The Twinkling of an Eye

I

The telegraph messenger looked again at the address on the envelope in his hand, and then scanned the house before which he was standing. It was an old-fashioned building of brick, two stories high, with an attic above; and it stood in an old-fashioned part of lower New York, not far from the East River. Over the wide archway there was a small weather-worn sign, “Ramapo Steel and Iron Works;” and over the smaller door alongside was a still smaller sign, “Whittier, Wheatcroft & Co.”

When the messenger-boy had made out the name, he opened this smaller door and entered the long, narrow store. Its sides and walls were covered with bins and racks containing sample steel rails and iron beams, and coils of wire of various sizes. Down at the end of the store were desks where several clerks and book-keepers were at work.

As the messenger drew near, a red-headed office-boy blocked the passage, saying, somewhat aggressively, “Well?”

“Got a telegram for Whittier, Wheatcroft & Co.,” the messenger explained, pugnaciously thrusting himself forward.

“In there!” the office-boy returned, jerking his thumb over his shoulder towards the extreme end of the building, an extension, roofed with glass and separated by a glass screen from the space where the clerks were at work.

The messenger pushed open the glazed door of this private office, a bell jingled over his head, and the three occupants of the room looked up.

“Whittier, Wheatcroft & Co.?” said the messenger, interrogatively, holding out the yellow envelope.

“Yes,” responded Mr. Whittier, a tall, handsome old gentleman, taking the telegram. “You sign, Paul.”

The youngest of the three, looking like his father, took the messenger’s book, and, glancing at an old-fashioned clock which stood in the corner, he wrote the name of the firm and the hour of delivery.

He was watching the messenger go out. His attention was suddenly called to subjects of more importance by a sharp exclamation from his father.

“Well, well, well,” said the elder Whittier with his eyes fixed on the telegram he had just read. “This is very strange--very strange indeed!”

“What’s strange?” asked the third occupant of the office, Mr.

Wheatcroft, a short, stout, irascible-looking man with a shock of grizzly hair.

For all answer Mr. Whittier handed to Mr. Wheatcroft the thin slip of paper.

No sooner had the junior partner read the paper than he seemed angrier than was usual with him.

“Strange!” he cried. “I should think it was strange! confoundedly strange--and deuced unpleasant, too.”

“May I see what it is that’s so very strange?” asked Paul, picking up the despatch.

“Of course you may see it,” growled Mr. Wheatcroft; “and let us see what you can make of it.”

The young man read the message aloud: “Deal off. Can get quarter cent better terms. Carkendale.”

Then he read it again to himself. At last he said, “I confess I don’t see anything so very mysterious in that. We’ve lost a contract, I suppose; but that must have happened lots of times before, hasn’t it?”

“It’s happened twice before, this fall,” returned Mr. Wheatcroft, fiercely, “after our bid had been practically accepted and just before the signing of the final contract!”

“Let me explain, Wheatcroft,” interrupted the elder Whittier, gently.

“You must not expect my son to understand the ins and outs of this business as we do. Besides, he has only been in the office ten days.”

“I don’t expect him to understand,” growled Wheatcroft. “How could he?

I don’t understand it myself!”

“Close that door, Paul,” said Mr. Whittier. “I don’t want any of the clerks to know what we are talking about. Here are the facts in the case, and I think you will admit that they are certainly curious: Twice this fall, and now a third time, we have been the lowest bidders for important orders, and yet, just before our bid was formally accepted, somebody has cut under us by a fraction of a cent and got the job.

First we thought we were going to get the building of the Barataria Central’s bridge over the Little Makintosh River, but in the end it was the Tuxedo Steel Company that got the contract. Then there was the order for the fifty thousand miles of wire for the Trans-continental Telegraph; we made an extraordinarily low estimate on that. We wanted the contract, and we threw off, not only our profit, but even allowances for office expenses; and yet five minutes before the last bid had to be in, the Tuxedo Company put in an offer only a hundred and twenty-five dollars less than ours. Now comes the telegram to-day. The Methuselah Life Insurance Company is going to put up a big building; we were asked to estimate on the steel framework. We wanted that work--times are hard and there is little doing, as you know, and we must get work for our men if we can. We meant to have this contract if we could. We offered to do it at what was really actual cost of manufacture--without profit, first of all, and then without any charge at all for office expenses, for interest on capital, for depreciation of plant. The vice-president of the Methuselah, the one who attends to all their real estate, is Mr. Carkendale. He told me yesterday that our bid was very low, and that we were certain to get the contract. And now he sends me this.” Mr. Whittier picked up the telegram again.

