The Debtor Part 54

"And then you expect to resume business?" questioned Allbright, with a mild persistence. He still kept those keen, childlike eyes of his upon the other man's face.

"What else would you understand from what I have already said?" said Carroll. He essayed to meet the other man's eyes, then he turned and looked out of the window, and at that minute the girl who had worked at the type-writer in the back office looked up at him from the crowded platform of the car with her small, intense face, whose intensity seemed to make it stand out from the others around her as from a blurred background of humanity. "May I ask you to kindly wait a moment, Mr. Allbright?" Carroll said, and went out hurriedly, leaving Allbright standing staring in amazement. There had been something in his employer's manner which he did not understand. He stood a second, then presently made free to take up a copy of the Wall Street edition of the Sun, and sit down to glance over the panic reports. It was not very long, however, before he heard Carroll approaching the door. Carroll entered quite naturally, and the unusual expression which had perplexed the clerk was gone from his face. His mind seemed to be princ.i.p.ally disturbed by the trouble about the elevator.

"It is an outrage," he said, in his fine voice, which was courteous even while p.r.o.nouncing anathema. "The management of this block is not what it should be."

Allbright had risen, and was standing beside the desk on which lay the Sun. "It hasn't been acting right for a week past," he said, referring to the elevator.

"I know it hasn't, and there might have been an accident. It is an outrage. And they are taking twice as long to repair it as they should. I doubt if it is in working order by to-morrow." As he spoke, Carroll was taking out his pocket-book, which he opened, disclosing neatly folded bank-notes. "By-the-way, Mr. Allbright," he said, "I find I can settle my arrears with you to-night, after all. I happened to think of a party from whom I might procure a certain sum which was due me, and I did so."

Allbright's face brightened. "I am very glad, sir," he said. "I was afraid of getting behind with the rent, and my sister has not been very well lately, and there is the doctor's bill."

"I am very glad also," said Carroll. "I dislike exceedingly to allow these things to remain unpaid." As he spoke he was counting out the amount of Allbright's month's salary. He then closed the pocket-book with a deft motion, but not before the clerk had seen that it was nearly empty. He also saw something else before Carroll brought his light overcoat together over his chest. "It is really cold to-night,"

he said.

"I am very much obliged to you, sir, for the money," Allbright said, putting the notes in his old pocket-book. Then he replied to Carroll's remark concerning the weather, that it was indeed cold, and he thought there would be a frost.

"Yes, I think so," said Carroll.

Then Allbright put on his own rather shabby, dark overcoat and his hat and took his leave. Much to his surprise, Carroll extended his hand, something which he had never done before.

"Good-bye," he said.

Allbright shook the extended hand, and felt a sudden, unexplained emotion. He returned the good-bye, and wished Mr. Carroll a pleasant vacation and restoration to health.

"I am tired out and ill," Carroll admitted, in a weary voice, and his eyes, as they now met the other man's, were haggard.

"There's two weeks' vacation," Allbright told his sister when he reached home that night, "and I don't know, but I'm afraid business ain't going just to suit Captain Carroll, and that's the reason for it."

"Has he paid you?" asked his sister, quickly, and her placid forehead wrinkled. Her illness had made her irritable.

"Yes," replied her brother. He looked at her meditatively. He was about to tell her something--that he was almost sure that Carroll had gone out and p.a.w.ned his watch to pay him--then he desisted. He reflected that his sister was a woman, and would in all probability tell the woman down-stairs and her son about it, and that it would be none of their business whether he worked for a man who was honest enough, or hard up enough, to p.a.w.n his watch to pay him his month's salary or not. He was conscious of sentiments of loyalty both to himself and to Carroll. During the next two weeks he often strolled in the neighborhood of the office and stood looking up at the familiar windows. One day he saw some men carrying away a desk which looked familiar, but he was not sure. He hesitated about asking them from what office they had removed it until they had driven away and it was too late. He went up on the elevator and surveyed the office door, but it looked just as usual, with the old sign thereon. He tried it softly, but it was locked.

When he reached the sidewalk he encountered Harrison Day, the young clerk. He did not see him at first, but a nervous touch on his arm arrested his attention, and then he saw the young man's face with its fast-winking eyes.

"Say," said Harrison Day, "it's all right, ain't it?"

"What's all right?" demanded Allbright, a trifle shortly, drawing away. He had never liked Harrison Day.

"Oh, nothin', only it's ten days since he went, and I thought I'd look round to see how things were lookin'. You s'pose he's comin'

back all right?"

"I haven't any reason to think anything else."

"Well, I thought I'd look around, and when I saw you I thought I'd ask what you thought. The girls are kind of uneasy--that is, Sadie is--May don't seem to fret much. Say!"

"What?"

"Did he pay you?"

"Yes, he did."

"Ain't he owin' you anything?"

"No, he is not."

The young man gave a whistle of relief. "Well, I s'pose he's all right," he said. "He 'ain't paid the rest of us up yet, but I s'pose it's safe enough."

A faithful, even an affectionate look came into the other man's face.

He remembered his suspicions about the watch, and reasoned from premises. "I have no more doubt of him than I have of myself," he replied.

"You s'pose the business is goin' on just the same, then?"

"Of course I do," Allbright replied, almost angrily. And then a man who had just emerged from the street door coming from the elevator accosted him.

"Can you tell me anything about a man by the name of Carroll that's been running a sort of promoting business up in No. 233," he asked, and his face looked reddened unnaturally. The young man thought he had probably been drinking, but Allbright thought he looked angry.

The young man replied before Allbright opened his mouth.

"He's gone on a vacation," he said.

"Queer time of year for a vacation," snapped the man, who was long and lean and full of nervous vibrations.

"He was overworked," said Harrison Day.

"Guess he overworked cheating me out of two thousand odd dollars,"

said the man, and both the others turned and stared at him.

Then Allbright spoke. "That is a statement no man has any right to make about my employer unless he is in a position to prove it," he said.

"That is so," said Harrison Day. He was a very small man, but he danced before the tall, lean one, who looked as if all his flesh might have resolved to muscle.

The man looked contemptuously down at him and spoke to Allbright. "So he is your employer?" he said, in a sarcastic tone.

"Yes, he is."

"This young man's also, I presume."

"Yes, he is," declared Day. But the man only heeded Allbright's response that he was.

"Well," said the man, "may I ask a question?"

"Yes, you may," said Day, pertly, "but it don't follow that we are goin' to answer it."

"May I ask," said the man, addressing Allbright, "if Captain Carroll has paid you your salaries?"

"He has paid me every dollar he owed me," replied Allbright, with emphasis, and his own face flushed.

Then the man turned to Day. "Has he paid you?" he inquired.

And Day, with no hesitation, lied. "Yes, sir, he has, every darned cent," he declared, "and I don't know what business it is of yours whether he has or not."