CHAPTER XXXIX.

HOW IT WAS IN THE MORNING.

“Who’s there, and what do you want?” demanded Wade, in reply to the summons at the door.

“Open the door,” said a man on the outside.

“Not much!” replied the custodian of the fortress.

“Open the door: I am the private watchman,” added the outsider.

“If you are, you ought to have been around here about half an hour ago,” answered Wade, who did not even know what a private watchman was.

“That’s Bleeker, the private watchman,” interposed the clerk.

“I don’t care who it is: I won’t let any one in till morning. How do I know he is not the man who fired the pistol in the street?” argued Wade. “Besides, I don’t feel much like following your advice, after the way you have managed this business.”

The private watchman, if it was he, rapped at the door till he was tired of it, and then he went off. Wade went his round again, and examined all his prisoners very carefully. He had them still, and they were all right. The last one visited was the clerk.

“Won’t you let me off, my good fellow?” said this one, in a pleading tone.

“No, I won’t: you let these robbers in, and you tried to shoot me,” answered Wade decidedly.

“I didn’t mean to shoot you. I have a mother who depends on me to support her; and I don’t know what will become of her.”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” added Wade; “but you ought to have thought of that before now.”

A little later, the knocking at the back-door was renewed; and again the private watchman--at any rate, it was the same voice--demanded admittance. Wade made no reply. Then he heard the voices of two other men, who said they were policemen.

“I won’t open the door to any one,” said Wade then. “The store has been broken into, and the robbers have friends on the outside; and I can’t tell the difference between you and them by the sound of your voices.”

“Who are you?” asked one of the men outside.

“I am the fellow that is holding the fort,” answered Wade.

“The police here want to come in,” added the private watchman.

“They can’t come in.”

“Then we will break in the door,” added another.

“If you do, I’ll empty this pistol into you,” replied Wade. “If you want to do any thing about it, go and call the man that keeps the store.”

“Where is the man that sleeps in the store?” asked the private watchman.

“He is safe enough, tied hand and foot, so that his business is such he can’t leave.”

Wade heard the men talking together, and he was pretty well satisfied that they were what they represented themselves to be; but, as he was not sure, he deemed it best not to let them in. It was time to make his round among the prisoners, and he set about it. He let the light of the lantern fall upon each, for the gas did not burn very brightly.

When he came to the one who had proposed to buy out his interest in the scrape, he renewed his offer. Wade thought the voice sounded like one he had heard before; and he threw the light on his face.

“I thought so!” exclaimed he. “You don’t seem to be in the missionary business just now.”

It was Mr. Caleb Klucker.

“I see you know me,” said the swindler; “but I am willing to give you a chance to make a pile of money.”

“And I am willing to give you a chance to spend the next ten or twenty years of your life in the State Prison,” replied Wade. “I am sure we can’t make a trade on any other terms.”

Wade left him. By this time the daylight was beginning to come in at the great windows on Broadway. It was nearly an hour by the clock since he had had his last talk at the back-door with the private watchman. The holder of the fortress seated himself in the rear of the store, and waited patiently for some one to come to his relief. He began to feel hungry too; and this reminded him that he had had no supper. He wondered whether he would be charged with being concerned in the robbery.

He had promised to go back to the restaurant of Mr. Flinker in the morning; but he had little hope of ever seeing the hundred dollars he had lost. Perhaps the jolly old man that kept the eating-house might give him some breakfast; and that was all he had to hope for. While he was thinking in this way, he heard noises at the front door: some one was at work on the locks, and presently the door opened.

A well-dressed gentleman and three other men entered at the Broadway door, and two of them were policemen. The person at the head of the procession was evidently the one that kept the store; and the man with the policemen was doubtless the private watchman. As they came in, Wade Brooks rose to show himself.

“Who are you?” demanded the gentleman at the head of the procession.

“I am the fellow that is keeping this store at present,” replied Wade.

“Are you one of those that broke into the store?”

“No, sir! I found the door open, and I came in.”

“What has been going on here?” continued the proprietor, gazing sternly at Wade as though he considered him an intruder.

“Well, sir, there has been an awful time here,” answered Wade, shaking his head to emphasize the statement.

“Has the store been robbed?”

“That’s more than I know; but I think the fellows that took the job didn’t get away with any thing.”