“But if we were going to do it at actual cost of manufacture,” said the young man, “and somebody else underbids us, isn’t somebody else losing money on the job?”

“That’s no sort of satisfaction to our men,” retorted Mr. Wheatcroft, cooking himself before the fire. “Somebody else--confound him!--will be able to keep his men together and to give them the wages we want for our men. Do you think somebody else is the Tuxedo Company again?”

“What of it?” asked Mr. Whittier. “Surely you don’t suppose----”

“Yes, I do,” interrupted Mr. Wheatcroft, swiftly. “I do, indeed. I haven’t been in this business thirty years for nothing. I know how hungry we get at all times for a big, fat contract; and I know we would any of us give a hundred dollars to the man who could tell us what our chief rival has bid. It would be the cheapest purchase of the year, too.”

“Come, come, Wheatcroft,” said the elder Whittier; “you know we’ve never done anything of that sort yet, and I think you and I are too old to be tempted now.”

“Nothing of the sort,” snorted the fiery little man; “I’m open to temptation this very moment. If I could know what the Tuxedo people are going to bid on the new steel rails of the Springfield and Athens, I’d give a thousand dollars.”

“If I understand you, Mr. Wheatcroft,” Paul Whittier asked, “you are suggesting that there has been something done that is not fair?”

“That’s just what I mean,” Mr. Wheatcroft declared, vehemently.

“Do you mean to say that the Tuxedo people have somehow been made acquainted with our bids?” asked the young man.

“That’s what I’m thinking now,” was the sharp answer. “I can’t think of anything else. For two months we haven’t been successful in getting a single one of the big contracts. We’ve had our share of the little things, of course, but they don’t amount to much. The big things that we really wanted have slipped through our fingers. We’ve lost them by the skin of our teeth every time. That isn’t accident, is it? Of course not! Then there’s only one explanation--there’s a leak in this office somewhere.”

“You don’t suspect any of the clerks, do you, Mr. Wheatcroft?” asked the elder Whittier, sadly.

“I don’t suspect anybody in particular,” returned the junior partner, brushing his hair up the wrong way; “and I suspect everybody in general. I haven’t an idea who it is, but it’s somebody! It must be somebody--and if it is somebody, I’ll do my best to get that somebody into the clutches of the law.”

“Who makes up the bids on these important contracts?” asked Paul.

“Wheatcroft and I,” answered his father. “The specifications are forwarded to the works, and the engineers make their estimates of the actual cost of labor and material. These estimates are sent to us here, and we add whatever we think best for interest, and for expenses, for wear and tear, and for profit.”

“Who writes the letters making the offer--the one with actual figures I mean?” the son continued.

“I do,” the elder Whittier explained; “I have always done it.”

“You don’t dictate them to a typewriter?” Paul pursued.

“Certainly not,” the father responded; “I write them with my own hand, and, what’s more, I take the press-copy myself, and there is a special letter-book for such things. This letter-book is always kept in the safe in this office; in fact, I can say that this particular letter-book never leaves my hands except to go into that safe. And, as you know, nobody has access to that safe except Wheatcroft and me.”

“And the Major,” corrected the junior partner.

“No,” Mr. Whittier explained, “Van Zandt has no need to go there now.”

“But he used to,” Mr. Wheatcroft persisted.

“He did once,” the senior partner returned; “but when we bought those new safes outside there in the main office, there was no longer any need for the chief book-keeper to go to this smaller safe; and so, last month--it was while you were away, Wheatcroft--Van Zandt came in here one afternoon, and said that, as he never had occasion to go to this safe, he would rather not have the responsibility of knowing the combination. I told him we had perfect confidence in him.”

“I should think so!” broke in the explosive Wheatcroft. “The Major has been with us for thirty years now. I’d suspect myself of petty larceny as soon as him.”

“As I said,” continued the elder Whittier; “I told him that we trusted him perfectly, of course. But he urged me, and to please him I changed the combination of this safe that afternoon. You will remember, Wheatcroft, that I gave you the new word the day you came back.”

