There was hardly room for the female clerk and myself to move about in the room after the perishable records were all in there—big volumes of yellow tissue made it look like a storehouse, though they only extended back to the time of the first loss.
In addition to this arrangement it was generally given out that the night business on the wharf tracks had been so largely increased by the heavy movement of fruit that an extra man was to be put on to work opposite Hiram, who went on at four a. m., and came off at three p. m. As the general office was uptown, more than a mile from the dock tracks, it was unlikely that I would be noticed working in the dual capacity of night clerk on the wharf and something or other under the auditor in the general offices. But in this we soon found we had miscalculated.
When Hiram learned the arrangement he was jubilant. In an incredibly short time he had come to look on my capacity to clear up a mystery as unlimited. The joy of anticipation supplanted fear, but he did not fully recover his old, buoyant, optimistic self.
He never mentioned Anna Bell Morgan, but I was sure he thought of her about all the time he was not busy.
"Ben," he began one night, laughing, "did you send your friend in New York another sample of those steel filings on which we are paying storage? I believe you will soon graduate into the 'Prince of conmen,' or a second-story worker. I tell you it takes a pretty good man to stop me in the middle of the street and subtract three-fifty from my jeans for a half-interest in a barrel of junk."
"No, not yet, but I expect to soon."
But after I had been working in the dual rôle of wharf night clerk and assistant auditor for a week and nothing happened, he began to get uneasy, but somehow did not doubt the final outcome.
We usually ate dinner together, then we would come down to his little office in the corner of the wharf and he would stay with me until his early bed-time.
"How long are you going to stand this night-and-day business? I don't see when you get any sleep?" he asked, evidently edging over for some information, not volunteered.
"One doesn't need much sleep on a loafing job like this. You see, there is little to do here nights, and less in the day time, so I manage pretty well." I had told him little about my office work.