"His keen gray eyes seemed to pierce through and through me. I expected every moment to hear him shout out: 'Come hither, everybody—quickly; this man is not Lester Armstrong, striking though the resemblance is. Send for the police, that this mystery may be solved at once!'"
He was not far wrong in his suspicions.
Manager Wright had quitted the private office with a deeply knitted brow and a troubled expression on his face.
"The change in Lester Armstrong since yesterday is amazing," he mused. "Long years of dissipation could not have told more on him than the change these few hours have worked. He must have been out drinking and carousing all night long—the odor of the room from the fumes of strong liquor was almost unbearable; it was blue with smoke, too, and Lester Armstrong always led us to believe that he had never smoked a cigar in his life; and, worst of all, from a gentleman he has suddenly turned into a libertine, if I am any judge of features.
"I cannot begin to account for the great change in him; it mystifies me quite as much as it did the store detectives and Mr. Conway, the cashier. It is all terribly wrong—somehow—somewhere. If it were not that I have been here so many years I would tender Mr. Armstrong my resignation. I am not at all satisfied—and yet, yesterday, when Mr. Armstrong called me into his private office and we had that long talk about the business matters of the house, I felt that all would go well; to-day he is like a different man—appears to have forgotten completely all of the instructions he was so particular to give me. Yesterday he said: 'We will go over the books and papers very carefully, you and I, and see that every department is run as carefully and well as heretofore. I should not like any one in the establishment to feel that my taking possession will mean any change for them—save for the better.'
"To-day he is as different as night from day; he does not know what he wants; he seems all at sea over the simplest details which he ought to be decidedly familiar with." His musings were suddenly cut short by an immediate summons to return to the private office.
It was with some misgivings that he entered his employer's presence the second time.
The bogus Mr. Armstrong was almost invisible from a cloud of smoke from a freshly lighted Havana. He held the morning paper in his hand and was perusing its columns with apparent avidity.
"Wright!" he cried, excitedly, "how much ready money do you suppose there is in the safe of this shebang—-hey?"
It took Mr. Wright almost a moment to recover his usual calm dignity and make answer: