Samuel Dexter.”
When Mr. Korwein had finished reading this letter he replaced it carefully in his pocket, lit another cigar, and resumed his meditations, and if anyone could have looked into his heart at that moment he would have been heard to say to himself something like the following:
“I think that after all I have played my cards wonderfully well and unless some brat turns up with a claim on it nothing can prevent me from inheriting the bulk of the estate. So far he knows nothing about the shop down town, but if he ever finds out about it I shall be ruined. I’ll take care that he doesn’t though, and, after all, the city is so big, and there are so many people in it, that the chances of his or anybody else’s connecting me with that shop are very small indeed. The boy has got some stuff in him and under my tuition he’ll amount to something. I think I’ll take hold of him if he does this business in the country all right, and give him a steady job, looking after my affairs. He’s a smart little brute and knows enough to keep his mouth shut. It’s easy enough to get some lawyer to go up there and find out what I want to know but a lawyer would be too smart to suit me; he’d suspect something at once, whereas this kid will think of nothing except the money he’s going to get, besides if he did want to blab he’d find no one but some youngster of his own age and class to talk to. I guess I did the best thing I could in sending him up there, but all the same I shall be anxious until he gets back.”
At this point in his reflections, the tall, dark bearded man rose to his feet, walked swiftly down the winding path, passed through the front gate, and then went on down below it till he reached the station of the east side of the Elevated railroad. Three quarters of an hour later he entered the little office on Eldridge Street where the bookkeeper was still diligently at work on his big ledger.
“How is business to-day?” he asked of his assistant.
“Pretty fair,” replied the other, as he handed his chief a batch of letters that had arrived in the morning’s mail, and which he had opened and perused. Mr. Korwein took the letters in his hand, pushed open a small swinging door behind the bookkeeper’s desk and disappeared into the room beyond, leaving the old bookkeeper toiling away with his scratching pen as if he had been at it all his life and never expected to stop.
When Skinny the Swiper parted from his employer he walked rapidly down the road which led to the Elevated station, took the train and proceeded to Forty-second Street, and then to the Grand Central Depot. Here he purchased a ticket for Rocky Point, and, finding that he still had an hour to wait, determined to employ his time to good advantage in eating another dinner. The fact that he had partaken of a hasty repast in Mr. Korwein’s kitchen two hours before, made no difference to him. Hearty repasts did not come in Skinny’s way every day, and he believed in availing himself of every opportunity of the sort that presented itself. He was capable of eating three or four dinners in one day, and nothing at all for two days after, and as he was going into the interior of the country, to a point more distant from the city than any that he had ever previously visited, he determined to fortify himself for the journey with a good, square New York meal, the last, he said to himself, that he might have for many a day.
Therefore he strolled languidly along, with his hands in his pockets, until he reached Third Avenue, and not half a block away he found a small oyster house, in which he thought he could be well fed. In taking a seat at one of the small tables, he called the waiter to him in a lordly manner, that caused the other diners in the room to smile broadly, and bade him bring him a beefsteak, potatoes, a piece of apple pie, and “be quick about it.”
“Which will you have first, sir, the pie or the steak,” said the waiter with perfect gravity.
“You can bring me de pie, an’ I’ll eat it while de steak is cookin’,” replied Skinny, and was astonished to notice that his remarks were greeted with a general roar of laughter, in which the waiter and cashier, as well as the guests, joined heartily.