CHAPTER V.

THE CLERK’S RUSE.

“I was in hopes we should be kept so busy this afternoon that Sam wouldn’t have a chance to speak to me,” thought Gus, as he made his way to the office and hung up his hat and overcoat, “but it is just my luck. If I wanted a few minutes rest the store would be so full of customers that you couldn’t crowd a ramrod in among them.”

“Well?” said Sam, when the boy came out of the office and took his place behind the counter.

“Well,” answered Gus, “I can’t pay you this month. I have had so many calls that my money is all used up. Twenty dollars don’t go far, you know.”

Sam’s face grew black at once. “Didn’t I tell you that my claim was to be settled first?” he demanded, angrily.

“Yes; but what am I to do when a man stops me in the street and tells me that if I don’t pay up then and there, he will see my father about it before I am an hour older?” asked Gus.

“Put him off with promises, as you do me. Who stopped you on the street?”

“That Jew.”

“Did you pay him?”

“I did—_not_.” The last word Gus said to himself.

“Well, you still have five dollars left. Hand that over and I will give you credit for it.”

“But I haven’t got it. I paid that out, too.”

Sam whistled softly to himself and drummed with his fingers on the counter for a moment; then he drew a sheet of white wrapping-paper toward him and pulled a pencil from his pocket. The pencil moved rapidly over the paper for a few seconds, and after Sam had read what he had written, he crossed over to Gus’s side of the store and laid before him the following:—

“$12.00. Foxboro’, Jan. 29th 18— ROBBINS & CO.

Please pay Samuel Holmes Twelve Dollars out of my next month’s wages, and charge the same to my account.”

“There, Gus,” said he, “sign that, and I shall begin to believe that I stand a chance of getting the money I lent you to help you out of a tight place.”

“Twelve dollars!” exclaimed Gus. “I borrowed only ten.”

“But I don’t lend money for nothing,” replied Sam, “and besides I must have something to pay me for waiting so long, and for the trouble I have had in collecting it.”

Gus took a minute to think about it, then seized the pencil and wrote his name at the bottom of the order. Sam thrust it into his pocket and putting on his hat left the store.

“I don’t run any risk by that,” said Gus to himself. “Sam will not present the order before the 1st of March, and by that time, if things work as I hope they will, I shall be a good many miles from here. What miserable luck some fellows do have in this world, anyhow. I thought I should have no trouble in getting the money on that check to-day. Where has Sam gone, I wonder?”

As Gus asked himself this question an expression of alarm settled on his face. He ran quickly to the door, and looking down the street saw that Sam was just disappearing in the cigar store on the corner. The boy’s heart began to beat a little faster, for he knew now, as well as he did five minutes later, what it was that took Sam to Mr. Meyers’s place of business. He stood in the door until Sam came out, and then he retreated behind his counter and employed himself in straightening up the goods on the shelves.

“Gus,” said Sam, when he had hung his hat in its accustomed place, “lie, number one thousand and one, is nailed. Meyers says he hasn’t seen you to-day.”

“Suppose he hasn’t!” snapped Gus, who had been caught in so many falsehoods that he had become used to it.

“Why don’t you tell the truth once in a while?” continued Sam; “say once a week, or even once a month, if you can’t stand it any oftener. You will get so, pretty soon, that nobody will believe a word you say.”

“Why don’t you keep from sticking your nose into matters that don’t concern you?” exclaimed Gus, angrily.

“This matter does concern me. Now, I want to know what has become of that money you drew to-day.”

“It is none of your business. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, I understand it,” said Sam, so quietly that Gus looked at him in surprise.

“Then you may as well understand another thing, while you are about it,” continued the latter, “and that is, that from this time out you are to attend to your own affairs and let me entirely alone. What I do with my money is none of your business.”

“I generally do attend to my own affairs,” replied Sam, “and I shall attend to yours in a way you don’t think of. You haven’t started for Texas, yet!”

Gus jumped as if he had been shot. He could hardly bring himself to believe that he had heard aright. He had guarded his secret as closely as a boy could. Having no intimate friend to assist him in keeping it, he had not lisped a word of it to anybody; but it had leaked out after all, and Sam seemed to know all about it.

“Tex——” said Gus, drawing a long breath and leaning heavily on the counter, “as!”

“Yes! You have laid your plans to skip out and leave us all in the lurch, but you shan’t do it! I must have what you owe me first; and when you get the money on that check, I will tell you how much I want of it to pay me for the trouble of keeping your secret. I know you didn’t get the money to-day.”

“How do you know that?” stammered Gus, growing more and more astonished and bewildered.

“That’s my business!” was the satisfactory reply.

Just then a customer came in and moved up to Sam’s side of the store, and this gave Gus an opportunity to collect his scattered wits, and think over what Sam had just told him. How in the world had the latter learned his secret? was a question that Gus asked himself over and over again, but without finding any satisfactory answer. It was too deep a mystery for him to solve just then, for he was so utterly confounded that he could not think at all.

