Caught

From the day that I first came into our house, as a partner, I have always attended to the cash and banking business myself, all moneys, checks, &c., passing through my hands are accounted for to me. In three and twenty years, experience, I never had an error but which, on careful revision, could be rectified, nor had any moneys ever been lost or stolen.

You may judge, therefore, of my surprise when, one day—it had been a very heavy cash day—on making up my account, I found myself two thousand three hundred and fifty-seven dollars short. There was no such amount entered in any way that I could possibly have nothing in my transactions upon which to base my deficit. I had but one place in which to put my money during the day, and that was in a drawer of my desk, a solid, old-fashioned structure attached to the building, and put up when the office was built, forty years before. Had the desk been one of the modern, flimsy affairs, I might have thought that somebody could have spirited the money out in some way, but even the idea of a false key did not harmonize with the old-fashioned lock of solid wood. I always locked the drawer, and carried the key in my pocket, and was rarely out of the office during the day, except half an hour for lunch, and then there were never fewer than three or four persons in the same room. At night I invariably removed every dollar to the safe, so that any appropriation of funds must be made in the daytime.

This was the sate of the case the day that I was two thousand three hundred and fifty-seven dollars short. I went through every pocket and available place on my person, though I knew I never put any money about me, and closed my account with the deficit, making up my mind not to speak of it that day, but to consider it until the morrow, before I asked advice. The morrow came, and, utterly decomposed, I admitted to myself… Read More