One night I spoke to you about my disappointment. I told you this wasn’t the sort of thing I wanted, that I had expected to go about disguised with wigs and false mustaches, carrying revolvers, bowie-knives, dark lanterns and handcuffs in my pockets, and all that sort of thing.
How you laughed! I shall never forget it.
“Why, bless you, some one’s got to do the kind of work you’re doing,” you said, “and very often just such work becomes necessary in the most important cases. However, if you’re tired of it I’ll try you on another sort of a job and see how you make out.”
You took me into the office and began to talk.
“Did you ever study bookkeeping?” you asked.
“Humph. I’m afraid that won’t amount to much, still, you can try.”
“Listen to me! To-morrow morning you go down to No. ---- Broadway, office of the Eagle Steamship Line, and say I’m the bookkeeper Old King Brady spoke of. That will be enough. They’ll engage you.”
“But I don’t want to be a book-keeper--I want to be a detective.”
“Hold on, hold on! A detective has got to be anything and everything. You will take the job and go to work. You will also keep your eyes open and try and find out who is robbing the safe every night or two, of small amounts--do you understand?”
“Ah! I’m going to be put on a case at last then?”
“Of course you are. There is no information to give you except that some one of your fellow employees is a thief, and I want to catch him. You must watch every man in the office and you mustn’t let one of them know that you are watching. As for further instructions, I haven’t got any to give. It is a case for you to show what you are made of. I will give you one week to accomplish something in. If you have nothing to report at the end of that time, I shall put on another man.”
Well, I thought so then, and I haven’t changed my opinion since.
I resolved to show you what sort of stuff I was made of before the week had passed.
Of course, when I presented myself at the Eagle steamship office I was engaged at once.
The line ran down to South America somewhere--Brazil, if I remember rightly--and the proprietor’s name was Sandman, a bald-headed, snuffy old Scotchman who was terribly exercised about the robberies, but I felt very sure, from what I heard the other clerks say, that, even if I did succeed in catching the thief, I needn’t look for any big reward, for, with one voice, they pronounced Mr. Sandman “meaner than mud.”