Henty was accessible by telephone. He answered Evan's excited summons. Between them the boys got Penton home and in bed. It was no simple task, either. The manager was obstreperous, but at the same time he showed the white feather. Drink could not have made him so ridiculous: there must have been something ridiculous in his nature.
"Why don't you let me alone?" he whined.
"Because," said Evan, "you're disgracing the bank. If you don't come home I'll report you to head office."
They were on the street. Penton shuddered and went with them more willingly when the threat had penetrated his clogged brain.
"You won't report me, will you? You won't report me?" he repeated in a fawning manner, fearful and pitiful.
"Not if you cut this out," said the teller.
"I'll c-cut it out, old c-cock," laughed Penton raspingly, swaying to the poison in his blood, "me f-for the water wagon after this."
He raved about himself until they had him in bed, then he raved about everything.
"Do you want me to stay a while, Mrs. Penton?" asked the teller.
"No thank you, Mr. Nelson," she replied, wearily; "he will be all right now. Oh, I'm so afraid this will be talked of all over town. Do you think so?"
"Nobody saw him," said Nelson consolingly, "but a few drunks, and anything they say won't matter."
"Oh, I hope so," she said; "it would be dreadful if the town turned against us. This is our first branch, you know, and a scandal like this might ruin us."
"Don't worry, Mrs. Penton; people are kind in this town, if theyarebehind the times. They always forgive the first offence, and sometimes more. During the two weeks Mr. Penton has been here he has made lots of friends."
Mrs. Penton began to be comforted, for what the teller said was true. Penton had a way with him among people; it was a hypocritical way, of course, but the affectation of it was not clear to the kind, simple people of Banfield. His ignoble flattery passed for amiability and good-will.
"It won't occur again," said Mrs. Penton, thoughtfully; "this will be a lesson to him. I wish you would frighten him, Mr. Nelson."
Henty had to smile. The manager's wife also smiled then. It was impossible to look worried or cross in the face of what Filter called "the ape's grin." Evan, however, was the first to sober. He was thinking of the day he had entered the bank, and how he had thrilled at sight of a living manager, an appointee of head office. Now he was asked to frighten one of these potentates into subjection.
"I'll make him believe the people of the town are sore," said the teller, pensively.
As they walked to their boarding-houses up the frosty street, the two boys discussed matters.
"I feel kind of sorry for him," said Henty; "he must be a regular booze-fighter."
"Yes. I wonder did head office know it when they sent him up here?"
Henty had no idea. Being simply a junior he did not venture an opinion concerning head office. He did express himself about the unofficial Penton, however.
"I don't like him, Nelson."
"No," said Evan, "he is a mistake. I see trouble ahead for us. I can't understand why the bank sent him up here. He has evidently been used to a fast life, and there's no excitement here for him except booze."
Henty had reached his lodging. With a "good-night" and a sigh he entered the cold storage where he put in the nights.
Evan, drawing one hundred and fifty dollars a year more than the junior, went further up the hill and landed in a warmer room. He lighted a lamp and prepared to thoroughly peruse a couple of letters. They were more than a couple, they were a pair. Julia reminded him of the "perfectly lovely" times they had spent together, and Lily spoke of the "grand evenings" they had walked or driven in. The Mt. Alban girl intimated that she was without "such a friend" now, and the Creek Bend girl spoke about the scarcity of "the right kind of fellows." Both letters were a challenge for Evan to act consistently with smile or kiss bestowed in the past, and a reminder that girls do not forget so readily as bankclerks might wish.
Folding the two little love-notes together, he held them above the lamp chimney and watched them burn. He did not wear the expression of a Nero, but of an Abram offering up that which was part of himself. He was not burning sheets of paper, but leaves from his life: sheets that he declared must become ashes to him—and to them.
"Yes," he thought, "it is better to make them angry than to string them along and break their hearts at last."
He continued to reason with himself:
"In the first place, I can't tell which of them I like best; therefore I don't love either of them. In the second place, it will be years before I shall draw enough money to marry on."
There was a third place, but Evan wanted to avoid it, for in that "place" sat Frankie Arling. The Bonehead also sat there, with his arms around Frankie.
Unable to banish this picture from his imagination, Evan finally delivered himself up to thoughts of Frankie: only in that way could he depose the redoubtable Porter.
