Tales of Fantasy and Fact by Brander Matthews (i love reading .TXT) 📗

to tell them to send for it at once. Give it to the man who will come this afternoon with my card. Do you understand?"

"Cert," the boy answered. "If he 'ain't got your card, he don't get the clock."

"That's what I mean," Paul responded, as he left the office.

Before he reached the door he met Mr. Wheatcroft.

"Paul," cried the junior partner, explosively, "I've been thinking about that—about that—you know what I mean! And I have decided that we had better put a detective on this thing at once!"

"Yes," said Paul, "that's a good idea. In fact, I had just come to the same conclusion. I——"

Then he checked himself. He had turned round slightly to speak to Mr. Wheatcroft; he saw that Major Van Zandt was standing within ten feet of them, and he noticed that the old book-keeper's face was strangely pale.

III

During the next week the office of Whittier, Wheatcroft & Co. had its usual aspect of prosperous placidity. The routine work was done in the routine way; the porter opened the office every morning, and the office-boy arrived a few minutes after it was opened; the clerks came at nine, and a little later the partners were to be seen in the inner office reading the morning's correspondence.

The Whittiers, father and son, had had a discussion with Mr. Wheatcroft as to the most advisable course to adopt to prevent the future leakage of the trade secrets of the firm. The senior partner had succeeded in dissuading the junior partner from the employment of detectives.

"Not yet," he said, "not yet. These clerks have all served us faithfully for years, and I don't want to submit them to the indignity of being shadowed—that's what they call it, isn't it?—of being shadowed by some cheap hireling who may try to distort the most innocent acts into evidence of guilt, so that he can show us how smart he is."

"But this sort of thing can't go on forever," ejaculated Mr. Wheatcroft. "If we are to be underbid on every contract worth having, we might as well go out of the business!"

"That's true, of course," Mr. Whittier admitted; "but we are not sure that we are being underbid unfairly."

"The Tuxedo Company have taken away three contracts from us in the past two months," cried the junior partner; "we can be sure of that, can't we?"

"We have lost three contracts, of course," returned Mr. Whittier, in his most conciliatory manner, "and the Tuxedo people have captured them. But that may be only a coincidence, after all."

"It is a pretty expensive coincidence for us," snorted Mr. Wheatcroft.

"But because we have lost money," the senior partner rejoined gently, laying his hand on Mr. Wheatcroft's arm, "that's no reason why we should also lose our heads. It is no reason why we should depart from our old custom of treating every man fairly. If there is any one in our employ here who is selling us, why, if we give him rope enough he will hang himself, sooner or later."

"And before he suspends himself that way," cried Mr. Wheatcroft, "we may be forced to suspend ourselves."

"Come, come, Wheatcroft," said the senior partner, "I think we can afford to stand the loss a little longer. What we can't afford to do is to lose our self-respect by doing something irreparable. It may be that we shall have to employ detectives, but I don't think the time has come yet."

"Very well," the junior partner declared, yielding an unwilling consent. "I don't insist on it. I still think it would be best not to waste any more time—but I don't insist. What will happen is that we shall lose the rolling of those steel rails for the Springfield and Athens road—that's all."

Paul Whittier had taken no part in this discussion. He agreed with his father, and saw he had no need to urge any further argument.

Presently he asked when they intended to put in the bid for the rails. His father then explained that they were expecting a special estimate from the engineers at the Ramapo Works, and that it probably would be Saturday before this could be discussed by the partners and the exact figures of the proposed contract determined.

"And if we don't want to lose that contract for sure," insisted Mr. Wheatcroft, "I think we had better change the combination on that safe."

"May I suggest," said Paul, "that it seems to me to be better to leave the combination as it is. What we want to do is not to get this Springfield and Athens contract so much as to find out whether some one really is getting at the letter-book. Therefore we mustn't make it any harder for the some one to get at the letter-book."

"Oh, very well," Mr. Wheatcroft assented, a little ungraciously, "have it your own way. But I want you to understand now that I think you are only postponing the inevitable!"

And with that the subject was dropped. For several days the three men who were together for hours in the office of the Ramapo Iron and Steel Works refrained from any discussion of the question which was most prominent in their minds.

It was on Wednesday that the tall clock that Paul Whittier had broken returned from the repairer's. Paul himself helped the men to set it in its old place in the corner of the office, facing the safe, which occupied the corner diagonally opposite.

It so chanced that Paul came down late on Thursday morning, and perhaps this was the reason that a pressure of delayed work kept him in the office that evening long after every one else. The clerks had all gone, even Major Van Zandt, always the last to leave—and the porter had come in twice before the son of the senior partner was ready to go for the night. The gas was lighted here and there in the long, narrow, deserted store, as Paul walked through it from the office to the street. Opposite, the swift twilight of a New York November had already settled down on the city.

"Can't I carry yer bag for ye, Mister Paul?" asked the porter, who was showing him out.

"No, thank you, Mike," was the young man's answer. "That bag has very little in it. And, besides, I haven't got to carry it far."

