“It seems to me,” said Copeland, “that you’ve done about enough for me for one day,—kept me out of jail and then saved me five thousand dollars!”
“We do what we can,” replied Jerry. “Keep us posted and when in doubt make the high sign. You’d better keep mum about the check. The deputy prosecutor’s a friend of mine and I don’t want to get him into trouble.”
“It makes me feel a little better about that check to know that it wasn’t good when I gave it,” remarked Copeland dryly. “I’ve only got about a hundred in bank according to my stubs.”
“I was just thinking,” said Jerry, playing with the curtain cord, “as I came down from the police court, that five thousand per night swells the overhead considerable. This isn’t a kick; I just mention it.”
Copeland paused in the act of drawing on his coat to bestow a searching glance upon his employee. He shook himself into the coat and rested his hand on the brass bedpost.
“What’s the odds?” he asked harshly. “I’m undoubtedly going to hell and a thousand or two, here and there—”
“Why are you going?” asked Jerry, tying a loop in the curtain cord.
Copeland was not prepared for this; he didn’t at once correlate Amidon’s question with his own remark that had inspired it.
“Oh, the devil!” he ejaculated impatiently; and then he smiled ruefully as he realized that there was a certain appositeness in his rejoinder.
The relations of employer and employee had been modified by the incidents of the night and morning. Copeland imagined that he was something of a hero to his employees, and that Jerry probably viewed the night’s escapade as one of the privileges enjoyed by the more favored social class. Possibly in his own way Amidon was guilty of reprehensible dissipations and therefore disposed to be tolerant of other men’s shortcomings. At any rate, the young fellow had got him out of a bad scrape, and he meant to do something for him to show his gratitude.