The more Evan compared Frankie with Julia Watersea and Lily Allen, and with others whom he had met, the surer he felt, of her superiority. He regretted having hurt her at his home on Christmas Day, and knew he had done it because he cared for her. Thoughts of Perry gave him a sick feeling in his vitals, but he could not convince himself that Frankie cared anything about "the porter." What had become of all the other Hometon bankclerks she had temporarily tantalized?
In his quiet room the Banfield teller mused. After two years of banking he felt himself further from Frankie Arling than he had felt the day he went away. He was within a few days of nineteen now; his views on everything had undergone a change. Yet, he knew that he was more desirous than ever of marrying Frankie. There are moments when we see our hearts before us under an X-ray more wonderful than that used in medicine. Evan was given a glimpse of his inmost self, and what he saw was startling to him. He knew he loved Frankie Arling, and that he would be happy if he married her, even at nineteen! Age probably has less to do with the proper kind of marriage than is often supposed. There are boys of seventeen who would make good husbands, whereas some men are never fit. Evan knew he could have settled down at nineteen and made a success of marriage—if he could only have afforded it.
Knowing, though, the futility of dreaming against such odds as seven dollars a week and the bank system of increases, he forced his mind off matrimony and thought of Frankie only as an unattainable object he loved. In the midst of his dreaming loomed up again visions of other girls, chiefly Julia and Lily. He felt guilty for having shown them attention. He experienced remorse, for it was possible he had (the phrase passed facetiously through his brain) "built better than he knew." The letters just burnt were not at all comforting in this connection.
Nelson had met bankboys who delighted in what they called "stringing skirts." Those fellows were despicable to him; they were scarcely worth despising. And their numbers were altogether too large. He had met others—very many—who were not in the despicable class, but who also were guilty of unfaithfulness. Why, he asked himself, were conditions in the bank conducive to such a state of affairs?
It was, experience answered, because a fellow's mind was unoccupied after hours, and for many other reasons. He was among the most attractive people, and was obliged to dress well and be amiable. If girls were attracted to him it could do business no harm—and business comes first. When a move came along a fellow was lonely for a while and longed to be back at the town he had just left. Naturally he wrote a more or less pathetic letter to the girl who had liked him best, and she, being also a little lonely, replied with a touch of tenderness. A fellow came back with another letter, stronger than the first, written in a particularly dark hour, and the girl left behind began to feel herself a party to something serious. Letters went back and forth until a fellow was invited out in the new town, or otherwise met another fair one. Then his letters dropped off. Probably he liked the girl left behind and could have fallen in love with her; but he knew he could not hold out hopes of marriage, and why spoil her chances by writing any longer than was absolutely necessary? Sometimes the girl left behind persisted in her writing. Several of them, if he had worked in a number of towns, usually did. A fellow could not be rude to them—he must let them down gradually; so he wrote regularly for a while, praying that the growing frigidity of his tone would finally discourage.
Thus it went, town after town. The bankman drifted along, taking no girl seriously, but using them all so, out of necessity. If he was an unscrupulous person he enjoyed it; if he knew what conscience meant he periodically took himself to task—but never quite solved the problem. There was no solution to it. One could not be a hermit or a boor because girls had hearts and the bank had none. He must play the game. He was taking a big chance of having his own heart cracked, and thought of danger for himself fostered recklessness toward the weaker sex.
Something, a solemn voice it seemed, whispered to Evan that a young man of iron could go through the ordeal of eight or ten years' bank service and run the gauntlet of attractive femininity without injury to a single soul; but young men are not made of iron. Evan wondered if those who wrote the Rules and Regulations had daughters, or if they remembered the letters they had received when they were clerking in little towns. Why didn't they take the whole of human nature into consideration when they laid down laws to govern employes? The fact that they had ignored the right of young men to marry at a reasonable age had wrought a thousand published wrongs and ten thousand wrongs that would never reach the press.
In his silent room the young teller rebelled against the bonds that held him and his fellows. He counted the years that must elapse before he could hope to marry. At one hundred dollars increase per year it would take him seven years more to earn $1,050. In the East the "marriage minimum" was $1,000, in the West $1,200. Like Jacob he must work seven years for his wife. And then would it be Rachel or someone else? Would Frankie wait such an age for him? Could any man expect a girl to believe in the seriousness of his intentions for eighty-four months—a year of weeks? He believed she would wait if she understood, but how could a girl understand "business" like that?
