The Sword of Damocles

the breeze. Cicely was blind to it all, but as Paula looked from her window preparatory to going below, a close observer might have perceived that the serenity of the cloudless sky was reflected in her beaming eyes, that peace brooded above her soul and ruled her tender spirit. She had held a long conversation with Miss Belinda, she had prayed, she had slept and she had risen with a confirmed love in her heart for the man who was at once the admiration of her eyes and the wellspring of her deepest thoughts and wildest longings. “I will show him so plainly what the angels have told me,” whispered she, “that he will have no need to ask.” And she wound her long locks into the coil that she knew he best liked and fixed a rose at her throat, and so with a smile on her lip went softly downstairs. O the timid eager step of maidenhood when drawing toward the shrine of all it adores! Could those halls and lofty corridors have whispered their secret, what a story they would have told of beating heart and tremulous glance, eager longings, and maidenly shrinkings, as the lovely form, swaying with a thousand hopes and fears, glided from landing to landing, carrying with it love and joy and peace. And trust! As she neared the bronze image that had always awakened such vague feelings of repugnance on her part, and found its terrors gone and its smile assuring, she realized that her breast held nothing but faith in him, who may have sinned in his youth, but who had repented in his manhood, and now stood clear and noble in her eyes. The assurance was too sweet, the flood of feeling too overwhelming. With a quick glance around her, she stopped and flung her arms about the hitherto repellant bronze, pressing her young breast against the cold metal with a fervor that ought to have hallowed its sensuous mould forever. Then she hurried down.

Her first glance into the dining-room brought her a disappointment. Mr. Sylvester had already breakfasted and gone; only Aunt Belinda sat at the table. With a slightly troubled brow, Paula advanced to her own place at the board.

“Mr. Sylvester has urgent business on hand today,” quoth her aunt. “I met him going out just as I came down.”

Her look lingered on Paula as she said this, and if it had not been for the servants, she would doubtless have given utterance to some further expression on the matter, for she had been greatly struck by Mr. Sylvester’s appearance and the sad, firm, almost lofty expression of his eye, as it met hers in their hurried conversation.

“He is a very busy man,” returned Paula simply, and was silent, struck by some secret dread she could not have explained. Suddenly she rose; she had found an envelope beneath her plate, addressed to herself. It was bulky and evidently contained a key. Hastening behind the curtains of the window, she opened it. The key was to that secret study of his at the top of the house, which no one but himself had ever been seen to enter, and the words that enwrapped it were these:

“If I send you no word to the contrary, and if I do not come back by seven o’clock this evening, go to the room of which this is the key, open my desk, and read what I have prepared for your eyes.

“E. S.”

XXXVII

The Opinion of a Certain Noted Detective

“But still there clung
One hope, like a keen sword on starting threads uphung.”

Revolt of Islam

“Facts are stubborn things.”

Elliott

Meanwhile Mr. Stuyvesant hasted on his way downtown and ere long made his appearance at the bank. He found Mr. Sylvester and Bertram seated in the directors’ room, with a portly smooth-faced man whose appearance was at once strange and vaguely familiar.

“A detective, sir,” explained Mr. Sylvester rising with forced composure; “a man upon whose judgment I have been told we may rely. Mr. Gryce, Mr. Stuyvesant.”

The latter gentleman nodded, cast a glance around the room, during which his eye rested for a moment on Bertram’s somewhat pale countenance, and nervously took a seat.

“A mysterious piece of business, this,” came from the detective’s lips in an easy tone, calculated to relieve the tension of embarrassment into which the entrance of Mr. Stuyvesant seemed to have thrown all parties. “What were the numbers of the bonds found missing, if you please?”

Mr. Stuyvesant told him.

“You are positively assured these bonds were all in the box when you last locked it?”

“I am.”

“When was that, sir? On what day and at what hour of the day, if you please?”

“Tuesday, at about three o’clock, I should say.”

“The box was locked by you? There is no doubt about that fact?”

“None in the least.”

“Where were you standing at the time?”

“In front of the vault door. I had taken out the box myself as I am in the habit of doing, and had stepped there to put it back.”

“Was anyone near you then?”

“Yes. The cashier was at his desk and the teller had occasion to go to the safe while I stood there. I do not remember seeing anyone else in my immediate vicinity.”

“Do you remember ever going to the vaults and not finding someone near you at the time or at least in full view of your movements?”

“No.”

“I have informed Mr. Gryce,” interposed Mr. Sylvester, with a ring in his deep voice that made Mr. Stuyvesant start, “that our chief desire at present is to have his judgment upon the all important question, as to whether this theft was committed by a stranger, or one in the employ and consequently in the confidence of the bank.”

Mr. Stuyvesant bowed, every wrinkle in his face manifesting itself with startling distinctness as he slowly moved his eyes and fixed them on the inscrutable countenance of the detective.

“You agree then with these gentlemen,” continued the latter, who