The Sword of Damocles Part 45

With the disappearance of the last mentioned individual, Mr. Gryce peeped from behind the screen. "A set of as honest-looking men as I wish to see!" uttered he with a frank cordiality that was scarcely reflected in the anxious countenances about him. "No sly-boots among them; how about the janitor, Hopgood?"

"He shall be summoned at once, if you desire it," said Mr. Sylvester, "I have only delayed calling him that I might have leisure to interrogate him with reference to his duties, and this very theft. That is if you judge it advisable in me to tamper with the subject una.s.sisted?"

"Your nephew can help you if necessary," replied the imperturbable detective. "I should like to hear what the man, Hopgood, has to say for himself," and he glided back into his old position.

But Mr. Sylvester had scarcely reached out his hand to ring the bell by which he usually summoned the janitor, when the agent of Hicks, Saltzer & Co. came in. It was an interruption that demanded instant attention.

Saluting the gentleman with his usual proud reserve, he drew his attention to the box lying upon the table.

"This is yours, I believe, sir," said he. "It was found in our vaults this morning in the condition in which you now behold it, and we are anxious to know if its contents are all correct."

"They have been handled," returned the agent, after a careful survey of the various papers that filled the box, "but nothing appears to be missing."

Three persons at least in that room breathed more easily.

"But the truth is," the gentleman continued, with a half smile towards the silent President of the bank, "there was nothing in this box that would have been of much use to any other parties than ourselves. If there had been a bond or so here, I doubt if we should have come off so fortunately, eh? The lock has evidently been wrenched open, and that is certainly a pretty sure sign that something is not right hereabouts."

"Something is decidedly wrong," came from Mr. Sylvester sternly; "but through whose fault we do not as yet know." And with a few words expressive of his relief at finding the other had sustained no material loss, he allowed the agent to depart.

He had no sooner left the room than Mr. Stuyvesant rose. "Are you going to question Hopgood now?" queried he, nervously pocketing his note-book.

"Yes sir, if you have no objections."

The director fidgeted with his chair and finally moved towards the door.

"I think you will get along better with him alone," said he. "He is a man who very easily gets embarra.s.sed, and has a way of acting as if he were afraid of me. I will just step outside while you talk to him."

But Mr. Sylvester with a sudden dark flush on his brow, hastily stopped him. "I beg you will not," said he, with a quick realization of what Hopgood might be led to say in the forthcoming interview, if he were not restrained by the presence of the director. "Hopgood is not so afraid of you that he will not answer every question that is put to him with straightforward frankness." And he pushed up a chair, with a smile that Mr. Stuyvesant evidently found himself unable to resist. The screen trembled slightly, but none of them noticed it; Mr. Sylvester at once rang for Hopgood.

He came in panting with his hurried descent from the fifth story, his face flushed and his eyes rolling, but without any of the secret perturbation Bertram had observed in them on a former occasion. "He cannot help us," was the thought that darkened the young man's brow as his eyes left the janitor, and faltering towards his uncle, fell upon the table before him.

Everything was reflected in the mirror.

"Well, Hopgood, I have a few questions to put to you this morning," said Mr. Sylvester in a restrained, but not unkindly tone.

The worthy man bowed, bestowed a salutatory roll of his eyes on Mr.

Stuyvesant, and stood deferentially waiting.

"No, he cannot help us," was again Bertram's thought, and again his eyes faltered to his uncle's face, and again fell anxiously before him.

"It has not been my habit to trouble you with inquiries about your management of matters under your charge," continued Mr. Sylvester, stopping till the janitor's wandering eyes settled upon his own. "Your conduct has always been exemplary, and your attention to duty satisfactory; but I would like to ask you to-day if you have observed anything amiss with the vaults of late? anything wrong about the boxes kept there? anything in short, that excited your suspicion or caused you to ask yourself if everything was as it should be?"

The janitor's ruddy face grew pale, and his eye fell with startled inquiry on Mr. Harrington's box that still occupied the centre of the table. "No, sir," he emphatically replied, "has anything--"

But Mr. Sylvester did not wait to be questioned. "You have attended to your duties as promptly and conscientiously as usual; you have allowed no one to go to the vaults day or night, who had no business there? You have not relaxed your accustomed vigilance, or left the bank alone at any time during the hours it is under your charge?"