The teller's mind grew darker as he mused. He saw only gloom ahead. The drunken manager staggered into his room, in spirit, and delivered another lecture on the "aristocracy of banking." Bah!
Evan filled with rebellion as his situation stood out before him—a sudden pain in the head warned him that he was worrying. Then came a slight reaction.
"Pshaw!" he muttered, "I'm putting myself in a rotten humor. I'll feel better in the morning."
And so he did. The "light of common day" is often preferable to the illusions of night. In spite of his disturbed state of mind Evan had slept well. Penton, too, had slept, but not well. Judging from his appearance in the morning, his dreams must have been diabolical.
When the teller entered the office Penton greeted him sullenly.
"Well," he said, grouchily, "I suppose I made a nice mess of things last night. I suppose every —— gossip in town will talk about it for months."
In spite of his grouch the manager looked frightened. Anyone could see he was worried.
"Not many know of it," said Evan, indifferently.
"Do you think they will blab?" Penton was still unrepentant. His brazenness irritated the teller, who answered simply:
"Yes."
Penton looked at him angrily.
"See here," he said, imperiously, "I don't give a —— what these yokels think of me. I am manager here, and if I want to take a glass that's my business; understand?"
Evan made no reply. He walked doggedly from the manager's office to his cage and set to work. Penton stood pulling at the inflamed tip of his upper lip. His bluffing had failed. When he approached Nelson it was humbly.
"I hope you'll try to fix things up as much as possible, old man," he said.
Under the circumstances Evan would rather have been called Old Nick than "old man," but he nodded obedience to the manager's wishes and went about his business.
"I promise it won't happen again," said Penton, grovelling.
"It will soon pass off," said Evan.
He might have meant that Penton's resolution would disappear. However, his words were consolation to the nerveless manager, who, from that time on, was quite servile. He ingratiated himself with the teller at every opportunity. His mock humility was loathsome to Evan and made him fear indefinitely. He worried over it. But he could not decide what to do or how to treat Penton.
Business was rushing. The work in the box had gradually increased, and other work had piled up since the new manager's arrival. Jones, though sick half the time and half sick the rest of the time, had done more than Penton would do. Penton, despite his criticism on the former manager's system, made no real effort to establish anything better. He often pointed out "how we used to do it in the M—— Bank," and sometimes Evan agreed with him but he never took off his coat and dug out the submerged junior or ledger-keeper as Jones had done, He seemed to be engaged forever in a mental calculation. Frequently he did not hear questions addressed to him. What little work he undertook was haggled at in spasms and usually left for the accountant to finish.
All the boys were loaded down with routine. They never thought of leaving the office until six o'clock, and night-work was now the rule. Evan began to have headaches.
The people of Banfield kindly let Penton's first offence pass, as it had been prophesied they would. Everyone knew about it, of course—what village of nine hundred population ever lost sight entirely of such a piece of news?
Mrs. Penton was delighted to know that she and her husband had not been disgraced. Penton pretended, now the danger was past, that he would not have cared.
"It's a funny thing," he said, with an adjective, "if a man can't take a social drink without insulting the town."
This remark was addressed to the whole staff. At times Penton was absurdly pompous and uncommunicative before the boys; at other times he entered into a mysterious intimacy with them, a relationship distasteful to them. They preferred his professional tactics to those others.
"By heck," said Henty one afternoon, after one of Penton's good-fellow demonstrations, "I naturally hate that devil!"
Nelson laughed immoderately, in the way one laughs who has been under a strain too long. Filter, even, thought the remark funny.
"I understand," he said, "that Penton has bought all his furniture on credit from Hunter's."
"Who told you?" asked Evan, interestedly.
"Jack Hunter," replied the ledger-keeper.
Nelson consulted his thoughts. He was conscious of an addition to the vague fear he already cherished.
The end of the month (January) kept the Banfield staff so busy they had little time to discuss the one great theme—Penton. He kept to his office pretty well and seemed to read the newspaper for hours every day. He did work a little on the loan return, after Evan had balanced the liability ledger, but left the totals to his teller. For one thing, however, Penton deserved credit: he was the most industrious signer of names that ever escaped jail for forgery. He even initialed items on the general ledger balance-sheet, where initials were ridiculous, to give the impression that he had checked the work.