“Yes, I remember,” said Mr. Wheatcroft. “But I don’t see why the Major did not want to know how to open that safe. Perhaps he is beginning to feel his years now. He must be sixty, the Major; and I’ve been thinking for some time that he looks worn.”

“I noticed the change in him,” Paul remarked, “the first day I came into the office. He seemed ten years older than he was last winter.”

“Perhaps his wound troubles him again,” suggested Mr. Whittier.

“Whatever the reason, it is at his own request that he is now ignorant of the combination. No one knows that but Wheatcroft and I. The letters themselves I wrote myself, and copied myself, and put them myself in the envelopes I directed myself. I don’t recall mailing them myself, but I may have done that too. So you see that there can’t be any foundation for your belief, Wheatcroft, that somebody had access to our bids.”

“I can’t believe anything else!” cried Wheatcroft, impulsively. “I don’t know how it was done--I’m not a detective--but it was done somehow. And if it was done, it was done by somebody! And what I’d like to do is to catch that somebody in the act--that’s all! I’d make it hot for him!”

“You would like to have him out at the Ramapo Works,” said Paul, smiling at the little man’s violence, “and put him under the steam-hammer?”

“Yes, I would,” responded Mr. Wheatcroft. “I would indeed! Putting a man under a steam-hammer may seem a cruel punishment, but I think it would cure the fellow of any taste for prying into our business in the future.”

“I think it would get him out of the habit of living,” the elder Whittier said, as the tall clock in the corner struck one. “But don’t let’s be so brutal. Let’s go to lunch and talk the matter over quietly.

I don’t agree with your suspicion, Wheatcroft, but there may be something in it.”

Five minutes later Mr. Whittier, Mr. Wheatcroft, and the only son of the senior partner left the glass-framed private office, and, walking leisurely through the long store, passed into the street.

They did not notice that the old book-keeper, Major Van Zandt, whose high desk was so placed that he could overlook the private office, had been watching them ever since the messenger had delivered the despatch.

He could not read the telegram, he could not hear the comments, but he could see every movement and every gesture and every expression. He gazed from one speaker to the other almost as though he were able to follow the course of the discussion; and when the three members of the firm walked past his desk, he found himself staring at them as if in a vain effort to read on their faces the secret of the course of action they had resolved upon.

II

After luncheon, as it happened, both the senior and the junior partner of Whittier, Wheatcroft & Co. had to attend meetings, and they went their several ways, leaving Paul to return to the office alone.

When he came opposite to the house which bore the weather-beaten sign of the firm he stood still for a moment, and looked across with mingled pride and affection. The building was old-fashioned--so old-fashioned, indeed, that only a long-established firm could afford to occupy it. It was Paul Whittier’s great-grandfather who had founded the Ramapo Works.

There had been cast the cannon for many of the ships of the little American navy that gave so good an account of itself in the war of 1812. Again, in 1848, had the house of Whittier, Wheatcroft & Co.--the present Mr. Wheatcroft’s father having been taken into partnership by Paul’s grandfather--been able to be of service to the government of the United States. All through the four years that followed the firing on the flag in 1861 the Ramapo Works had been run day and night. When peace came at last and the people had leisure to expand, a large share of the rails needed by the new overland roads which were to bind the East and West together in iron bonds had been rolled by Whittier, Wheatcroft & Co. Of late years, as Paul knew, the old firm seemed to have lost some of its early energy, and, having young and vigorous competitors, it had barely held its own.

That the Ramapo Works should once more take the lead was Paul Whittier’s solemn purpose, and to this end he had been carefully trained. He was now a young man of twenty-five, a tall, handsome fellow, with a full mustache over his firm mouth, and with clear, quick eyes below his curly brown hair. He had spent four years in college, carrying off honors in mathematics, was popular with his classmates, who made him class poet, and in his senior year he was elected president of the college photographic society. He had gone to a technological institute, where he had made himself master of the theory and practice of metallurgy. After a year of travel in Europe, where he had investigated all the important steel and iron works he could get into, he had come home to take a desk in the office.

