The partner and Mr. Phillips looked in wonder into our and each other's eyes, and simultaneously said, "Yes, yes, let's hear; and first," said Mr. Phillips, "let us hear the scoundrel's name, if you have it, and then the rest of the story."
"Ah, yes, sir," said I, "that is the point first. His name, Mr. Phillips, is 'William Bruce, dealer in stocks, etc.' (so his card says), '64 Wall Street.'"
Mr. Redding and the partner looked confused at the announcement (for I had told Mr. Redding that it was "an old clerk" of his), and Mr. Phillips, for a second, looked confused for another reason, which confusion was somewhat deepened, when I turned directly upon him, and said,—
"But Mr. Bruce has an alias, another name, and that is Mr. Charles Phillips; and you, sir, are the scoundrel you inquired for!"
Phillips turned pale as a ghost, and tried to say something, but his voice failed.
"Mr. Phillips," said I, "the house in 19th Street has delivered up its treasures. They are all in my possession, together with your mistress's pearls, diamonds, and watches, and everything valuable which she, as your 'wife,' would permit me and the officer to take, and you are now my prisoner, without the slightest possibility, on your part, of escape from the full penalties of the law; and now I propose to send a carriage at once for 'Mrs. Bruce.' She, I am sure, don't know of your guilt, and would be happy to encounter her returned husband here in the person of Mr. Charles Phillips, the time-old, confidential clerk of this house."
Phillips reached out his hands imploringly to me, and begged that I would not send for "Mrs. Bruce,"—said he was justly caught, and was ready to confess all, without our going to the trouble of a trial, and then commenced crying like a girl—hysterically.
The astonishment of Mr. Redding and his partner can better be imagined, perhaps, than portrayed here. I never saw such a change come over a man as that which Mr. Redding evinced. All his old strength seemed to come back to him at once. He was inflexible and severe. He said but few words, and these always to the purpose. His disgust for Phillips was something sublime. "O, you pious hypocrite!" said he; "you d——est of all 'whited sepulchres' that ever disgraced our common humanity! I am more angry that I have been so deceived by your pious villany, than for all the anxiety and sickness you have brought upon me. But, in your own pious cant, as you have meted it to others, 'so shall it be meted unto you,' you thief, libertine, and saintly class-leader!"
Mr. Redding's partner, on the other hand, was differently affected. He cried, and said to Phillips, "O, Charles Phillips, how could you? I know you must have had dreadful temptations. It was all that woman: she spurred you on."
Phillips was silent for a moment; and I, who believed the woman innocent of any knowledge of his crimes, waited anxiously to hear what he would say in reply; and the hardened man had the magnanimity to not shield himself behind the woman, but said, "O, no; she knows nothing of my guilt. She has not prompted me to it directly, but it was to support and to please her that I, without her knowledge, pursued my career of crime. I am the wickedest 'whited sepulchre,' as Mr. Redding calls me, that ever walked Broadway, or disgraced the inside of a church. But I have got my punishment, in part, now, and I am ready, if you demand it, to suffer the penalties of the law; but for my wife's and children's sake, I could wish that I could compromise with you, and go away from New York forever." (His family resided in Brooklyn.)