“What?”

“Did he pay you?”

“Yes, he did.”

“Ain’t he owin’ you anything?”

“No, he is not.”

The young man gave a whistle of relief.  “Well, I s’pose he’s all right,” he said.  “He ’ain’t paid the rest of us up yet, but I s’pose it’s safe enough.”

A faithful, even an affectionate look came into the other man’s face.  He remembered his suspicions about the watch, and reasoned from premises.  “I have no more doubt of him than I have of myself,” he replied.

“You s’pose the business is goin’ on just the same, then?”

“Of course I do,” Allbright replied, almost angrily.  And then a man who had just emerged from the street door coming from the elevator accosted him.

“Can you tell me anything about a man by the name of Carroll that’s been running a sort of promoting business up in No. 233,” he asked, and his face looked reddened unnaturally.  The young man thought he had probably been drinking, but Allbright thought he looked angry.  The young man replied before Allbright opened his mouth.

“He’s gone on a vacation,” he said.

“Queer time of year for a vacation,” snapped the man, who was long and lean and full of nervous vibrations.

“He was overworked,” said Harrison Day.

“Guess he overworked cheating me out of two thousand odd dollars,” said the man, and both the others turned and stared at him.

Then Allbright spoke.  “That is a statement no man has any right to make about my employer unless he is in a position to prove it,” he said.

“That is so,” said Harrison Day.  He was a very small man, but he danced before the tall, lean one, who looked as if all his flesh might have resolved to muscle.

The man looked contemptuously down at him and spoke to Allbright.  “So he is your employer?” he said, in a sarcastic tone.

“Yes, he is.”

“This young man’s also, I presume.”

“Yes, he is,” declared Day.  But the man only heeded Allbright’s response that he was.

“Well,” said the man, “may I ask a question?”

“Yes, you may,” said Day, pertly, “but it don’t follow that we are goin’ to answer it.”

“May I ask,” said the man, addressing Allbright, “if Captain Carroll has paid you your salaries?”

“He has paid me every dollar he owed me,” replied Allbright, with emphasis, and his own face flushed.

Then the man turned to Day.  “Has he paid you?” he inquired.

And Day, with no hesitation, lied.  “Yes, sir, he has, every darned cent,” he declared, “and I don’t know what business it is of yours whether he has or not.”

“When is he coming back?” asked the man, of Allbright, not heeding Day.

“Next Monday,” replied Allbright, with confidence.

“Where does he live?” asked the man.

Then for the first time an expression of confusion came over the book-keeper’s face, but Day arose to the occasion.