It was only for a moment that he stood on the sidewalk opposite, looking at the old building. Then he threw away his cigarette and went over. Instead of entering the long store he walked down the alleyway left open for the heavy wagons. When he came opposite to the private office in the rear of the store he examined the doors and the windows carefully, to see if he could detect any means of ingress other than those open to everybody.

There was no door from the private office into the alleyway or into the yard. There was a door from the alleyway into the store, opposite to the desks of the clerks, and within a few feet of the door leading from the store into the private office.

Paul passed through this entrance, and found himself face to face with the old book-keeper, Van Zandt, who was following all his movements with a questioning gaze.

“Good-afternoon, Major,” said Paul, pleasantly. “Have you been out for your lunch yet?”

“I always get my dinner at noon,” the book-keeper gruffly answered, returning to his books.

As Paul walked on he could not but think that the Major’s manner was ungracious. And the young man remembered how cheerful the old man had been, and how courteous always, when the son of the senior partner, while still a school-boy, used to come to the office on Saturdays.

Paul had always delighted in the office, and the store, and the yard behind, and he had spent many a holiday there, and Major Van Zandt had always been glad to see him, and had willingly answered his myriad questions.

Paul wondered why the book-keeper’s manner was now so different. Van Zandt was older, but he was not so very old, not more than sixty, and old age in itself is not sufficient to make a man surly and to sour his temper. That the Major had had trouble in his family was well known.

His wife had been flighty and foolish, and it was believed that she had run away from him; and his only son was a wild lad, who had been employed by Whittier, Wheatcroft & Co., out of regard for the father, and who had disgraced himself beyond forgiveness. Paul recalled vaguely that the young fellow had gone West somewhere, and had been shot in a mining-camp after a drunken brawl in a gambling-house.

As Paul entered the private office he found the porter there, putting coal on the fire.

Stepping back to close the glass door behind him, that they might be alone, he said:

“Mike, who shuts up the office at night?”

“Sure I do, Mr. Paul,” was the prompt reply.

“And you open it in the morning?” the young man asked.

“I do that!” Mike responded.

“Do you see that these windows are always fastened on the inside?” was the next query.

“Yes, Mr. Paul,” the porter replied.

“Well,” and the inquirer hesitated briefly before putting this question, “have you found any of these windows unfastened any morning lately when you came here?”

“And how did you know that?” Mike returned, in surprise.

“What morning was it?” asked Paul, pushing his advantage.

“It was last Monday mornin’, Mr. Paul,” the porter explained, “an’ how it was I dunno, for I had every wan of them windows tight on Saturday night, an’ Monday mornin’ one of them was unfastened whin I wint to open it to let a bit of air into the office here.”

“You sleep here always, don’t you?” Paul proceeded.

“I’ve slept here ivery night for three years now come Thanksgivin’,”

Mike replied. “I’ve the whole top of the house to myself. It’s an illigant apartment I have there, Mr. Paul.”

“Who was here Sunday?” was the next question.

“Sure nobody was here at all,” responded the porter, “barrin’ they came while I took me a bit of a walk after dinner. An’ they couldn’t have got in anyway, for I lock up always, and I wasn’t gone for an hour, or maybe an hour an’ a half.”

“I hope you will be very careful hereafter,” said Paul.

“I will that,” promised Mike, “an’ I am careful now always.”

The porter took up the coal-scuttle, and then he turned to Paul.

“How was it ye knew that the winder was not fastened that mornin’?” he asked.

“How did I know?” repeated the young man. “Oh, a little bird told me.”

When Mike had left the office Paul took a chair before the fire and lighted a cigar. For half an hour he sat silently thinking.

He came to the conclusion that Mr. Wheatcroft was right in his suspicion. Whittier, Wheatcroft & Co. had lost important contracts because of underbidding, due to knowledge surreptitiously obtained. He believed that some one had got into the store on Sunday while Mike was taking a walk, and that this somebody had somehow opened the safe.

There never was any money in that private safe; it was intended to contain only important papers. It did contain the letter-book of the firm’s bids, and this is what was wanted by the man who had got into the office, and who had let himself in by the window, leaving it unfastened behind him. How this man had got in, and why he did not get out by the way he entered, how he came to be able to open the private safe, the combination of which was known only to the two partners--these were questions for which Paul Whittier had no answer.

