The next day at the noon hour I saw my female clerk in a certain situation that led me into all sorts of information. Miss Bascom of the golden locks was openly dangling her feminine charms before Chief Clerk Burrell.
I had only to glance through an open door from the hall on my floor into a long room occupied by a lot of clerks of which he had charge as chief. Evidently he was a married man, and of a species easily susceptible.
I would have continued to think it was a case of old-fashioned man hunting to win free board and a little credit at the stores, had it not been reported by a man detailed at my request to see just what kind of smoke Mr. Becker was making during his stay in New Orleans. There was a lengthy conference that night between Burrell and Becker, of Becker & Company, with liberal quantities of gin fizz on the side, in a private room back of a prominent hotel bar.
This was exceedingly interesting and filled with possibilities—a party of three, two men and a woman, an unusually attractive young woman at that, and all were interested in the movement of freight, with this difference, that Becker might be the chief beneficiary, and both men might be rising to the lure of beauty.
I spent most of that night looking up the antecedents of this interesting trio and did not go down to the wharf, but went to bed just before Hiram arose to go to work. Burrell, I found, lived with his wife and two children and was inclined to be sporty; Becker was a rounder, and the girl was just a clerk before she came to me.
I heard Hiram leaving the house and had not been sleeping long before a messenger came from him, requesting me to hurry down to the wharf. I had asked him to send for me the instant the next irregularity was observed.
He was very much excited when I got there, as were also the Government meat inspector and the packing-house representative. The three of them, together as usual, had broken the seals of a Kansas City car of fresh sausages in ten-pound cartons, and about half of it, from the center of the car, was gone. This could be seen at a glance.
The four of us went into Hiram's little office at the corner of the wharf. He was so furious that he had become stoical, even sullen, which was promptly misunderstood by the Government inspector and the packing-house agent as proof of guilt. In order to protect him and get a full expression from them I took the attitude of favoring their view. He did not quite understand this and felt it keenly.
Each of them was ready, like dogs held in leash, to spring at his throat. But it might have been a sorry leap: Hiram was magnificent under such fire. Surely the Gold-Beater had given him good blood and a fighting spirit if nothing else.