Читать книгу The Passionate Quest онлайн

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"This is damned foolishness!" he muttered. "There can be no one in the place."

At that moment the outside door closed, not with a bang but with soft and stealthy deliberation. Philip hurried into the clicking room, on his way to the broad windows which commanded the street. The room, however, was divided into two by a partition, and the communicating door was locked. By the time he had made his way round and scrambled upon the bench to obtain a view of the street, there was nothing to be seen. He jumped down and shook the dust from his clothes.

"This is imagination," he decided. "There was no one there—there could have been no one there."

Thereupon he made a brave showing. He retraced his steps to the office, completed his task of leaving everything in order, helped himself to his old coat and cap, descended the stairs, let himself out and marched boldly up the street. For ever afterwards in his mind, however, he registered a dislike for empty buildings.

A few minutes later, Benjamin Stone sat in the chair which Philip had vacated. The cash box stood open before him, a small memorandum book was by his side. Three times he counted the little sheaves of notes, three times he turned back and compared them with the rough wage book. Then he abandoned his task. He sat very still, looking through the glass front of the office down the long, empty room beyond. An earnest and profound religious belief had helped him to find every crisis in life simple. For the first time he was assailed with doubts. For the first time he felt the grim despair of a man confronted with unimagined tragedy. He was a man who loved money, but it was not the loss of the fifty pounds which had brought the grey colour into his cheeks and that sense of horror into his whole being. It was the fact that the thief was one of those brought up under his own roof, for whose moral probity he was almost responsible. He picked up Philip's cigarette stump and threw it into the wastepaper basket, gazed at the empty peg from which the cap and coat had vanished. Then, with a little groan, his head sank upon his folded arms.