What grieved him when he had come to the conclusion was that the thief--for such the house-breaker was in reality--was probably one of the men in the employ of the firm. It seemed to him almost certain that the man who had broken in knew all the ins and outs of the office. And how could this knowledge have been obtained except by an employee? Paul was well acquainted with the clerks in the outer office. There were five of them, including the old book-keeper, and although none of them had been with the firm as long as the Major, no one of them had been there less than ten years. Paul did not know which one to suspect.

There was, in fact, no reason to suspect any particular clerk. And yet that one of the five men in the main office on the other side of the glass partition within twenty feet of him--that one of those was the guilty man Paul did not doubt.

And therefore it seemed to him not so important to prevent the thing from happening again as it was to catch the man who had done it. The thief once caught, it would be easy thereafter for the firm to take unusual precautions. But the first thing to do was to catch the thief.

He had come and gone, and left no trail. But he must have visited the office at least three times in the past few weeks, since the firm had lost three important contracts. Probably he had been there oftener than three times. Certainly he would come again. Sooner or later he would come once too often. All that needed to be done was to set a trap for him.

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!”

“That’s true, of course,” Mr. Whittier admitted; “but we are not sure that we are being underbid unfairly.”

“The Tuxedo Company have taken away three contracts from us in the past two months,” cried the junior partner; “we can be sure of that, can’t we?”

“We have lost three contracts, of course,” returned Mr. Whittier, in his most conciliatory manner, “and the Tuxedo people have captured them. But that may be only a coincidence, after all.”

“It is a pretty expensive coincidence for us,” snorted Mr. Wheatcroft.

“But because we have lost money,” the senior partner rejoined gently, laying his hand on Mr. Wheatcroft’s arm, “that’s no reason why we should also lose our heads. It is no reason why we should depart from our old custom of treating every man fairly. If there is any one in our employ here who is selling us, why, if we give him rope enough he will hang himself, sooner or later.”

“And before he suspends himself that way,” cried Mr. Wheatcroft, “we may be forced to suspend ourselves.”

“Come, come, Wheatcroft,” said the senior partner, “I think we can afford to stand the loss a little longer. What we can’t afford to do is to lose our self-respect by doing something irreparable. It may be that we shall have to employ detectives, but I don’t think the time has come yet.”

“Very well,” the junior partner declared, yielding an unwilling consent. “I don’t insist on it. I still think it would be best not to waste any more time--but I don’t insist. What will happen is that we shall lose the rolling of those steel rails for the Springfield and Athens road--that’s all.”

Paul Whittier had taken no part in this discussion. He agreed with his father, and saw he had no need to urge any further argument.

Presently he asked when they intended to put in the bid for the rails.

His father then explained that they were expecting a special estimate from the engineers at the Ramapo Works, and that it probably would be Saturday before this could be discussed by the partners and the exact figures of the proposed contract determined.

“And if we don’t want to lose that contract for sure,” insisted Mr.

Wheatcroft, “I think we had better change the combination on that safe.”

“May I suggest,” said Paul, “that it seems to me to be better to leave the combination as it is. What we want to do is not to get this Springfield and Athens contract so much as to find out whether some one really is getting at the letter-book. Therefore we mustn’t make it any harder for the some one to get at the letter-book.”

“Oh, very well,” Mr. Wheatcroft assented, a little ungraciously, “have it your own way. But I want you to understand now that I think you are only postponing the inevitable!”

And with that the subject was dropped. For several days the three men who were together for hours in the office of the Ramapo Iron and Steel Works refrained from any discussion of the question which was most prominent in their minds.

It was on Wednesday that the tall clock that Paul Whittier had broken returned from the repairer’s. Paul himself helped the men to set it in its old place in the corner of the office, facing the safe, which occupied the corner diagonally opposite.

It so chanced that Paul came down late on Thursday morning, and perhaps this was the reason that a pressure of delayed work kept him in the office that evening long after every one else. The clerks had all gone, even Major Van Zandt, always the last to leave--and the porter had come in twice before the son of the senior partner was ready to go for the night. The gas was lighted here and there in the long, narrow, deserted store, as Paul walked through it from the office to the street.

Opposite, the swift twilight of a New York November had already settled down on the city.

“Can’t I carry yer bag for ye, Mister Paul?” asked the porter, who was showing him out.