CHAPTER I_Three Thousand Dollars

THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS

[Illustration: "_Now state your problem_"]

THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS

ANNA KATHARINE GREEN

AUTHOR OF

"THE LEAVENWORTH CASE," "THE MILLIONAIRE BABY,"

"THE MAYOR'S WIFE," "THE FILIGREE BALL,"

ETC., ETC.

BOSTON

RICHARD G. BADGER

THE GORHAM PRESS

1910

Publishing Company

The Gorham Press, Boston, U. S. A.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I "Do you know what would happen to him" 9

II "Thousands in that safe" 17

III "How does it stand" 23

IV "Stenographers must be counted" 29

V "I've business with him" 35

VI "If I could tell you his story" 43

VII "I'm sure that I can get them for you" 51

VIII "I did as you bid me" 59

IX "'The safe door is opened,' I cried" 67

X "I have a scheme" 75

XI "She will go in" 81

XII "A block of steel" 89

XIII "I am from headquarters" 95

XIV "You do not answer" 103

XV "Now, if Fellows will stay away" 111

XVI "It was not paper I meant to have" 121

XVII "Now for my part of the bargain" 129

XVIII "What have you done among you" 139

XIX "So that was your motive" 147

XX "A jewel of far greater value" 155

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

OPPOSITE PAGE

"Now state your problem" Frontis

"He transferred his attention to the door" 38

"Grace, you have misunderstood me" 48

"An old man was looking up at the face of a young girl" 80

"She was ignorant of his presence" 100

"The door opened and Philip Andrews came in" 144

"'R. S. T.,' read the official" 152

"He was even present at the wedding" 158

THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS

CHAPTER I

"_Do you know what would happen to him?_"

"Now state your problem."

The man who was thus addressed shifted uneasily on the long bench which

he and his companion bestrode. He was facing the speaker, and though

very little light sifted through the cobweb-covered window high over

their heads, he realized that what there was fell on his features, and

he was not sure of his features, or of what effect their expression

might have on the other man.

"Are you sure we are quite alone in this big, desolate place?" he

asked.

It seemed a needless question. Though it was broad daylight outside and

they were in the very heart of the most populated district of lower New

York, they could not have been more isolated had the surrounding walls

been those of some old ruin in the heart of an untraversed desert.

A short description of the place will explain this. They were in the

forsaken old church not far from Avenue A----, a building long given

over to desolation, and empty of everything but débris and one or two

broken stalls, which for some inscrutable reason--possibly from some

latent instinct of inherited reverence--had not yet been converted into

junk and sold to the old clothes men by the rapacious denizens of the

surrounding tenements.

Perhaps you remember this building; perhaps some echo of the bygone and

romantic has come to you as you passed its decaying walls once dedicated

to worship, but soulless now and only distinguishable from the

five-story tenements pressing up on either side, by its one high window

in which some bits of colored glass still lingered amid its twisted and

battered network. You may remember the building and you may remember the

stray glimpses afforded you through the arched opening in the lower

story of one of the adjacent tenements, of the churchyard in its rear

with its chipped and tumbling headstones just showing here and there

above the accumulated litter. But it is not probable that you have any

recollections of the interior of the church itself, shut as it has been

from the eye of the public for nearly a generation. And it is with the

interior we have to do--a great hollow vault where once altar and

priest confronted a reverent congregation. There is no altar here now,

nor any chancel; hardly any floor. The timbers which held the pews have

rotted and fallen away, and what was once a cellar has received all this

rubbish and held it piled up in mounds which have blocked up most of the

windows and robbed the place even of the dim religious light which was

once its glory, so that when the man whose words we have just quoted

asked if they were quite alone and peered into the dim, belumbered

corners, it was but natural for his hardy, resolute, and unscrupulous

companion to snort with impatience and disgust as he answered:

"Would I have brought you here if I hadn't known it was the safest place

in New York for this kind of talk? Why, man, there may be in this city

five men all told, who know the trick of the door I unfastened for you,

and not one of them is a cop. You may take my word for that.

Besides----"

"But the kids? They're everywhere; and if one of them should have

followed us----"

"Do you know what would happen to him? I'll tell you a story--no, I

won't; you're frightened enough already. But there's no kid here, nor

any one else but our two selves, unless it be some wandering spook from

the congregations laid outside; and spooks don't count. So out with

your proposition, Mr. Fellows. I----"