Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 115, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 May 1914 — HELD FOR I RANSOM [ARTICLE]

HELD FOR I RANSOM

By CLARA INEZ DEACON.

Two persons in the world knew just how mean old John Beckworth was. They were his wife and son. The wife was a humble little woman who had never dared to argue or to differ, and whose existence was scarcely suspected by the world. The son, David, had grown up in such a mixture that hi& face carried the look of a man puzzled to know why he was here on earth at all. As a child he had been awed and frightened by his father. As a youth he had been made to feel that he was in the way. At the age of eighteen he was sent away to school. He was a gawk and an Ignoramus. For the first six months he was the butt of the school. Then he began to pick up and astonished everyone. Old John Beckworth passed as an erratic. Many a man’s meanness has been covered up under that term. He was a note-shaver and a money-lender, and he spared no debtor. There were two- or three business men with whom he wanted to stand well, and as they had spoken of the son he sent him to school. At the same time his table was so meager that his wife went about half-starved. After two years David was ordered home and the father said: ‘‘lt is time you began earning your own living.” “I am willing to,” was-the reply. “Hornaday will take you on at his grocery at five dollars a week. You will pay me $4.50 of that for board." Like the mother, the son had never disputed a matter with his father. He did not begin now. With only a dollar or two in his pocket he walked out of the house and faded the world. In the two years he had acquired selfconfidence. His father would have told him that without his aid he must wander the streets and starve. The young man did neither. He secured a fairly good position almost at once, Improved it, and it was a year before he saw his father again. When he visited his mother it was Becretly. He came back one evening to see his father. “There are two things I wish to advise with you about. Firstly, If you can Bpare me $2,000, I can buy into a business that is making money, and , shall ask no more of you," he said. “Not a penny!” firmly replied the father. ' “You will not even lend it to me?” “I will not!” “Secondly, I am In love with and engaged to a nice young girl, and I thought I ought to tell you that we are soon to be married." “Wlyr should you have cope here to tell me that?” “Because you are my father.” “Umph!” “Will you attend the wedding?” “I will not!” “Will you permit mother to?” “I will not!” David Beckworth was married a few weeks later % Old John Beckworth occupied as an office a ramshackle old shanty in a neighborhood none too reputable. He did it to save rent. As it was a matter of common gossip that he always had a large sum of money with him and that he was in his office until a late hour in the evening, he had been warned over and over again that a plot would be hatched against him. He paid not the slightest heed to the warnings, and at length he was caught. One evening as the old man sat at his desk with his back to the door a man sneaked in and threw a cloth saturated with chloroform over his head. When the victim recovered his wits he was not only lying on the floor of an empty house, but was tied down and gagged. He had been taken out of the back door of his office and into the hack door of a cottage facing the other street. Young Beckworth was boarding when married, and after a few weeks the question of keeping house came up. It was the wife that must do the house-hunting. In her wanderings she came upon a cottage to please her, and got the key from the agent to inspect the place. In one of the bedrooms she discovered old John Beckworth. It was the day after he had been kidnaped, and he had not been reported missing yet. She had Been him a few times and recognized him at once. She had also learned from her husband about his meanness. Her first thought was to rush out and give the alarm. Her second was to have a little talk first. The old man had had a pretty hard time of it since recovering consciousness. As it happened, he had only about a hundred dollars in his pocket when made captive, and this was far from satisfying the hopes of his captors, of whom there were three. They wanted his bank check for -SIO,OOO. “You don’t get it for even a dollar!” was his reply. ! They lighted a candle and burned bis feet, but he jrould not give in. They bent two of his fingers back, but still he defied them. They used him cruelly in various v&y* for two or three hourß, and then left the bouse with the threat to return at night and kill him if he did not give up. , He had passed many hours bound and gagged when the young wife discovered him. He recognized her, as she did him, and the first words he uttered as she removed the gag were: “This is some of your work-—yours And David's!” “Another speech like that and I will replace the gag!” she replied. “Then who did do it?" if) Y

"How do I know? r cams here to rent the place and fottnd you thus.” * ‘Release me at once!” ■ . “I will not!” * The old man tried to shout, but his voice was gone. He had struggled against his bonds for hours and_. learned that it was useless. “Well, how much ransom do you want?” he finally asked. “Not a cent, and you know it! David has told me what a mean and unnatural father you have always been, and how you have been a hog and a tyrant to your wife. Do you glory in being a hated man, Mr. Beckworth?” “Who hates me?” “Everybody that knows you well. There isn’t a man in this city you can call your friend. Don’t you know the children run after you and call you names?” -i:--/;.. “They ought to be arrested!” he mumbled. “And what ought to be done with you? You have tried your best to spdll the lives of your wife and son. You have turned sick husbands out oh the streets. You have evicted widows and, orphans. Your want of mercy has caused at least two suicides. No one has ever injured you. You have done what you have done because you are a human hyena.' You have lost a hundred dollars. If it had been your all there would have been general rejoicing. If you had been found dead here nobobdy would have mourned you!” “David has. never talked to me as you have,” said the old man. “Because you have made him fear and hate you.” * “But I sent him to school.” “And every day he was there was a humiliation to him, and you were glad of it. Oh, what a devil a human being can become!” “If I’ve been a Jittle hard on David 1 Fm sorry for it. If he’d talked up to me mebbe I’d have been different.” “And maybe you were always hoping he would, so that you could find excuse for turning him out of doors.” “If he wants that money yet—” “We wouldn’t take a penny from you! No beggar in the street would accept your alms if he knew your mean nature!” “But about the ransom?” he asked after a silence. “It Is this, take a whole day to think things over and see if there is ’ any hope for you. If you conclude that you must continue to he a human hyena if you live, then hang or dfown yourself! I will now release you.” “If this should get out —” “You -would be ridiculed to the day of your death, and everybody would say that it served your right. I shall not even tell David about it.” When old John Beckworth reached home after an absence of 20 hour 3, in which his wife had worried herself almost ill, she dared to look at him interrogatively for the first timo in her life. “I had to go out of town on business,” he said as he kissed her. The. old man kept to his promise. For a whole day he was reviewing his .deeds, and there were immediate results. He owned a much better cottage than the one In which he had been held to ransom, and within a week it had been deeded to David tad his wife and partly furnished. Then he presented himself at their rooms and said: “David, I’ve been chasing some of the meanness out of my system. It Came hard, but I did it. You can have all the money you want to go into business!” “But, father —” “And I hear that your wife is looking for a cottage to rent.” “I think I found one today,” answered the bride. “Don’t bother with it. Here is a deed to one as a bridal present!” Eyes bulged out and mouths stood open. “And don’t forget mother aDd the old home!” More mouth —more bulge! “And, David,” concluded the father, “if this wife ever starts to give you any advice don’t squelch her. It till be worth listening to and obeying!” (Copyright, 1914, by the McClure Newspaper Syndicate.)