For the first week in February the boys worked every night. Henty's face kept its color, but Nelson began to look like Filter. The ledger-keeper plodded so slowly and fondled his ledger so tenderly, his pasty face did no worse than remain pasty. There was new vim for him in every new account opened. He knew the names of every man, woman and child in his ledger. He might be moved away any time, and all his special knowledge would become useless to him—Filter knew that—but he did not live in his ledger from a sense of duty: he just loved clerically killing time. He was too lazy or too unoriginal to think, so he kept his mind occupied with insignificant things, and made an ideal clerk.
It was afternoon, toward the end of a certain week in February. Henty had been down to a grain elevator at the station with a draft. It usually took him a long time to deliver a draft in that direction, because Hilda Munn lived out there; but this day he came back rapidly and rushed excitedly up to the teller's box.
"Nelson!" he whispered ominously, tapping the cage door.
Evan turned around and smiled at the expression of A. P.'s face.
"What's the matter, Henty?"
Filter had foregone the temptation to make an entry, and stood listening and watching.
"It's Penton. He's drunk again. He took the 3.30 train south."
"Was he alone?"
"Yes."
Immediately Evan went and found Mrs. Penton. She was nursing the white poodles. They nearly went mad when a stranger entered the domain of their mistress.
"Mrs. Penton," said the teller, "do you know where Mr. Penton is?"
She paled at once. Evan could see that she lived in dread of her husband's habit, and was on the watch for outbreaks.
"Has anything happened, Mr. Nelson?" she asked, painfully.
"Yes. He's gone on the southbound."
"To Toronto!" she cried. "Was he intoxicated?"
"Yes."
The teller gazed on her in pity. After she had stared at him a while her eyes saw sympathy and understanding, and she cried. He assured her the work at the office would not be neglected, and promised to forge Penton's name to the daily cash-statement so as to keep the matter a secret from head office. She clutched his shoulders and sobbed against them. His heart ached for her, and he promised to help Penton all he could.
"Oh, Mr. Nelson," she stammered, wiping her cheeks, "if only Pen were like—like you!"
Then she wept again. The spell over, she inquired about the trains and found she could get to Toronto in the evening.
"I know where to find him," she said. "We lived in Toronto a year. Mr. Nelson, you can't imagine how I have suffered through it all. When I married Pen I knew he took an occasional glass, but I didn't dream that he was a drunkard."
"Is it as bad as that, Mrs. Penton?"
"It is as bad as it can be." She spoke excitedly. "I have known him to spend fifty dollars in one night, when he was only making nine hundred dollars a year. (We got married by special influence.) It just seems as though something draws him toward a debauch every little while. I'm afraid this small town will be our ruination."
Evan tried to make her load lighter and, in a degree, succeeded. There is no burden so heavy that true sympathy will not budge it a little. Mrs. Penton coaxed him to have tea with her; preparing it, she said, would occupy her mind. She couldn't bear to stay alone. The teller pretended to have pleasure in accepting her invitation. There was a certain amount of novelty in eating alone at a table with a strange young woman. Still, the circumstances were not very romantic.
Neither were the circumstances surrounding Penton's return. He contrived to get away from his wife in Toronto and board a train for Banfield. He arrived several hours ahead of her, and advertised himself all over town as something to be pitied. This was two days after his drunken flight. When Mrs. Penton came on the scene the manager was standing helplessly before the staff, crying like a bruised youngster. Evan sat up all night with him, studying the pathos and humor of delirium tremens. The drink demon is a tragic devil, but he has fits of fun.
For days the manager could not sign his name. The teller did it for him, feeling as he did so that he was supporting a rotten structure that must soon fall. He did not picture himself among the debris, however.
By quarrelling with his wife and kicking the pups Penton managed to entertain himself, apart from the keg, for over a month. Then he went and did it again. He took some money to a place called Burnside to cash cattle tickets for a drover who did business at the Banfield branch. When he got back he was in a boisterous state of intoxication.
"Hello, old kid!" he said to Henty, whom he met at the door of the bank.
Henty backed up and went in the office again, to consult with the teller.
"This is getting monotonous," said Nelson. "What would you do about it, A. P.?"
"Report the son-of-a-gun," said Henty, florid of countenance.
