For nearly two years John had not known an hour devoid of haunting fear. From a cheerful and contented youth he had become despondent, taciturn and nervous. He was the same affectionate husband and attentive son as before, and his general characteristics remained precisely the same. He was scrupulous to a penny in every other department of his life, and undoubtedly would have felt the same pricks of conscience had he been guilty of any other act of dishonesty. The affair at the bank was a thing apart. The embezzler of six hundred thousand dollars was not John at all, but a separate personality wearing John’s clothes and bearing his name. He perceived clearly the enormity of his offense, but, because he was the same John in every other respect, he had a feeling that somehow the fact that he had done the thing was purely fortuitous—in other words, that the bonds had to be taken, were going to be taken anyway, and that Fate had simply elected him to take them. Surely he had not wanted the bonds—had had no intention of stealing half a million dollars, and, in short, was not the kind of a man who would steal half a million dollars. Each night he tossed, sleepless, till the light stole in through the shutters. At every corner on his way uptown he glanced over his shoulder behind him. The front doorbell never rang that his muscles did not become rigid and his heart almost stop beating. If he went to a theatre or upon an excursion he passed the time wondering if the next day he would still be a free man. In short, he paid in full in physical misery and mental anxiety and wretchedness for the real moral obliquity of his crime. The knowledge of this maddened him for what was coming. Yet he realized that he had stolen half a million dollars, and that justice demanded that he should be punished for it.
After leaving the bank John called up Prescott and learned that the plan to adjust matters with the president had miscarried by reason of the latter’s absence. The two then met in a saloon, and here it was arranged that John should call up the loan clerk and tell him that something would be found to be wrong at the bank, but that nothing had better be said about it until the following Monday morning, when the president would return. The loan clerk, however, refused to talk with him and hung up the receiver. John had nowhere to go, for he dared not return home, and spent the afternoon until six o’clock riding in street cars and sitting in saloons. At that hour he again communicated with Prescott, who said that he had secured rooms for him and his wife at a certain hotel, where they might stay until matters could be fixed up. John arranged to meet his wife at Forty-second Street with Prescott and conduct her to the hotel. As Fate decreed, the loan clerk came out of the subway at precisely the same time, saw them together and followed them. Meantime a hurry call had been sent for the president, who had returned to the city.