“You have not told me what you have discovered,” said he.
“Well, sir, only this.” And he took from his pocket a small roll of paper which he unfolded and held out in his hand. It contained a gold toothpick somewhat bent and distorted.
A flush dark and ominous crept over Mr. Sylvester’s cheek. He glanced sternly at the trembling janitor, and uttered a short, “Well?”
“I found it on the floor of the bank just after you went out the other morning,” the other pursued well-nigh inaudibly. “It was lying near the safe. As it was not there when you went in, I took it for granted it was yours. Am I right, sir?”
The anxious tone in which this last question was uttered, the studied way in which the janitor kept his eyes upon the floor could not have been unnoticed by Mr. Sylvester, but he simply said,
“I have lost mine, that may very possibly be it.”
The janitor held it towards him; his eyes did not leave the floor. “The responsibility of my position here is sometimes felt by me to be very heavy,” muttered the man in a low, unmodulated tone. It was his duty in those days previous to the Manhattan Bank robbery, to open the vault in the morning, procure the books that were needed, and lay them about on the various desks in readiness for the clerks upon their arrival. He had also the charge of the boxes of the various customers of the bank who chose to entrust their valuables to its safe keeping; which boxes were kept, together with the books, in that portion of the vault to which he had access. “I should regret my comfortable situation here, but if it was necessary, I would go without a murmur, trusting that God would take care of my poor little lamb.”
“Hopgood, what do you mean?” asked Mr. Sylvester somewhat sternly. “Who talks about dismissing you?”
“No one,” responded the other, turning aside to attend to some trivial matter. “But if ever you think a younger or a fresher man would be preferable in my place, do not hesitate to make the change your own necessities or that of the Bank may seem to require.”
Mr. Sylvester’s eye which was fixed upon the janitor’s face, slowly darkened.
“There is something underlying all this,” said he, “what is it?”
At once and as if he had taken his resolution, the janitor turned. “I beg your pardon,” said he, “I ought to have told you in the first place. When I opened the vaults as usual on the morning of which I speak, I found the boxes displaced; that was nothing if you had been to them, sir; but what did alarm me and make me feel as if I had held my position too long was to find that one of them was unlocked.”
Mr. Sylvester fell back a step.
“It was Mr. Stuyvesant’s box, sir, and I remember distinctly seeing him lock it the previous afternoon before putting it back on the shelf.”
The arms which Mr. Sylvester had crossed upon his breast tightened spasmodically. “And it has been in that condition ever since?” asked he.
The janitor shook his head. “No,” said he, taking his little girl up in his arms, possibly to hide his countenance. “As you did not come down again on that day, I took the liberty of locking it with a key of my own when I went to put away the books and shut the vault for the night.” And he quietly buried his face in his baby’s floating curls, who feeling his cheek against her own put up her hand and stroked it lovingly, crying in her caressing infantile tones,
“Poor papa! poor tired papa.”
Mr. Sylvester’s stern brow contracted painfully. The look with which his eye sought the sky without, would have made Paula’s young heart ache. Taking the child from her father’s clasp, he laid her on the bed. When he again confronted the janitor his face was like a mask.
“Hopgood,” said he, “you are an honest man and a faithful one; I appreciate your worth and have had confidence in your judgment. Whom have you told of this occurrence beside myself?”
“No one, sir.”
“Another question; if Mr. Stuyvesant had required his box that day and had found it in the condition you describe, what would you have replied to his inquiries?”
The janitor colored to the roots of his hair in an agony of shame Mr. Sylvester may or may not have appreciated, but replied with the straightforward earnestness of a man driven to bay, “I should have been obliged to tell him the truth sir; that whereas I had no personal knowledge of anyone but myself, having been to the vaults since the evening before, I was called upon early that morning to open the outside door to you, sir, and that you came into the bank,” (he did not say looking very pale, agitated and unnatural, but he could not help remembering it) “and finding no one on duty but myself—the watchman having gone upstairs to take his usual cup of coffee before going home for the day—you sent me out of the room on an errand, which delayed me some little time, and that when I came back I found you gone, and everything as I had left it except that small pick lying on the floor.”
The last words were nearly inaudible but they must have been heard by Mr. Sylvester, for immediately upon their utterance, the hand which unconsciously had kept its hold upon the toothpick, opened and with an uncontrollable gesture flung the miserable telltale into the stove near by.
“Hopgood,” said the stately gentleman, coming nearer and holding him with his eyes till the poor man turned pale and cold as a