"Sure," said Filter; "he'll be holding us up some of these days at the point of a gun."
Evan thought over Filter's remark, for he had been tempted to entertain similar notions himself. What might not happen if Penton got in a drunken craze? The teller worried more and more as he speculated on the possible outcome of events.
Mrs. Penton got the manager to bed and then came out to the office.
"Mr. Nelson," she whispered through the cage, "could I speak to you?"
Evan went into the manager's office with her.
"I know you are going to tell head office about it this time," she said, despairingly. "It isn't right for me to ask any further consideration from you. The business here will be ruined."
"I won't say anything," replied Nelson, "until some of the customers begin to kick. I have an idea they will not do any reporting without warning us, though."
The manager's wife sighed.
"It would be a relief, I sometimes think," she said, "to get back to the city. Pen was busy there and it kept, his mind occupied. I see there is no hope for him here. The trouble is head office might drop him from the service altogether. Of course, his relatives in Berlin are big depositors—"
"That might help some," said Evan, treasonably. Then, "Don't give up, Mrs. Penton. We may be able to scare him good for another month or so."
She made an effort to smile, but it was a tired one.
"You are my only hope, Mr. Nelson," she said, forcing back her tears. "I'm going to tell you something more."
He wondered what was coming next.
"Pen," she continued, "is in debt, I'm afraid. How could he help it when he spends so much on liquor? His salary here is only nine hundred dollars and rent, you know."
That seemed a great deal to Evan, who got board for $3.25 per week.
"Do you mean he owes money in town?"
"Yes."
The teller recalled what Filter had said Jack Hunter told him. If the manager owed Hunter money, he probably was in debt elsewhere, too.
"Well, Mrs. Penton," answered Evan, "I don't know what to say. I wish I had the money myself to lend. Do you know what I get?"
She blushed.
"It is only your advice I ask, Mr. Nelson," she replied, sadly. "As to your salary, I think they ought to pay you more than Pen."
Evan's chest went out an inch or two, but he found himself still unequal to the task of advising her. Things would have to take their course, as they always do.
Now, in the course of things, there came a very busy day. The manager had been sober for a fortnight; he sat in his office pulling at that long upper lip of his, and consuming inwardly with the fierce desire that drunkards know. Perhaps no one sympathized with him sufficiently. Who, after all, knows anything about hell but those who have been there?
Before the teller's box thronged women and men from all the country roundabout, smelling strongly of poultry. It was such a cold day that the bank was chilly and windows could not be raised. The aroma that arose before the wickets was indescribably potent. Evan felt his head swim and his stomach sicken. But work was behind him, pushing him along; he knew he must get through somehow. Filter was not able to handle the cash, especially on a market-day, and Evan would not have trusted Penton in the cage, under the circumstances. If anything happened the teller was responsible for the cash: he would be taking a chance on Penton—and a fellow can't afford to be a sport on seven dollars a week.
When a man fills a position where he is practically indispensable, so far as the work, not the position, is concerned, his job is his master. Many a bankboy, on the verge of collapse, is unable to leave for a single day his unhealthy environment. Some, like Evan, are tied down by circumstances; the majority of them are bound by their own foolish tenacity. All of them realize, sooner or later, that their labor was in vain. When their health is gone, like Jones', and their efforts stored up in bank buildings, those modern Egyptian obelisks, who knows or rewards them? If they find themselves, after years of service, unfitted both mentally and physically for anything but clerical work, and yet unable to longer endure the strain of it, what are they going to do? The man who sells his vitality is a fool, but he who gives it away is worse than a fool. The trouble with us fools is that we don't believe it about ourselves. Evan was sceptical of the harm bank toil was working upon his constitution. He would not allow himself to think his health was failing rapidly—or even slowly.
Silver was always in great demand on market days. In the midst of his rush, this very busy day, Evan discovered that he had not brought from the safe enough quarters to carry him through. A murmur arose from the stampeders when he left his box and walked to the vault. The murmur became a grumble when he fumbled the vault combination without opening the door.
"Filter," he called, impatiently, "open this hanged vault, will you? I can hardly see the numbers."
Calmly the ledger-keeper turned the combination, clicking it open unhesitatingly. He turned and winked at Henty.
Evan brought out a bag and deposited it on a small table in the cage, there for the accommodation of odorous money parcels and noon lunches. On opening the silver he found there were five packages of quarters, one hundred dollars each. He took one package out, tied up the bag, and set it under the table out of the way.
