Dick Darling's Money; or, The Rise of an Office Boy; and Other Stories

by Self-made man; Various

"Look at him, Jim; isn't he a handsome boy? And he treated me at the store as if I were a real lady."

Jim Patterson, if his name really was Patterson, which seemed doubtful after what had happened, uttered an imprecation as he got up.

"Now, then, you soft-hearted thing, go and find a piece of line for me to tie him with," he said.

"You won't do anything to him while I'm gone, will you, Jim?" she said anxiously.

"Why should I? He's down and out now for six or eight hours, which will give us time to skip. There's nothing in the house, except our trunks and duds that belong to us, for we took the place furnished. When the servant returns in the morning she'll find the boy and liberate him. By that time we'll be a long way on our way West. We have cleaned up quite a stake since we've been here, and can live on Easy street for a while. I'm afraid I made a mistake in pulling off this last trick. There isn't enough in it for the risk we ran. You ought to have bought more diamonds while you were about it."

"I was afraid to buy too much lest it should have excited suspicion," she said.

"We won't quarrel over it. Go and get the line."

The woman left the room, her dress rustling on the stairs. In a short time, during which Patterson took the money from the table and put it in his pocket and paced up and down the room, she came back with a length of clothes-line. Dick was carried into a small bedroom on that floor and his arms bound to his sides by half a dozen turns of the rope, which was then knotted at his back. There he was left to lie like a dead one on the bed until well along in the evening, when the Pattersons were ready to leave the house for good, when Jim intended to carry him downstairs to the basement where the servant would find him in the morning when she returned. After the woman had completed the balance of the packing, she and Jim went out to their dinner. When they got back the expressman Patterson had arranged with early in the day to take their trunks to the Pennsylvania ferry was waiting for them. He took away all their baggage. Soon afterward Patterson carried the unconscious boy downstairs, placed him upright in a kitchen chair, with the table for a support, and then the rascal locked up the house and placed the key of the front door under the iron area gate where the servant would see it when she came in the morning, and with his wife started for the railroad station.

They had been gone about an hour when Dick recovered his senses. He discovered his bound condition at once, and wondered where he was, for the room he was in was pitch dark. He pushed back the chair with his feet, which he saw were not tied, and got up. His eyes were accustomed to the darkness so he soon made out the outline of the stove and other things that showed him that he was in the kitchen, which he judged was in the basement of the house. Walking toward the door, which he found standing open, he passed into the lower hall up which he went to the door that opened on to the small space within the area gate and directly under the stoop and the stairs to the sidewalk. Bending sideways a little, he seized the handle and turned, but it was, as he supposed, locked. He bent lower and felt for the key, but it was missing, for the servant had taken it with her, along with the key of the gate. He saw that he couldn't get out there, so he thought he would venture to try the front door. He walked softly upstairs, for he supposed the man and his wife were still in the house. There was no light in the hall and the house was as silent as the grave, from which fact Dick circulated that it was very late.

He went to the front door, the inner one, but again he was stumped, for that key was missing, too. That seemed to indicate that Patterson and his wife had left the premises. This appeared to be a reasonable conclusion under the circumstances. They would hardly remain all night after what they had been guilty of. If they had fled the place, they had left a furnished house behind them, and the boy presumed that the furnishings belonged to them. He wondered if the man had intended to kill him, and that the woman had saved his life.