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Read Ebook: Three Thousand Dollars by Green Anna Katharine
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Ebook has 585 lines and 30201 words, and 12 pages
I "Do you know what would happen to him" 9
II "Thousands in that safe" 17
V "I've business with him" 35
VI "If I could tell you his story" 43
X "I have a scheme" 75
XX "A jewel of far greater value" 155
OPPOSITE PAGE
"Now state your problem" Frontis
"He transferred his attention to the door" 38
"Grace, you have misunderstood me" 48
"An old man was looking up at the face of a young girl" 80
"She was ignorant of his presence" 100
"The door opened and Philip Andrews came in" 144
"'R. S. T.,' read the official" 152
"He was even present at the wedding" 158
THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS
"Now state your problem."
The man who was thus addressed shifted uneasily on the long bench which he and his companion bestrode. He was facing the speaker, and though very little light sifted through the cobweb-covered window high over their heads, he realized that what there was fell on his features, and he was not sure of his features, or of what effect their expression might have on the other man.
"Are you sure we are quite alone in this big, desolate place?" he asked.
It seemed a needless question. Though it was broad daylight outside and they were in the very heart of the most populated district of lower New York, they could not have been more isolated had the surrounding walls been those of some old ruin in the heart of an untraversed desert.
Perhaps you remember this building; perhaps some echo of the bygone and romantic has come to you as you passed its decaying walls once dedicated to worship, but soulless now and only distinguishable from the five-story tenements pressing up on either side, by its one high window in which some bits of colored glass still lingered amid its twisted and battered network. You may remember the building and you may remember the stray glimpses afforded you through the arched opening in the lower story of one of the adjacent tenements, of the churchyard in its rear with its chipped and tumbling headstones just showing here and there above the accumulated litter. But it is not probable that you have any recollections of the interior of the church itself, shut as it has been from the eye of the public for nearly a generation. And it is with the interior we have to do--a great hollow vault where once altar and priest confronted a reverent congregation. There is no altar here now, nor any chancel; hardly any floor. The timbers which held the pews have rotted and fallen away, and what was once a cellar has received all this rubbish and held it piled up in mounds which have blocked up most of the windows and robbed the place even of the dim religious light which was once its glory, so that when the man whose words we have just quoted asked if they were quite alone and peered into the dim, belumbered corners, it was but natural for his hardy, resolute, and unscrupulous companion to snort with impatience and disgust as he answered:
"No names!" hoarsely interrupted the other. "If you speak my name again I'll give the whole thing up."
"No you won't; you're too deep in it for that. But I'll drop the Fellows and just call you Sam. If that's too familiar, we'll drop the job. I'm not so keen on it."
"Experience," dryly put in the other. "Well, well!" he exclaimed impatiently, as Fellows crept nearer, but said nothing.
"I'm going to speak, but--Well, then, here's how it is!" he suddenly conceded, warned by the other's eye. "The building is a twenty-story one, chuck full and alive with business. The room I mean is on the twelfth floor; it is one of five, all communicating, and all in constant use except the one holding the safe. And that is visited constantly. Some one is always going in and out. Indeed, it is a rule of the firm that every one of the employees must go into that room once, at least, during the day, and remain there for five minutes alone. I do it; every one does it; it's a very mysterious proceeding which only a crank like my employer would devise."
"What do you do there?"
"Yes, this is all very interesting. Go on. What you want is an artist with a jimmy."
The hoarseness with which this word was uttered, the instinct of shame which made his eyes fall as it struggled from his lips, wakened a curious little gleam of hardy cynicism in the steady gaze of his listener.
"Oh, you're manager, are you!" came in slow retort, filling a silence that had more of pain than pleasure in it. "Well, manager, your story is very interesting, but by no means complete. Suppose you hurry on to the next instalment."
Cringing as from a blow, Fellows took up his tale, no longer creeping nearer his would-be confederate, but, if anything, edging away.
"Drop that, it isn't interesting. The facts are what I want. What kind of safe is it?"
"We'll take its contents for granted. How does it stand? On a platform?"
"Yes, one foot from the floor. The platform runs all the way across the room and holds other things; a table which nobody uses, a revolving bookcase and a series of shelves, fitted with boxes containing old receipts and such junk. Sometimes I go through these; but nothing ever comes of it." He paused, as if the subject were distasteful.
"And the safe is opened?"
"Almost every week. I'm ashamed to tell you the old duffer's methods; they're loony. But he isn't a lunatic. At any rate, they don't think so in Wall Street."
"I'll make a guess at his name."
He had the grace to whisper.
Young Fellows squirmed and turned a shade paler, if one could trust the sickly violet ray that shot down from the once exquisitely colored window high up over their heads.
"Hush!" he muttered; and the other grinned. Evidently the guess was a correct one.
"No, he's no lunatic," the professional quietly declared. "But he has queer ways. Which of his queers do you object to?"
"When his letters come, or more often his cablegrams, they are opened by me and then put in plain view on a certain little bulletin board in the main office. These are his orders. Any one who knows the cipher can read them. I don't know the cipher. At night I take them down, number them, and file them away. They have served their purpose. They have been seen by the person whose business it is to carry out his instructions, and the rest you must guess. His brokers know the secret, but it is never discussed by us. The least word and the next cablegram would read in good plain English, 'Fire him!' I've had that experience. I've had to fire three since he went away two months ago."
"That's good."
"Why good?"
"That's so." New life seemed to spring up in Fellows. "You'll do the job," he cried. "Somehow, I never thought of going about it that way. And I know another man that's out."
"Who?"
"Myself, for one. There are only seven more."
"Counting all?"
"All."
"Stenographers included?"
"Oh, stenographers!"
"Stenographers must be counted."
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