Saying this, he slipped his fingers into a private panel in the wall and pulled out a small box and looked greedily at the contents.
“Abe Nathans will give me at least a thousand on these, and let me out of some of the worry he has given me before.”
Out of the room he went slyly, and hid the box in his pocket.
“I am not going to be without money,” said he as he was again in his room safely with the trinkets. “If the old man doesn’t realize that I am to have a certain amount, then I will take it myself.”
Three months had elapsed since Tom Cooper had left the big bank, and nothing had been heard of him, save that he had gone to sea. There were many times the old man felt that he had wronged the boy in sending him away without a word of explanation, but his heart was so full of finding Annie that he had no place for even Tom, and the doctor and lawyer had it so arranged that George could not see his uncle at all. If the old man had only known the truth about his young ward he would have inserted an advertisement for him in the paper.
But not knowing, Tom Cooper was allowed to come into the city without a friend to meet him, and his boat landed one evening just at dusk, and he had not yet received his month’s pay.
So, thinking that he needed a little money, he rolled up a suit of clothes and walked toward the nearest pawn shop.
Before he had done this another young man had gone in the same direction.
He opened the door, the bell sounding through the place.