The next morning Paul was the first of the three to arrive. The clerks were in their places already, but neither the senior nor the junior partner had yet come. The porter happened to be standing under the wagon archway as Paul Whittier was about to enter the store.

The young man saw the porter, and a mischievous smile hovered about the corners of his mouth.

"Mike," he said, pausing on the door-step, "do you think you ought to smoke while you are cleaning out our office in the morning?"

"Sure, I haven't had me pipe in me mouth this mornin' at all," the porter answered, taken by surprise.

"But yesterday morning?" Paul pursued.

"Yesterday mornin'!" Mike echoed, not a little puzzled.

"Yesterday morning at ten minutes before eight you were in the private office smoking a pipe."

"But how did you see me, Mr. Paul?" cried Mike, in amaze. "Ye was late in comin' down yesterday, wasn't ye?"

Paul smiled pleasantly.

"A little bird told me," he said.

"If I had the bird I'd ring his neck for tellin' tales," the porter remarked.

"I don't mind your smoking, Mike," the young man went on, "that's your own affair; but I'd rather you didn't smoke a pipe while you are tidying up the private office."

"Well, Mister Paul, I won't do it again," the porter promised.

"And I wouldn't encourage Bob to smoke, either," Paul continued.

"I encourage him?" inquired Mike.

"Yes," Paul explained; "yesterday morning you let him light his cigarette from your pipe—didn't you?"

"Were you peekin' in thro' the winder, Mister Paul?" the porter asked, eagerly. "Ye saw me, an' I never saw ye at all."

"No," the young man answered, "I can't say that I saw you myself. A little bird told me."

And with that he left the wondering porter and entered the store. Just inside the door was the office-boy, who hastily hid an unlighted cigarette as he caught sight of the senior partner's son.

When Paul saw the red-headed boy he smiled again, mischievously.

"Bob," he began, "when you want to see who can stand on his head the longest, you or Danny the boot-black, don't you think you could choose a better place than the private office?"

The office-boy was quite as much taken by surprise as the porter had been, but he was younger and quicker-witted.

"And when did I have Danny in the office?" he asked, defiantly.

"Yesterday morning," Paul answered, still smiling, "a little before half-past eight."

"Yesterday mornin'?" repeated Bob, as though trying hard to recall all the events of the day before. "Maybe Danny did come in for a minute."

"He played leap-frog with you all the way into the private office," Paul went on, while Bob looked at him with increasing wonder.

"How did you know?" the office-boy asked, frankly. "Were you lookin' through the window?"

"How do I know that you and Danny stood on your heads in the corner of the office with your heels against the safe, scratching off the paint? Next time I'd try the yard, if I were you. Sports of that sort are more fun in the open air."

And with that parting shot Paul went on his way to his own desk, leaving the office-boy greatly puzzled.

Later in the day Bob and Mike exchanged confidences, and neither was ready with an explanation.

"At school," Bob declared, "we used to think teacher had eyes in the back of her head. She was everlastingly catchin' me when I did things behind her back. But Mr. Paul beats that, for he see me doin' things when he wasn't here."

"Mister Paul wasn't here, for sure, yesterday mornin'," Mike asserted; "I'd take me oath o' that. An' if he wasn't here, how could he see me givin' ye a light from me pipe? Answer me that! He says it's a little bird told him; but that's not it, I'm thinkin'. Not but that they have clocks with birds into 'em, that come out and tell the time o' day, 'Cuckoo! Cuckoo! Cuckoo!' An' if that big clock he broke last week had a bird in it that could tell time that way, I'd break the thing quick—so I would."

"It ain't no bird," said Bob. "You can bet your life on that. No birds can't tell him nothin' no more'n you can catch 'em by putting salt on their tails. I know what it is Mr. Paul does—least, I know how he does it. It's second-sight, that's what it is! I see a man onct at the theayter, an' he——"

But perhaps it is not necessary to set down here the office-boy's recollection of the trick of an ingenious magician.

About half an hour after Paul had arrived at the office Mr. Wheatcroft appeared. The junior partner hesitated in the doorway for a second, and then entered.

Paul was watching him, and the same mischievous smile flashed over the face of the young man.

"You need not be alarmed to-day, Mr. Wheatcroft," he said. "There is no fascinating female waiting for you this morning."

"Confound the woman!" ejaculated Mr. Wheatcroft, testily. "I couldn't get rid of her."

"But you subscribed for the book at last," asserted Paul, "and she went away happy."

"I believe I did agree to take one copy of the work she showed me," admitted Mr. Wheatcroft, a little sheepishly. Then he looked up suddenly. "Why, bless my soul," he cried, "that was yesterday morning——"

"Allowing for differences of clocks," Paul returned, "it was about ten minutes to ten yesterday morning."

"Then how do you come to know anything about it? I should like to be told that!" the junior partner inquired. "You did not get down till nearly twelve."

"I had an eye on you," Paul answered, as the smile again flitted across his face.

"But I thought you were detained all the morning by a sick friend," insisted Mr. Wheatcroft.

"So I