Mr. Maynard, the proprietor, led the way toward the rear of the store, looking about on both sides of him, evidently anxious to learn the present condition of the establishment. Presently he came to the bag of goods which Wade had dragged in from the back street.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“I don’t know what’s in it; but I brought it into the store from that street,” replied Wade, pointing to the one in the rear.

Mr. Maynard opened the bag, and found it was filled with watches, chains, and jewelry. He looked about in the vicinity of the counters and the big iron safe, and found two other bags, both containing the same kind of goods as the first. Wade had not seen these, for he had not been behind the counters.

“Where did you find that bag?” demanded Mr. Maynard.

“I brought it in from the back street; but I haven’t seen these two bags till now,” replied Wade.

“The store has been robbed!” exclaimed the proprietor with a good deal of excitement. “Where is Steeples?”

“Steeples? I don’t know him,” said Wade.

“He is the clerk that sleeps in the store,” added Mr. Maynard.

“Oh! I know where he is,” answered the boy custodian of the store. “Come this way, and I will show him to you.”

Wade led the way to the part of the store where he had put the clerk after he had bound him, and, throwing the light of his dark lantern on the face of the recreant employé, enabled the proprietor to recognize him at a glance.

“Steeples!” exclaimed Mr. Maynard, as he gazed upon the clerk he had so lately trusted with all the property in the store. “How is this?”

But Steeples made no reply to the question, and closed his eyes as though he could not bear the sight of his employer.

“This way, if you please, sir, and I will show you something that is worth seeing,” said Wade, as he led the way to the nearest of the robbers. “That is one of the fellows that did it.”

“We know him; but I didn’t think he was up to a job as big as this one,” said the officer of the police, who was one of the party.

“Here is another one, sir,” added Wade, leading the proprietor to the other side of the store. “This is Caleb Klucker.”

“Who?” asked the officer; and he probably knew the man better than the boy from the country.

“His name is Caleb Klucker; and he swindled me out of eighteen dollars.”

“This is Crapsy: he is a sneak-thief and general confidence man,” added the police-officer. “But he has as many names as he has fingers and toes.”

“But why is Steeples tied up with the rest of them?” asked Mr. Maynard, looking towards the place where the clerk lay on the floor.

“Because he fired a pistol at me, and tried to kill me; and he did it when the robber on the other side of the store told him to do it,” replied Wade.

“But he thought you were one of the robbers,” suggested the owner of the property.

“No, he didn’t; for he knows that when I found him gagged, and tied to a post, I let him loose; and he knew that I had knocked over these two robbers without any help from him. He knew I was not one of the thieves; and he would not have fired at me if he had known I was one of the thieves.”

“You knocked the robbers over!” exclaimed the officer of the police, with something like a laugh, in which his companions joined.

“That’s my remembrance of the matter,” added Wade.

“Do you mean to say that you, a mere boy, knocked over these two men, one of whom is an accomplished cracksman, and bound them as we find them?” demanded the officer, with an incredulous chuckle.

“That’s just what I mean to say,” replied Wade stoutly.

“Won’t you tell how it was done?” laughed the police-officer. “We have had some experience with the thieves of New York.”

“So have I,” added Wade, as he led the way to the back-door.

He turned the key, and threw back the bolts. Opening the door, he related the story as it has already been told. The police were satisfied that the feat was possible in the way it was described. The officer then examined the broken heads of the discomfited robbers, and found plain marks of the heels of the boy’s shoes on both of them. The “one from the country” recited all the details of the affair with the utmost minuteness. Mr. Maynard and the officer questioned him very closely; and they had no alternative but to believe him, because all the circumstances confirmed what he said. Wade pointed to the box of tools on the floor of the store.

“Those are kept down stairs, and no one is allowed to leave them in the upper store,” said the owner. “Were those used in opening the door?”

“Not at all, sir: Steeples opened the door for the robbers. I found the key of the door on the floor; but they could not have got the door open if those two big bolts had not been shoved back for them,” continued Wade. “That box of tools was brought up here to fix the door, and make it look as if it had been cut away. Then Steeples let them gag and bind him, and he groaned like a sick man, so as to make himself appear all right; and he was to get a share of the swag, as that fellow calls it.”

“My partners have said lately that Steeples was living too fast for his means,” said Mr. Maynard, musing.

“The boy has the right of it: the robbery could have been carried out on no other plan,” added one of the officers.

Not a little to the astonishment of Wade Brooks, he found he was not to be accused as one of the robbers. But it was _not_ “just his luck.”