The switchboard was never very busy after half-past five, and Ann leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes for a moment. She opened them almost immediately with a start, suddenly aware of another presence in the big office. The new janitor, a scraggly feather duster in his hand, stood by her desk.
“Did you want something?” Ann asked sharply.
She did not approve of the new janitor; his hair was too long and shaggy, his chin too stubbly, and his bushy eyebrows shaded eyelids that drooped. His appearance was in accord with his shiftless way of dusting and sweeping, Ann thought with disfavor. Her voice was decidedly sharp as she asked again, “Did you want something?”
“I wanted to see the cashier,” the man answered. His drooping eyelids gave a peculiar, leering expression to his face that filled Ann with repulsion. Then she braced herself; no matter how afraid she was, he must not know it.
“He has gone for the day. Come back in the morning,” she said, turning to her typewriter to cut the conversation short. The man hesitated for a moment, but her preoccupied air chilled him and Ann soon heard him walk away.
At that moment a tall young woman came hurrying down the stairs from the upper floor.
“I declare!” she cried, looking about the darkened office. “Everybody has gone home! And Mr. Bradford has locked the safe! Now will you tell me, Miss Carstairs, what I am going to do with all this money?”
She waved a green cardboard box in the air as she spoke, her voice rising higher and higher in her agitation.
“I have collected eight hundred dollars on those Liberty Bond payments, and here Mr. Bradford has locked the safe and gone home. I’m going to the country to-night and I can’t take all this money with me.”
“Sh! Miss Benson!” Ann warned, glancing quickly at the swing door that had not yet ceased swaying after the departing janitor. “Don’t tell any one. Can’t you put it in the vault? Mr. Bradford left it for me to lock to-night.”
“But,” Miss Benson objected, “something may happen to it and I am responsible. I can’t take it with me, though. I’ll have to put it in there, I guess.”
“See, Miss Carstairs,” she called a moment later from the depths of the vault, “I’m putting it beside the stamp box.”