“You haven’t started for Texas yet,” and “when you get the money on that check, I will tell you how much I want of it to pay me for the trouble of keeping your secret,” were the words that were constantly passing through the boy’s mind, and he could not drive them out long enough to decide what he ought to do. If he had any means of finding out just how much Sam knew, he might be able to make up his mind to something.

“But I don’t see how I am to find that out,” thought Gus, walking nervously up and down the store, “for of course he won’t tell me, if I ask him. The whole thing bangs me completely. I know I haven’t said a word that would lead him or anybody else to suspect anything; but he has got hold of it somehow, and wants a part of my hundred dollars to pay him for keeping his mouth shut. He shan’t have it! No matter what happens, he shan’t have it, for I don’t know how much I shall need to pay my expenses.”

Both the clerks were kept busy that afternoon, Gus at his counter and Sam in unpacking and arranging a new supply of goods that arrived about one o’clock. Gus could not keep his mind on his work, for he was continually thinking about this last piece of bad luck, and wondering how he should go to work to “pump” Sam, in order to find out just how much the latter knew about his contemplated movements. Once during the afternoon, when the store was clear of customers, he had occasion to pass through the warehouse, where Sam was at work, breaking open the boxes in which the new goods were packed. The latter was at work in his shirt-sleeves, and his coat lay wrong side out upon one of the boxes. As Gus passed by it, something caught his eye. He noticed that there were several letters sticking out of the inside pocket of the coat, and that they were all enclosed in brown envelopes, except one. That envelope was white, and there was something about it that looked familiar. Gus drew nearer to it, and was astonished almost beyond measure to see that it bore his own name in Ned Ackerman’s handwriting!

The whole mystery was made perfectly plain to Gus at once. The letter in question was the last he had received from his friend in Texas—the one in which the check was sent. On the day it arrived, Gus had kept it by him all the afternoon, devoting every leisure moment to reading it, and, instead of taking it home with him at night, as he meant to have done, and as he thought he _had_ done, he left it on the long shelf behind his counter, and Sam had found it there. He had been mean enough to read it, too; and then, instead of putting it back where he found it, he kept it, intending to use it to extort money from Gus.

And right here, we may add something that the reader ought to know, and that Gus never found out. When Sam met Gus going into the bank, his suspicions were aroused, and he stood in front of the window and watched his movements. He thought that Gus was going to deposit the wages he had just received, instead of paying up his debts, as he ought to have done; but when he saw him present the check, mentioned in the letter he had stolen, Sam knew that Gus was making arrangements to leave the city very shortly. He saw that Gus did not receive the money, and that he did not bring the check out with him; so it must have been left in the bank for collection.

The rest of the boy’s plans Sam guessed at. He knew that Gus was very discontented; that he thought he would rather follow any business in the world than his own; that he imagined he would be happier anywhere on earth than he was in Foxboro’; that Mr. Robbins would never permit his son to go to Texas on a visit, especially to meet such a fellow as Ned Ackerman, whose influence over his associates was always a bad one. Sam knew all these things, and by putting them together, he arrived at a conclusion which we know to be the correct one.

“That’s Sam’s game,” thought Gus, swelling with indignation. “He intends to hold that letter over me as a sort of whip to make me do just as he says; but it’ll not succeed. He knows everything, and I must mind what I am about. The first thing I do will be to take what belongs to me.”

Gus came a step nearer to the box, intending to snatch the letter and walk off with it, leaving Sam to help himself if he could; but after an instant’s reflection he decided to adopt a different course. It would not be wise, he thought, to bring on an open rupture with Sam, for the latter might pay him back by telling his employer about his son’s Texas scheme, and that was something that must be kept from his father’s ears at all hazards.

“That would never do,” said Gus, as these thoughts passed through his mind. “I must wait until he turns his back.”

This Sam was accommodating enough to do in a very few minutes. As soon as he had taken an armful of bales out of the box he had just opened, he picked them up, carried them into the store and laid them on the counter. He was gone scarcely more than half a minute, but that was all the time Gus needed to accomplish his object. He seized the letter, thrust it into his own pocket and walked out into the store, feeling as though a heavy load had been removed from his shoulders. He fully expected that Sam would make trouble for him very shortly, and he prepared himself for it; but Sam did nothing of the kind. When he discovered his loss he probably thought that he had mislaid the letter or that it had dropped out of his pocket. At any rate he said nothing to Gus about it.

Gus wrote a long letter to Ned that night, telling him of all the bad luck that had befallen him of late, and describing his plans for the future, and then he settled back into his old monotonous life again. The store had never looked so dreary and uninviting as it did now, and neither had his work ever been so distasteful to him. Gus never could have endured it, so he told himself more than once, if he had not been sustained and encouraged by the belief that it would end in a very few days, and that when once he was away from home and could do as he pleased, he would have fun enough to make up for all the gloomy hours he had spent behind the counter.

After the second week had passed Gus made it a point to call at the bank every few days to see if his check had been heard from, and when he came out he always found that Sam, who went to his meals at the same time Gus did, was loitering on the sidewalk in front of the window.

“Let him watch,” thought Gus, who grew angry whenever he caught even the smallest glimpse of Sam. “If I am not smart enough to outwit him I ought to lose every cent of that money.”

