“Just so.”
“I want a thousand dollars.”
“Of course you mean of your aunt’s money?”
“It won’t make much difference to me whose money it is, if I only get it.”
“You shall have the thousand you paid me on her account.”
“Very well, sir.”
He gave me his check for the amount, and I wrote a note for it, payable to my aunt. The captain wished to ascertain how much I had lost by the copper explosion, but I evaded a definite answer, and intimated that I was bitten to the extent of only a few hundred dollars. I had now a thousand dollars in my pocket, besides about a hundred in my possession before. I felt a little easier, though the terrible pressure of my load still rested heavily upon me. I am not disposed to moralize in this place upon the guilt of my conduct, for really the guilt at that time did not trouble me half so much as the fear of detection.
I owed the bank eight thousand dollars. I had “tinkered” the books so as to account for the deficiency, but the record would not bear a very close examination. The fact that I was mixed up in these miserable copper stock speculations was quite enough to excite suspicion, for I could not hope that the fact was unknown to the directors, as long as my uncle knew it. I felt as though I was living on a powder magazine which might explode at any instant. The slightest accident might reveal the whole truth to Mr. Bristlebach.
If I should happen to be sick a day, so that I could not go to the bank, my false entries might be detected. Even while I was in the daily discharge of my duties, the president or the cashier might be tempted to examine my accounts. On the other hand, I might go a year or more without discovery, though the chances were apparently all against me. If I ran the risk of the future, I should live in constant terror of an explosion. The death of Aunt Rachel, I confidently believed, would enable me to pay off my debt; and the question was whether or not I should take the chances of detection until the possession of her money enabled me to set myself right with the bank.