Page:Czechoslovak stories.pdf/249

 ﻿It was suspiciously light-empty. The counsellor raised a second box, shook it-it was empty. He took a third, fourth, fifth-all were empty and only the last two were filled with the round, white wafers. The counsellor pushed his spectacles up on his forehead. What did this mean? Why, he himself had bought a supply only two weeks ago on what things could they all have been pasted in so short a time? He was still standing beside the cabinet when Konopásek reentered the office. Observing the attorney beside the cabinet, he turned as white as the wall.

“Well, where did you put all the wafers? Speak up!”

“Oh, Mr. Counsellor!” cried out the pale, trembling clerk, clasping his hands imploringly. “Do not destroy me I have a wife and six children!”

Until that moment the counsellor had not a thought of anything irregular, but now he suspected something was wrong, yet he could not grasp what it might be. The wafers—what had happened?

The crushed, deadly pale, shivering clerk reached with his bony fingers into the tail of his shabby, greenish-colored coat and drew therefrom a pocket-handkerchief, filled up, the corners being drawn together and tied.

“Here they are every one of them,” he stammered with chattering teeth. “I will put them all back into the boxes.” He untied the corners of the handkerchief and poured out on a sheet of paper a small pile of wafers.