The rag-man's memory was good, and he told me where he got the bag. It was among the last things he purchased the day he sold it to the coachman; and there was something about it peculiar, in this, that the rag-man, grumbling a little at the price he had paid for a few pounds of rags,—some few cents,—the old woman of whom he bought them threw that in, and told him to "go 'long."
I dismissed the coachman, offering to pay him for his time, but he would take nothing; and I went on with the rag-man and his striped dog. But it was slow work, and we had some distance to go; so I assisted him in getting his cart and dog housed in a livery stable on our course, and took the cars, and soon found the old woman, a gatherer up of old odds and ends, living in Bayard Street, just out of the Bowery. She traded a "good deal," she said, "with William, here" (the rag-man), "off and on."
I brought the matter of the bag to her notice. She remembered it well; and the next thing was to ask where she got it. That she could tell me, too. She had a daughter living in a building in Pine Street, below William, and it was she who sold it to her mother, with a lot of old rags and papers. "It comed to me," said she, "in the pile I had from her."
On inquiry, I found that the purchase had been made, as near as I could calculate, about three days after the robbery. I employed the old woman to go down to introduce me to her daughter, whom I found to be a very good, honest woman, who got a living by cleaning down-town offices, while her husband did a little private watching, now and then, and helped "along shore" a little.
The woman being introduced to me by her mother, who said I was an old friend of hers (as I had asked her to; for I had given her some slight hint of why I wanted to learn where the daughter got the bag, and had paid her beforehand for her time in waiting on me), made ready reply to my queries.
"Yes, yes; now I do remember," said she, scratching her forehead in a peculiar way with her stubbed fingers, "where I got that; it was that sassy brat in ——'s office gin it to me."
"Where's that?"
Her reply gave me the number of a broker's office in Wall Street, and things began at once to shape themselves in my mind. If I had not been a detective, I might have been surprised; but it was easy now to form an intelligible theory. I did not know this man, and made no inquiries about him of the woman; but I asked her how the boy came to give it to her.
"He ain't a young boy," replied she; "he's full-growed, and has got whiskers,—side whiskers,—but he's full of old Ned, and acts like a boy, poking fun all the while; and I call him a boy. Well, he gin it to me one night,—let's see,"—and she went over the list of names of offices where she had worked, and said, "Yes, it was Friday,"—fixing a time just the day after the robbery. She was there, it seems, just after business hours were over, to clean the room. Her day there was Saturday, generally, instead of Friday, and she went three times a week usually, and washed and mopped. Being a jolly woman, she was bantering with the "boy" (clerk), as she called him, who had staid to lock up after her. The clerk had thrown some old papers upon her, which he gave her to carry off, and she'd made a wad of some of them, and thrown them back to him; and so they had "smouched" each other,—as she termed that sort of play,—when just as she was going out, the clerk seized this bag from under the counter, and threw it, rolled up, at her head. She seized it, and said, "Thank you; this will do to bile puddings in; I'll take it."
"Take it, Sarah," said he; "and we'll call it quits for now," as she left the office.