“I’ll speak to Mayhew about this to-morrow,” he thought.

The latter had certainly imagined upon going out a half-hour before that he had turned the knob on the door so as to spring the lock.  He had never failed to do so before.  But to-night Mayhew had other thoughts.  He had been revolving the problem of a business of his own.

“I’ll look in here,” thought the manager, pulling out the money drawers.  He did not know why he wished to look in there.  It was quite a superfluous action, which another time might not have happened at all.

As he did so, a layer of bills, in parcels of a thousand, such as banks issue, caught his eye.  He could not tell how much they represented, but paused to view them.  Then he pulled out the second of the cash drawers.  In that were the receipts of the day.

“I didn’t know Fitzgerald and Moy ever left any money this way,” his mind said to itself.  “They must have forgotten it.”

He looked at the other drawer and paused again.

“Count them,” said a voice in his ear.

He put his hand into the first of the boxes and lifted the stack, letting the separate parcels fall.  They were bills of fifty and one hundred dollars done in packages of a thousand.  He thought he counted ten such.

“Why don’t I shut the safe?” his mind said to itself, lingering.  “What makes me pause here?”

For answer there came the strangest words: 

“Did you ever have ten thousand dollars in ready money?”

Lo, the manager remembered that he had never had so much.  All his property had been slowly accumulated, and now his wife owned that.  He was worth more than forty thousand, all told—­but she would get that.

He puzzled as he thought of these things, then pushed in the drawers and closed the door, pausing with his hand upon the knob, which might so easily lock it all beyond temptation.  Still he paused.  Finally he went to the windows and pulled down the curtains.  Then he tried the door, which he had previously locked.  What was this thing, making him suspicious?  Why did he wish to move about so quietly.  He came back to the end of the counter as if to rest his arm and think.  Then he went and unlocked his little office door and turned on the light.  He also opened his desk, sitting down before it, only to think strange thoughts.

“The safe is open,” said a voice.  “There is just the least little crack in it.  The lock has not been sprung.”

The manager floundered among a jumble of thoughts.  Now all the entanglement of the day came back.  Also the thought that here was a solution.  That money would do it.  If he had that and Carrie.  He rose up and stood stock-still, looking at the floor.

“What about it?” his mind asked, and for answer he put his hand slowly up and scratched his head.