“I wonder what’s the matter?” thought Sam, when he saw Gus go into the bank and come out again with the very long face he always wore when he was disappointed. “They ought certainly to have heard from that check by this time. Well, there’s one thing about it: Gus can’t get the money without my knowing it, because the only time he can get into the bank is when he goes to his dinner, and I shall always be on hand to watch him.”

One day, after Gus had grown very impatient, and had begun to fear that his check had been lost on the way, and that he would never hear from it again, he happened to meet the cashier, who was also going home to his dinner. “It is all right at last, Gus,” said the latter, cheerfully.

The boy’s gloomy expression of countenance, which he had worn for several days past, vanished at once. “Has the money come?” he asked as soon as he could speak.

“No; but we have heard from the check, and will cash it for you whenever you please.”

“And you won’t want my father’s signature?”

“No. You fill out a draft—you’ll find blanks at the bank—making it payable to ‘self’ and sign your name to it, and I’ll give you the money. That’s all there is of it.”

The cashier went on his way, and Gus looked up and down the streets and on all sides of him to make sure that Sam had not been a witness of the interview. But the latter was nowhere in sight. He had followed Gus at a distance, as he did every day, to satisfy himself that he did not go to the bank and draw the money, and then he turned toward his own home. He was fooled for once, and with this reflection to encourage him Gus walked slowly toward his father’s house, and making his way to his own room threw himself upon the bed. He did not answer the dinner-bell when it rang, and presently his mother, who had heard him enter the house, came up to see what was the matter.

“Why, Augustus, are you ill?” she asked, with some anxiety.

“No, ma’am; but I don’t want any dinner,” was the reply.

Moral philosophy teaches us that we can speak the truth and at the same time tell a lie, and Gus certainly did on this occasion. He told nothing but the truth when he said that he was not sick and didn’t want any dinner; but the tone in which he said it, and his manner, made his mother believe that he was not well, and that was just what he wanted her to believe. He didn’t want any tea or toast either, he said. He only asked to be let alone so that he could rest until it was time for him to go down to the store again.

But Gus knew very well that he would not be expected to go down to the store that afternoon, and he wasn’t. His father came up to see him, as soon as he had eaten his dinner, and told him to stay at home until he felt better, and Gus did stay until about half-past two o’clock. Then he got up and went down to the bank. The draft he made out was promptly cashed, and Gus, with the money in his pocket, crept slowly homeward and went to bed again.

“There,” said he, as soon as he had settled his head on the pillow. “Where are you now, Mr. Sam Holmes? I’ve got my money, and you are none the wiser for it. I knew I could outwit you when the time came.”

While Gus was waiting to hear from his check he had ample leisure to perfect all his plans, and now nothing remained to be done but to pack his valise with the clothing he had already selected and laid by itself, and go down to the depôt in time to catch the westward-bound train which passed through Foxboro’ at half-past eight in the evening. He was somewhat nervous, for he knew that at the very last moment a thousand things might happen to interfere with his arrangements: but he did not think of the step he was about to take with the least regret. He knew when his father and brother came home at supper time, and heard them when they went out to return to the store. After that his mother brought him up some delicacies that sick people are supposed to relish; but Gus, although he was by this time very hungry, said he didn’t care for anything, and besides he showed so plainly that he didn’t want his mother in his room, that she went down stairs and left him to himself again.

There was no fear of interruption after that, and Gus set about completing the preparations for his flight. He quickly packed his valise, put his money carefully away in his pocket, stopped long enough to eat all the supper his mother had brought up to him, then seized his valise and crept down stairs and out of the house. He made his way toward the depôt, avoiding the principal streets as much as he could, and finally reached the railroad about a quarter of a mile above the place where the trains stopped. There was a freight-house opposite the depôt, and toward this Gus now directed his course, intending to wait there in the dark until the train arrived. He could thus avoid the crowd which always gathered about the platform at train time, and by boarding the cars on the side opposite the depôt, he could escape observation.

“That’s what I want to do,” said the runaway to himself, as he took his stand in a dark doorway and looked down the track to see if he could discover any signs of the approaching train, “for of course I wouldn’t be very smart if I were to let any of these loafers see me. They would all want to know where I was going, and then when my folks began to make inquiries about me, they would say they had seen me take the train for Chicago. I wouldn’t like to have that known, for there are such things as telegraphs and detectives in this country.”

If Gus had only known it, he was putting himself to a great deal of unnecessary trouble. It might have astonished him to know that even if his father had been thoroughly posted in all his plans, he would have made no effort to prevent Gus from carrying them into execution. The boy found this out in due time, and we shall tell about it in its proper place.

A good many incidents that were really worthy of note happened during Gus’s journey to Texas, but we have so many things to write about that are more interesting that we must pass them by without further notice. We have set out to tell what Gus did and how he enjoyed himself in Texas; and it will be enough now to say that he made the journey in safety; that Ned’s instructions were so plain and complete that he had no difficulty in finding his way; and that in due time the mail-coach deposited him on the verandah of the principal hotel in Palos.