The door of the room was safely locked and bolted, and Bar sat down with a strange kind of a trouble all over him, and drew from his bosom the treasure of which he had so singularly obtained possession.
It must have been made at the same shop as the one left in his hands by the “pocketbook-dropper” that morning, and Bar could not help wondering whether that baffled swindler would soon succeed again in rigging up so very taking a bait.
“He’ll end his days in the penitentiary,” muttered Bar, “and so’ll all the rest of ’em. I’d rather not go that way, if you please. Hullo! what’s this?”
Thousand-dollar bills, ten of them. Others of smaller denominations, comparatively, but all large. Checks and drafts for ten times as much more.
Business memoranda and receipts, which, even to Bar’s inexperienced eye, were evidently of great importance, and there could be no manner of doubt that the whole belonged to Dr. Randall Manning, the great physician.
“Glad he’s so rich,” muttered Bar. “And to think of such a man going in to help a poor fellow that fell in a fit on the sidewalk! How mad he must have been when he found he had been cheated! Yes, and what did he say or think when he found all this among the missing. I see. That gang played for him on purpose, and they played it wonderfully well. Hope they’ll be happy over their winnings. Why, I shall hardly dare go to sleep to-night with all this in my room. Only nobody’d dream of trying to rob a boy like me. Not worth robbing, and that’s a comfort just now. I’ll go to the doctor’s the first thing in the morning. Why not to-night? It’s early yet. No, he won’t be at home this evening. He’ll be hunting all over the city to see if he can get on the track of his property.”
Barnaby was only half right, and his better course would have been to go at once, for although the worthy doctor did employ his evening till a late hour, too, in the manner the quick-witted boy had imagined, he was just then at home and would have been glad enough to welcome such a visitor as Bar would have been.
Moreover, Bar himself might have had some chance for a good night’s sleep, instead of lying wide awake, as he did, hugging his precious wallet.
Perhaps, however, that night’s wakefulness, as the guardian of another man’s property, with all the thoughts it brought to the mind of the lonely and friendless boy, may have been of special service, and Bar’s decision may have been for the best, after all.
At all events, when morning came, Bar had fully made up his mind as to the course he meant to take, and it was scarcely the same he would have chosen if he had acted on the spur of the moment.