stopping till the janitor’s wandering eyes settled upon his own. “Your conduct has always been exemplary, and your attention to duty satisfactory; but I would like to ask you today if you have observed anything amiss with the vaults of late? anything wrong about the boxes kept there? anything in short, that excited your suspicion or caused you to ask yourself if everything was as it should be?”
The janitor’s ruddy face grew pale, and his eye fell with startled inquiry on Mr. Harrington’s box that still occupied the centre of the table. “No, sir,” he emphatically replied, “has anything—”
But Mr. Sylvester did not wait to be questioned. “You have attended to your duties as promptly and conscientiously as usual; you have allowed no one to go to the vaults day or night, who had no business there? You have not relaxed your accustomed vigilance, or left the bank alone at any time during the hours it is under your charge?”
“No sir, not for a minute, sir; that is—” He stopped and his eye wandered towards Mr. Stuyvesant. “Never for a minute, sir,” he went on, “without I knew someone was in the bank, who was capable of looking after it.”
“The watchman has been at his post every night up to the usual hour?”
“Yes sir.”
“There has been no carelessness in closing the vault doors after the departure of the clerks?”
“No sir.”
“And no trouble,” he continued, with a shade more of dignity, possibly because Hopgood’s telltale face was beginning to show signs of anxious confusion, “and no trouble in opening them at the proper time each morning?”