“I’m in here now, Bridget, and you can’t clean the room.”
“Sure, how did you know my name was Bridget, which it ain’t, bein’ Katie. But, av it’s all th’ same t’ yez, ye’ll have t’ step out while I do th’ room. Come now, Mr. Witherby, come out like a gintleman, an’ let me in.”
“No, Katie, I can’t,” and Larry smiled at the strange order.
“Yez’ll have t’! Didn’t th’ missus tell me t’ clane th’ room? Come out now, like a gintleman, or I’ll lose me place.”
“No, Katie,” said Larry. “Do some other room, and I’ll soon be out. I’ll explain to Mrs. Boland.”
“Will yez? Thin it’ll be all right, glory be!” and the servant passed on down the hall, much to Larry’s relief.
“That was a close shave,” he reflected. “I must get through here, or I won’t be so lucky next time. To think that I found the thousand-dollar bill—and the stolen million was in bills of this denomination! Oh, if they only had the numbers of some of them!”
Larry made a note of the bill he held in his hand, and then, slipping it back between the pages of the theatrical book, he placed the latter where he had found it. He made a cursory search through a drawer he had overlooked, not expecting to find anything, but what was his surprise to find in it a false, sandy moustache! A wave of memory swept over him.
“Great Scott!” he whispered. “Now I understand! Witherby has several disguises. It was he who was in this room, trying on the black beard the day I discovered the bricks in the new house. He was the man we thought was the sneak-thief! He walked out of his own room, with this false moustache on, and neither Mrs. Boland nor I recognized him. He fooled us both. And we thought him a sneak-thief!”
Larry could not but help admiring the nerve of the suspected bank clerk.