His cash was two dollars short that day. Too weary to look for his "difference" in the mess of work he had gone through, he put it up. But it worried him. He could not afford even so small a loss, for he was in debt as it was. His father had sent him a remittance, but he had sent it back, saying: "If I can't keep myself by this time, I'd better give it up as a bad job." He was too game, when writing home, to put blame for failure on the bank, so he took it himself. But he would not take money.
Locking-up time came late that market day, for the hucksters' list was enormous. The teller had paid out five hundred dollars in small bills and silver. He yawned as he packed away the filthy money in his tin box, and yawned as he carried it into the vault.
Henty and Filter were preparing to go up to supper.
"Wait, fellows," said Evan, "I'll go with you."
Penton sat in his office as the boys passed out. He had not initialed the teller's book, but had watched him lock the cash in the safe.
"I suppose you'll be back to-night," said the manager, not looking at any of the boys in particular.
"No," said Evan, "I won't. My head aches already."
But he did come back an hour later, and his head ached worse than ever, for he was worrying about the bag of silver he had forgotten to take from under the cage-table and lock up in the safe.
There it was, tied up, and how and where he had left it. With a sigh of relief he picked it up and locked it in the vault. Only Evan and Filter had the vault combination. Penton said he preferred not to have it, as he did not want to accommodate farmers after hours; it had never been done in the M—— Bank, where he had received his training.
It is customary for a manager to check the teller's cash once in a while. He is supposed to do it irregularly so as to keep the teller in constant suspense. Market day at Banfield was Tuesday. Wednesday afternoon Penton came round to count Nelson's cash. In the morning, first thing, the bag of silver had been locked in the safe, inside the vault.
There were two compartments in the safe; in one of them the "treasury" (a sort of local rest fund) and certain documents were kept; in the other, the cash box and bags of specie.
Penton first checked the bills and silver in the teller's drawer and tin box, then got the treasury notes and found them right.
"How much gold have you on hand?" he asked the teller.
Evan told him.
"I guess it's all right, but I'll count it, anyway."
He did, and found it correct.
"Bring me the silver, will you?" he said; "I might as well check everything while I am at it."
Evan brought several bags from the safe, and stood by while Penton opened them. When they came to the bag of quarters that had been left under the table for an hour the previous day, they made a discovery. At least Evan did. He found a package of one hundred dollars missing.
"What!" exclaimed Penton.
"Yes, there were five yesterday when I opened the bag, and I just took one out. There are only three here now."
The teller felt his head throb. Penton grinned sceptically.
"My dear man," he said, "you're mixed. The money was only left out for an hour, you say. No one was in here but myself."
Evan felt a chill. He was just as sure Penton had stolen one of those hundred dollar packages as he was that one had been stolen.
"Check your blotter," went on the manager, with a strange accent and a fearful glow in his colorless eye; "you couldn't possibly have paid out an extra hundred in silver. Good G——! man, you're crazy."
Mechanically the teller went over the additions in his blotter. That was always the first thing to do in a cash difference that looked like a mistake in addition. The blotter was found correct. Next came the vouchers. Penton worked assiduously on them with the teller. His mind somewhat clarified by checking, Evan began to think. Penton had said it was impossible to pay out one hundred dollars too much over the counter in silver—as it was. If he could trace the silver back to when the cash had been checked before, the difference could easily be located in the silver. He offered the suggestion. The manager made a gesture of impatience.
"I tell you," he said, "there must be a mistake somewhere; either in your work, or else you paid out one hundred dollars too much in bills and—you've been counting the silver wrong for days or weeks, that's it!"
Nelson knew he had not. Fortunately for him the manager had checked the cash a week before, and initialed it as correct. While Penton followed with his eyes, Evan ran over his cash-statement book, showing the decrease in silver each day to be about twenty-five dollars. Market days always took about one hundred and twenty-five dollars. But there was a falling off between Monday and Tuesday this week of two hundred and twenty-eight dollars.
Penton stared glassily a moment, as the boys had often seen him do. Then his cunning came to the rescue, as it always did.
"That bag you have been counting as five hundred dollars has only contained four packages. The loss is away back somewhere, and this is a coincidence. There has been a double error."
