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Burkhill sent his message to New York, he was followed into our office by a man who was shabbily dressed, and who impressed me as what is commonly called a "beat." He spoiled several blanks without sending a message and then abruptly tore them up, put the pieces in his pocket, and walked out after Mr. Burkhill.
"Nothing, except in the office." "He took down every letter of that cipher telegram you just received for Mr. Burkhill." The boy was surprised and sat a minute in deep thought. "Mr. Melville," he said, "if you have no objection, I shall study out that cipher." "That I think is impossible; it has been prepared with care, and it will take a greater expert than you to unravel it."
She was the sister of Burkhill, and the only one who clung to the bad brother, pronounced incorrigible by everyone else, even when a small boy. She believed there was some good in him, and, in the face of protests, she labored to bring him to a sense of right. It was through her influence that he was saved from condign punishment for more than one serious offense.
When I discovered that the seedy lounger about our office had carefully taken down the cipher telegram addressed to Burkhill, I was indignant, for it was well known that one of the most important duties which the telegraph companies insist upon is the inviolability of the messages intrusted to their wires.
Ben had hunted out from the files in the office the first disguised message, and it clearly referred to a contemplated robbery of one of the banks in Damietta. This G. R. Burkhill was a criminal who was playing a desperate game, in which he was likely to lose.
Ben had been an operator a little less than a year when he met with a most extraordinary experience, which to-day is a theme of never-ending wonder to those who were living in Damietta at the time. One evening a rough-bearded man entered the office, and stepping to the counter, said to me: "My name is Burkhill G. R. Burkhill and I am staying at the hotel in Moorestown.
It was a great shock to all, except a few, to find that Burkhill, the brother-in-law of Dolly Willard's father, was also one of the guilty ones. Willard and Mr. The facts in this singular affair, as they ultimately came to light, were as follows: George R. Burkhill was the black sheep in a most estimable family, of which Mrs. Willard, the mother of Dolly, was a member.
I am convinced that the inciting cause was the remark made by Ben Mayberry to the effect that he believed the seedy individual was a confederate of Burkhill, and that the two were perfecting a scheme for robbing one of the banks most likely the Mechanics'. "Ben is right," I said to myself.
He was the G. R. Burkhill who failed to receive the cipher dispatch which Ben Mayberry undertook to deliver to him on that eventful night. Dolly said her father was dead, or had been gone from home a very long time.
"I would like to, if it isn't too hard for me." Ben looked sharply at him and saw that the boy was in too weak a state to undertake the task. There was no other messenger within call, and Mr. Burkhill was doubtless impatient for the message whose delivery I had guaranteed.
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