FullReads

While Paul was sitting quietly in the private office, smoking a cigar with all his mental faculties at their highest tension, the clock in the corner suddenly struck three.

Paul swiftly swung around in his chair and looked at it. An old eight-day clock it was, which not only told the time of the day, but pretended, also, to supply miscellaneous astronomical information. It stood by itself in the corner.

For a moment after it struck Paul stared at it with a fixed gaze, as though he did not see what he was looking at. Then a light came into his eyes and a smile flitted across his lips.

He turned around slowly and measured with his eye the proportions of the room, the distance between the desks and the safe and the clock. He glanced up at the sloping glass roof above him. Then he smiled again, and again sat silent for a minute. He rose to his feet and stood with his back to the fire. Almost in front of him was the clock in the corner.

He took out his watch and compared its time with that of the clock. Apparently he found that the clock was too fast, for he walked over to it and turned the minute-hand back. It seemed that this was a more difficult feat than he supposed or that he went about it carelessly, for the minute-hand broke off short in his fingers. A spasmodic movement of his, as the thin metal snapped, pulled the chain off its cylinder, and the weight fell with a crash.

All the clerks looked up; and the red-headed office-boy was prompt in answer to the bell Paul rang a moment after.

“Bobby,” said the young man to the boy, as he took his hat and overcoat, “I’ve just broken the clock. I know a shop where they make a specialty of repairing timepieces like that. I’m going to tell them to send for it at once. Give it to the man who will come this afternoon with my card. Do you understand?”

“Cert,” the boy answered. “If he ‘ain’t got your card, he don’t get the clock.”

“That’s what I mean,” Paul responded, as he left the office.

Before he reached the door he met Mr. Wheatcroft.

“Paul,” cried the junior partner, explosively, “I’ve been thinking about that–about that–you know what I mean! And I have decided that we had better put a detective on this thing at once!”

“Yes,” said Paul, “that’s a good idea. In fact, I had just come to the same conclusion. I—-“

Then he checked himself. He had turned round slightly to speak to Mr. Wheatcroft; he saw that Major Van Zandt was standing within ten feet of them, and he noticed that the old book-keeper’s face was strangely pale.

III

During the next week the office of Whittier, Wheatcroft & Co. had its usual aspect of prosperous placidity. The routine work was done in the routine way; the porter opened the office every morning, and the office-boy arrived a few minutes after it was opened; the clerks came at nine, and a little later the partners were to be seen in the inner office reading the morning’s correspondence.

The Whittiers, father and son, had had a discussion with Mr. Wheatcroft as to the most advisable course to adopt to prevent the future leakage of the trade secrets of the firm. The senior partner had succeeded in dissuading the junior partner from the employment of detectives.

“Not yet,” he said, “not yet. These clerks have all served us faithfully for years, and I don’t want to submit them to the indignity of being shadowed–that’s what they call it, isn’t it?–of being shadowed by some cheap hireling who may try to distort the most innocent acts into evidence of guilt, so that he can show us how smart he is.”

“But this sort of thing can’t go on forever,” ejaculated Mr. Wheatcroft. “If we are to be underbid on every contract worth having, we might as well go out of the business!”