They were closing the drugstore, and Alfred Higgins who had just taken off his white jacket was putting on his coat and getting ready to go home. The little gray-haired man, Sam Carr, who owned the drugstore was bending down behind the cash register, and when Alfred Higgins passed him, he looked up and said softly, “Just a moment, Alfred. One moment before you go.”
The soft, confident, quiet way in which Sam Carr spoke made Alfred start to button his coat nervously. He felt sure his face was white. Sam Carr usually said “goodnight” brusquely, without looking up. In the six months he had been working in the drugstore Alfred had never heard his employer speak softly like that. His heart began to beat so loud it was hard for him to get his breath. “What is it Mr. Carr?” he asked.
“Maybe you’d be good enough to take a few things out of your pocket and leave them here before you go,” Sam Carr said.
“What things? What are you talking about?”
“You’ve got a compact and a lipstick and at least two tubes of toothpaste in your pocket, Alfred.”
“What do you mean? Do you think I’m crazy?” Alfred blustered. His face got red and he knew he looked fierce with indignation. But Sam Carr, standing by the door with his blue eyes shining bright behind his glasses and his lips moving underneath his gray mustache only nodded his head a few times and then Alfred grew very tightened and he didn’t know what to say. Slowly he raised his hand and dipped it into his pocket and with his eyes never meeting Sam Carr’s eyes, he took out a blue compact and two tubes of toothpaste and a lipstick, and he laid them one by one on the counter.
“Petty thieving, eh, Alfred?” Sam Carr said. “And maybe you’d be good enough to tell me how long this has been going on.”