Evan knew differently, but felt that he could not say anything plausible. He was silent. Penton waited a moment before remarking:
"It'll come pretty hard on you, old man, with your salary."
So diabolically triumphant was Penton's tone that it filled Nelson with a horror.
"I'll quit the bank before I'll put it up," he said, gutturally.
"That would make things look suspicious," replied Penton.
So it would! Evan had not thought of that. Penton seemed to have figured the situation out fully; directly he said:
"Well, let's sit down and write head office the particulars. They may let you off, seeing you are getting only three hundred and fifty dollars."
Realizing his powerlessness, Evan obeyed. For the first time in his Banfield management Penton took command. He was self-possessed; acted like one who was right at home. Probably he was, in that kind of a game.
Nelson wrote unsteadily in longhand to his manager's dictation, and was strengthened in the conviction that Penton had stolen that parcel of silver. Usually the manager composed hesitatingly, especially when addressing head office, but now he was glib, and seemed familiar with his subject. He even appeared to be in suppressed good humor over the matter.
"Don't look so grim, old man," he said, oilily, "they'll not make you put it up. Why, that would be absurd, on your allowance."
An idea struck Evan. Penton, if he had taken the money, probably hoped his teller's low salary would influence head office toward leniency. The amount was not so very large; it was, indeed, just about the proper amount to take. One hundred dollars was such a common loss in banking, it would not look suspicious. Anything more would have aroused inquiry, while anything less would scarcely have been worth stealing. The thing had been well executed; taking one package from the bag and tying it up again, then innocently desiring to check the cash next day, all showed thought; and it occurred to Nelson that Penton's head was just the shape for such thought. He had not been dragging at his upper lip in vain: he had extracted a piece of strategy, which had originated in the cerebrum. There was a peculiar sympathy between Penton's lips and his brain, anyway: what the former craved satisfied the latter.
Women are accused of having a monopoly on intuition, but men have a corner on "hunches." From the moment his eyes rested on three parcels of silver where there had been four, Evan had a hunch that Penton was the thief. The trickery of it was so in accord with the expression of Penton's eye!
"But who has taken it?" said the manager, when the head office letter was finished.
"Either you or I," said Evan; "no one else has been here."
Penton grinned. It mattered not what he did, appearances would remain as they were—and that was not against the manager any more than against the teller.
"Go home and get a sleep, old man," said Penton; "we may be able to think the thing out to-morrow."
The tone of the manager's "old man" rang in Nelson's ears all evening. He rebelled against Penton's insinuating manner; like the touch of his hand it was coldly, clammily smooth.
In his room the teller sat worrying. Mrs. Terry called up to him that he had a visitor. Evan asked her to send him up. It was Henty.
"Here's a letter for you," said the junior; "I didn't see you at the post office and thought you would be glad to get this. The mail was just closing when I left."
"Thanks," said Evan. "Wait till I read it; I want to tell you something."
Henty chewed the end of a fat five-cent cigar while Evan read the letter, which was from his mother. It read:
"Dear Evan,—We always enjoy getting your letters. They don't tell us much about yourself, to be sure, except that you are well. That is the main thing. Be sure and keep on your heavy underwear until the end of April, and don't wash your hair too often. I do hope that boarding-house of yours is good to you. I'm making a fruit cake which we will express to you in a day or two. If you could take care of a barrel of apples we'd be glad to send one.
"Just think, you have been away from home over two years now. Dear me, it seems like ten. Lou is still the tantalizer she always was. Father keeps busy and well as usual. We all look forward to having you back at summer holidays. When do you expect to arrive? Be sure and let us know ahead. Frankie Arling was in the other day, and asked about you. Hoping to hear from you soon.
"MOTHER."
Nelson sighed and handed the letter over to Henty. A. P. blushed as he read it. His red corpuscles had a habit of rushing to the surface, like a shoal of small sea-fish, at the slightest disturbance of their element.
"I guess a fellow never forgets home," he said, thoughtfully.
"No, I guess not," replied Evan. "Every morning when I wake I feel as if I am somewhere on a visit."
"By gosh," said Henty, "so do I—except that Mrs. Wilson doesn't use me much like a welcome visitor. I always have to break the ice to get into my water pitcher."
Nelson did not smile. In fact, he had not heard: he was thinking of the disappointment coming to his mother if he should have to make good the one hundred dollars loss and miss his holidays.
