The Argosy, April 1916 — page 188: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

178 It was 2 West 42d Street—a number as short, and thus easy to remember, as was his name. Boarding a car, I rode half way up-town to the store, which I entered with ‘a request to be allowed to see Mr. Og in person, as my business was of a private nature. “Y’m the jobber for the Little Gem auto- repair kit in this city,” I informed the mild, side-whiskered gentleman into whose pres- ence I was conducted, “‘with an office in the Mammoth Building, down on lower Broad- way.” I saw him start, and assume a guileless expression, as that introduction of myself probably fitted in with the description Molly’s uncle had given him. “Oh, yes—yes!” he stammered out— showing that he was a poor liar. “I dropped in to buy one of those—those kits from you yesterday, don’t you remember?” ‘Well, I see so many people in the course of a day, that I can’t say I do remember your face,” I answered dryly. “But you must have called on me,” I went on, tak- ing out the bill-fold as I spoke, ‘otherwise this pocketbook, with your name and ad- dress on the card inside, would never have been on my office floor this morning—” _ “Why, I’ve been looking all over for that!” the optical goods merchant ex- claimed, with a fair imitation of surprise and pleasure in his tonc, as he took the wallet from me and began to open it. “Thank you for returning it to me, sir. Your honesty deserves to be rewarded—”’ He stopped short, a look of genuine in- dignation wiping off the sham one on his face. ‘“You’re not so honest as I thought!” he snapped, staring up at me from the open pocketbook with his lips pressed together. My heart shot down into my boots. What was wrong now—? | “You imagined I wouldn’t know how much money I had in this, I suppose,” went on the fellow-conspirator of Molly’s uncle. “So you thought you could safely take out ten dollars, and return the rest—thus estab- lishing a reputation for honesty which you do not deserve. It happens, however, that I do know perfectly well how much money was put into—er, that I had in this, I should say. It was not fifty dollars, but sixty—” I was on my feet, staring at him with my eyes popping from.my head. What he im- plied’ was impossible—that any amount of money could have been taken out of that THE ARGOSY. wallet between the time I had seen it lying on the floor of the hall, and when I had paid the shabbily-dressed man who had found it to give it up to me. With the exception of only a very few moments, I had kept him in sight from the time he had picked it up until he had turned the bill-fold over to me. It was unnatural to suppose that, meaning to keep his find, he would have taken ten dollars from it and put it in another pocket the instant after he had picked the wallet up. But if he hadn’t taken it—and I would have sworn on a whole stack of Bibles that he had not—who had pilfered the bill which the optician claimed was missing? ‘On my word,” I earnestly assured him, “T didn’t take anything out of that pocket- book. It’s just as I found—” “The money is ten dollars short, I tell you!”’ he cut in emphatically. I pulled out my handkerchief and mopped my brow. A nice fix I was in now! Just as I was flattering myself that I had done a neat job by coming through the test Molly’s uncle had arranged for me with fly- ing colors—bif/ bang! This knockout punch had to connect with my solar-plexus. At that moment, the door was flung open. And in stalked the answer to the enigma—in the person of Mrs. Mulligan, the scrubwoman from my office building. One of the clerks in the store followed at her heels. He seized her by the elbow and sought to drag her back out of the private office into which she had forced her way. She shook him off, walking straight up to Mr. Og’s desk and laying down on the blot- ter before him a new ten-dollar bill. ‘There you are, sor!” she panted. “I’ve returned ye what’s yours—sind me to jail now if ye wanter! I stole that from yer pockey-book this marnin’—the pockey- book that I heard drop to the hallway be- hint me from the waste paper I was carryin’ from the office of a young gentleman in the mailin’ business, an’ that I opened to find a card with yer name an’ address in. “I meant to stale the whole thing. But I hear-rd somebody comin’. ’Twould be the owner av it, I thought. Quick, I took’ that tin dollars out, stuffin’ it in me waist an’ dropped the pockey-book back on the flure. The fact that all the money wasn’t in it wouldn’t be knowed, I thought, till I’d got out av sight. “°T was stalin’ to take the tin—I knowed that all along. I’ve a darter that’s sickly, cCoOmicoooks C@