"Vy to insure," the old man was shrilling, "if to send by you is, like you said, so safe? Hein?" He leaned over and hammered the ink-stained desk with a dirty fist.
The man behind the receipt-book shifted his position. He got up, and the light in the globe he bore on his shoulders was extinguished as by the turn of a screw. Hands in pocket, he stood in a shadow above the green reflector. "Safe, money undoubtedly is, in our hands. If," he repeated, "in one case out of a thousand it gets out of our hands, what then? Maybe you have heard there is a war? Maybe you can read?"
The old man gibbered with rage and offended pride; but the lines of defeat, which life had stamped on his face, deepened.
"Very well," said the other, with an effrontery that said he had marked the signs, "since you can read, you know who it is who robs the mails. Only twice since the war have they caught us, and we have sent tens of thousands of dollars. Ask the thieves of English where your money is!"
"Ai!" In the middle of the tirade the old man had turned away and spread out his hands in impotent grief.
"In war," the agent called after the broken figure—"in war it is wise to insure."
"Gone! All gone! Ai!" The quavering old voice trailed down the dingy stair.
Hahn mumbled an excuse, and the two new clients withdrew despite vigorous protests. Once outside the room, Hahn plunged down the two flights as though in fear of his life. When Napier reached the street there was no trace anywhere of either the old man, or of Hahn.
He recognized their collaboration in the account given in the New York papers, a few days later, of an exposure of one of the several concerns, all, it was hinted, under one (unnamed) management which, with no capital beyond a back room, a table, a chair, and a clerk behind a book of receipt "blanks," raked in hundreds and thousands from gullible people who thought they were helping their friends in Germany.