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I can't think about it now. I'll make all right with you." Still muttering, the disappointed politician departed, leaving Sandford in a deeper abyss than before. To prevent unwelcome visits, the latter left word with his clerks that he could see no one whatever. To wile away the time, he took out his cash-book and private papers. There was about a thousand dollars in bank.
His father's private cash-book was utterly unknown to him, and he had no trustworthy idea of the financial totality of the business; but the management of the shop till gave him the air of being in his father's confidence accustomed him to the discipline of anxiety, and also somewhat flattered him. He produced the book. The last complete page had not been added up. "Add this," said his father.
The premature night was closing in miserably, with increasing rain, and a doleful whistle of rising wind round the corner. At last she shut up the unconsidered cash-book, lighted another gas-jet, and striding to the door, rapped sharply on the glass. "Bring everything in!" she called to the boy, and helped out his apprehension by a comprehensive gesture.
Anxious, weary hours were spent in crowding the Cooper Institute, from week to week, with paying audiences, to listen to such men as Phillips, Curtis, and Douglass, who contributed their services, and lifted the secretary out of debt. At last, after many difficulties, her cash-book of 1863 was honorably pigeon-holed. In 1867 we can read account of herculean labor the second.
The following morning the premonition became a certainty. In the Gordonia mail there was a note from the younger Gordon, directing him to come to the office of the pipe foundry, bringing the cash-book and ledger for a year whose number was written out in letters of fire in the bookkeeper's brain. He went, again lacking the courage either to refuse or to disappear, and found Gordon waiting for him.
Mr Black had been groaning and growling all the day at the thoughts of the ruin which had overtaken him thoughts which were embittered by the knowledge that he had drawn it on himself through the instrumentality of Mrs Niven. The climax of Mr Jack's visit did not tend to restore him. Recovering from his amazement, and observing the condition of the clerk, he suddenly hurled the cash-book at him.
"It is true," replied the old man; "I had rather these immense riches were in the hands of those to whom they belong, than in mine; but, to day, I shall cease to be their trustee. Once more then, I will check the account for the last time, and compare the register with the cash-book that you hold in your hand."
This second mystery, following on the mystery of the anonymous letter, staggered him. But his business instincts were still in good working order. He held out his keys to the clerk. "Get the petty cash-book," he said, "and see if the money is all right." The clerk received the keys under protest. "That's not the right reading of the riddle," he remarked. "Do as I tell you!"
But at five minutes past twelve just before Stifford went out to his dinner Darius entered the ebonised cubicle, and said curtly to Edwin, who was writing there "Show me your book." This demand surprised Edwin. `His' book was the shop-sales book. He was responsible for it, and for the petty cash-book, and for the shop till.
But their immunity was doubly his, and the end of it was a bad quarter of an hour for him, two of them, to be precise: the first, in which he told the president and the treasurer the story of the missing cash-book and ledger pages and the extorted confession, and the other, during which he sat under a scathing fire of abuse poured on him by the younger of his two listeners.
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