said that a wall needed replacement, because the wood had rotted, or there was termite damage, even if you couldn’t see it, people trusted Sam. And it was when Sam was tearing down a wall on the mansion’s top floor, in Miser Entwhistle’s old bedroom study, that he made the find. It must have been Entwhistle’s final hoard. They were old bills, issued some time in the 1920s, and they looked uncirculated to me.

I know the value exactly because when he found the miser’s hoard, honest Sam made two telephone calls immediately, the first to Bob Parsons, and the other to my editor at The Chronicle. I was sent over to check out the story, which I’m sure you read the next day. He left things just as he had found them, in a leather wallet inside an old rusting tin box behind the dry wall, lid opened to show the leather wallet inside.

When I drove up to the house, Bob and Sarah Parsons had just arrived. “Let’s count it,” I said. I did, with the other three looking on. That’s how I knew there was exactly $820, in tens and twenties, with one fifty-dollar bill at the end of the roll of bills.

Bob Parsons was all for splitting the money then and there. “Heck, Sam, you keep my share – it’s about what I owe you anyway.”

Sam was more cautious. “It’s not that I believe in finders keepers,” he said, “but who knows who legally owns this money?”

“We do,” said Bob Parsons. “After all, we own the house. But you’ll deserve a share for finding the money?” He put the old leather wallet on the table. “Say,” he said, “let’s take a look at what we found.” He took a $50 bill from the wallet and stared at it. “Looks new to me. What’s a gold certificate?”

He handed the bill to Sam, who said, “That’s odd. It is signed by Treasury Secretary A. W. Mellon, and it’s dated 1928.”

“Let me look at that,” Sarah said. She took her reading glasses from her purse, fumbled for a tissue, and then turning to face the window, blew her nose, then held the bill up to the light. “This looks phoney to me,” she declared dismissively. “Are you even sure they are real?” She handed the bill to Sam, who put it back in the wallet.

“You’re all forgetting something,” I said. “What about the Entwhistle family? I’m no lawyer, but who can say that they don’t have some rights to the money?” They looked at me, as the representative of the local newspaper, and hence a solid local citizen. (No sense in telling them that this was my first job, and that I was actually from Pittsburgh!)

“Well,” I said, answering my own assertion, “as it happens there are some Entwhistles still in town. They live on the next block from this old mansion, come to think of it. We ought to see them about this as well.”

The four of us strolled down the block and knocked on the door. Sure enough, John Entwhistle III, direct descendant of old Miser Entwhistle, answered the door. He was intrigued by the story, as the four of us sat in his living room. I showed him the leather wallet, which I had carried from the Parsons house, rubber bands sealing it tight.

“I don’t know what the law is, either,” he said at length. “We could split it somehow.”

“I’d be amenable to that,” Sam chimed in. “I could always use some extra money.”

“No, I don’t think so,” said Sarah Parsons. “We own that house now, after all.”

Since nobody had a better idea, and we have a safe at The Chronicle, I proposed that we all go to the newspaper. John’s car was handy, so they agreed to drive in his car. John looked at the money in the leather wallet without counting it, then put the wallet in his right hand coat pocket until it could be safeguarded. Sam went with him to the kitchen, where he got his car keys. Then they drove off, Greenway in the front seat, and the Parsons couple in back. I followed them in my car.

We met with my editor when we arrived. “Darndest thing I ever heard of,” he said, but then he agreed that the money could be safeguarded in my office safe. His secretary, Sally Cartwright, came into his office, producing a large manila envelope. She put the leather wallet inside the envelope. I then opened my safe and locked it. No need to change the combination, since I was the only one who knew it.

Three days later, after their lawyers had had a field day, Bob and Sarah Parsons, Entwhistle and Greenway met again at the editor’s office. Why spend it all on legal fees? They had decided to split the money, with Greenway getting $220, while Entwhistle would get $300, and the Parsons couple would split the remaining $300. It sounded fair to me.

I opened the safe, pulled out the manila envelope and extracted the leather wallet. I counted the money, and there was $820 all right, but this time, the $50 bill was a Federal Reserve note issued just a few years ago.

“What the blazes is going on here?” I said. “There’s been a switch.” I showed them the $50 note, with the signature of Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, President George W. Bush’s first Secretary of the Treasury, big as life. The bill was dated 2003.

“What difference does that make?” Greenway said.

“A lot,” I answered. “That $50 gold certificate was probably worth a great deal more than the entire $820 in today’s money. So we’d better find it. I suggest we leave the room, and leave that recent $50 on the table. If anyone wants to come in and replace that new bill with the old one, that will save a lot of trouble … because I know who made the switch.”