"No sir, not for a minute, sir; that is--" He stopped and his eye wandered towards Mr. Stuyvesant. "Never for a minute, sir," he went on, "without I knew some one was in the bank, who was capable of looking after it."

"The watchman has been at his post every night up to the usual hour?"

"Yes sir."

"There has been no carelessness in closing the vault doors after the departure of the clerks?"

"No sir."

"And no trouble," he continued, with a shade more of dignity, possibly because Hopgood's tell-tale face was beginning to show signs of anxious confusion, "and no trouble in opening them at the proper time each morning?"

"No sir."

"One question more--"

But here Bertram was called out, and in the momentary stir occasioned by his departure, Hopgood allowed himself to glance at the box before him more intently than he had hitherto presumed to do. He saw it was unlocked, and his hands began to tremble. Mr. Sylvester's voice recalled him to himself.

"You are a faithful man," said that gentleman, continuing his speech of a minute before, "and as such we are ready to acknowledge you; but the most conscientious amongst us are sometimes led into indiscretions. Now have you ever through carelessness or by means of any inadvertence, revealed to any one in or out of the bank, the particular combination by which the lock of the vault-door is at present opened?"

"No sir, indeed no; I am much too anxious, and feel my own responsibility entirely too much, not to preserve so important a secret with the utmost care and jealousy."

Mr. Sylvester's voice, careful as he was to modulate it, showed a secret discouragement. "The vaults then as far as you know, are safe when once they are closed for the night?"

"Yes sir." The janitor's face expressed a slight degree of wonder, but his voice was emphatic.

Mr. Sylvester's eye travelled in the direction of the screen. "Very well," said he; and paused to reflect.

In the interim the door opened for a second time. "A gentleman to see Mr. Stuyvesant," said a voice.

With an air of relief the director hastily rose, and before Mr.

Sylvester had realized his position, left the room and closed the door behind him. A knell seemed to ring its note in Mr. Sylvester's breast.

The janitor, released as he supposed from all constraint, stepped hastily forward.

"That box has been found unlocked," he cried with a wave of his hand towards the table; "some one has been to the vaults, and I--Oh, sir," he hurriedly exclaimed, disregarding in his agitation the stern and forbidding look which Mr. Sylvester in his secret despair had made haste to a.s.sume, "you did not want me to say anything about the time you came down so early in the morning, and I went out and left you alone in the bank, and you went to the vaults and opened Mr. Stuyvesant's box by mistake, with a tooth-pick as you remember?"

The mirror that looked down upon that pair, showed one very white face at that moment, but the screen that had trembled a moment before, stood strangely still in the silence.

"No," came at length from Mr. Sylvester, with a composure that astonished himself. "I was not questioning you about matters of a year agone. But you might have told that incident if you pleased; it was very easily explainable."

"Yes sir, I know, and I beg pardon for alluding to it, but I was so taken aback, sir, by your questions; I wanted to tell the exact truth, and I did not want to say anything that would hurt you with Mr.

Stuyvesant; that is if I could help it. I hope I did right, sir," he blundered on, conscious he was uttering words he might better have kept to himself, but too embarra.s.sed to know how to emerge from the difficulty into which his mingled zeal and anxiety had betrayed him. "I was never a good hand at answering questions, and if any thing really serious has happened, I shall wish you had taken me at my word and dismissed me immediately after that affair. Constantia Maria would have been a little worse off perhaps, but I should not be on hand to answer questions, and--"

"Hopgood!"

The man started, eyed Mr. Sylvester's white but powerfully controlled countenance, seemed struck with something he saw there, and was silent.

"You make too much now, as you made too much then of a matter that having its sole ground in a mistake, is, as I say, easily explainable.

This affair which has come up now, is not so clear. Three of the boxes have been opened, and from one certain valuables have been taken. Can you give me any information that will a.s.sist us in our search after the culprit?"

"No sir." The tone was quite humble, Hopgood drew back unconsciously towards the door.