“He lives in Orange,” replied Day.

“What street, and number?”

“One hundred and sixty-three Water Street,” replied Day.  His eyes flashed.  He was finding an unwholesome exhilaration in this inspirational lying.

“Well,” said the man, “I can tell you one thing, if your precious boss ain’t in this office Monday morning by nine o’clock sharp, he’ll see me at one hundred an sixty-three Water Street, Orange, New Jersey, and he’ll hand over my two thousand odd dollars that he’s swindled me out of, or I’ll have the law on him.”  With that the man swung himself aboard a passing car, and Allbright and Day were left looking after him.

“That feller had ought to have been knocked down,” said Day.

Allbright turned and looked at him gravely.  “So, Captain Carroll lives in Orange?” he said.

“He may, for all I know.”

“Then you don’t know?”

“Do you?”

“No; I never have known exactly.”

“Well, I haven’t, but I wasn’t goin’ to let on to that chap.  And he may live jest where I said he did, for all I know.  Say!”

“What?”

“You s’pose it is all right?”

Allbright hesitated.  His eyes fell on three gold balls suspended in the air over a door a little way down a cross street.  “Yes,” he said.  “I believe that Captain Arthur Carroll will pay every man he owes every dollar he owes.”

“Well, I guess it’s all right,” said Day.  “I’m goin’ to take the girls to Madison Square Garden to-night.  I’m pretty short of cash, but you may as well live while you do live.  I wonder if the boss is married.”

“I don’t know.”

“I guess he is,” said Day, “and I guess he’s all right and above board.  Good-bye, Allbright.  See you Monday.”

But Monday, when the two stenographers, the book-keeper, and the clerk met at the office, they found it still locked, and a sign “To let” upon the door.

“Mr. Carroll gave up his office last Saturday,” said the man in the elevator.  “The janitor said so, and they have taken his safe out for rent.  Guess he bust in the Wall Street shindy last week.”

Out on the sidewalk the four looked at one another.  The pretty stenographer began to cry in a pocket-handkerchief edged with wide, cheap lace.

“I call it a shame,” she said, “and here I am owing for board, and—­”

“Don’t cry, May,” said Day, with a caressing gesture towards her in spite of the place.  “I guess it will be all right.  He has all our addresses, and we shall hear, and you won’t have a mite of trouble getting another place.”

“I think I am justified in telling you all not to worry in the least, that you will be paid every dollar,” said Allbright; but he looked perplexed and troubled.

“It looks mighty black, his not sending us word he was going to close the office,” said Day; and then appeared the tall, lean man who wanted his two thousand odd dollars.  He did not notice them at all, but started to enter the office-building.