"There's trouble down at the office, Henty," he said, slowly.
The genial junior raised his eyes in wonder.
"Drunk again?"
"No," said Evan, "worse than that. Someone has stolen a hundred dollars."
"The dickens!"
Nelson related him the story. A. P. drank it in with the expression of a child listening to Andersen's fairy tales. And he asked just as practical questions as a child asks.
"Do you suspect anybody?"
Evan smiled: he was growing tired of tragedy.
"I sort of suspect Filter," he answered.
Henty was serious.
"You don't like to say, do you?"
"No," said Evan.
The junior was silent a moment, after which he observed, bashfully:
"A certain party certainly needs the coin."
Evan sighed, and Henty looked at him quickly.
"You're lucky it wasn't a thousand, don't you think so?"
The teller had not thought of that. He was surprised both at the idea and the junior.
"You're right, Henty," he said, with interest, "I'm taking an awful chance. I believe in my heart Penton is a crook."
"Surest thing in the world!"
Evan thought a while.
"I'm going to write head office," he said finally, "and ask them for a move—but I can't peach on Penton's doings."
An answer to the manager's letter came from head office, but the teller did not receive a reply to his own. The one addressed to Penton said that manager and teller would have to put up $50 each, on account of the loss, to be paid in monthly instalments. It was a shrewd compromise, and characteristic of head office.
Penton swore volubly and pretended to be sorely aggravated.
"Well," he said, "yougot off easy, anyway."
Filter was professionally indignant when he heard of the affair, but a man came in who couldn't write his name, and asked to open a savings account. He so interested Gordon that Gordon forgot all else and settled in between the covers of his ledger like a pressed moth. He came out of his shell (to change the simile) toward the close of the day's work and went into a minute examination of certain deposit slips that had gone through the day of the shortage, but his interest was purely clerical, and his sympathy amounted to: "Did you ever see such rotten writers as these Banfield storekeepers?"
Henty looked up from a sponge, which, he said, he was training to lick stamps and envelopes, but did not speak. Words would have added nothing to the humor of his expression.
For two weeks after the affair of the silver, Penton surpassed himself in signing his name. Also he took a social turn, and began once more to hypnotize the good people of Banfield. He had a faculty for ingratiating himself with people who were not great students of human nature. The town mayor was a particularly easy victim of his.
"Hello, Mr. Muir," Penton would say as the mayor entered the office, "I'm glad to see you looking so well. How's Mrs. Muir? I understand you are doing big things on the dam." (Here Henty would emphatically repeat the word from his desk in the rear of the office.) The mayor would grin and begin divulging municipal secrets. Penton always made a point of talking loudly with Muir and laughing yet more vociferously at his jokes.
There were women in Banfield, too, who were not impervious to Penton's flattery. He had a way of looking into their eyes and speaking softly that charmed them.
Nelson knew that Penton could have managed the branch well if he had gone to work; Penton was, evidently, familiar with the great circus man's aphorism about humbugging people, and could have given them all they wanted of it—to the bank's profit. It was, no doubt, owing to this hypocritical asset and the appreciation of it by head office officials, that Penton was managing a branch.
There is a certain stock-company actor in the States who periodically goes on a spree, comes back and weeps to his audience, and is forgiven. That is virtually what Penton was doing. He had hit upon the scheme as by inspiration, and it worked well. He asked a young dentist and wife down to his apartments behind the bank and fêted them on the best in town. Above all, he flattered them, and he made Mrs. Penton help him do it. She was, in fact, blind to the greater part of his badness, and was so anxious to help him into the favor of Banfield's best customers that she was willing to do a little wrong in his behalf. The surprise he perpetrated on her and the town, his new policy of ingratiation, gave her hope and made her rather proud of his versatility. She was very agreeable indeed to the dentist and his wife.
In a little town like Banfield good tidings spread just as rapidly as bad, among the better souls. News of the Pentons' hospitality and geniality went abroad until many of the ladies of Banfield desired to see more of Mrs. Penton, and, incidentally, her husband. Using the dentist's wife as a medium, they secured introductions to Mrs. Penton. Soon pink-teas began to be stylish.
It was about a fortnight after the affair of the silver. Mrs. Penton was giving a euchre party (whist was unknown in Banfield, and bridge was considered a sin) for the big dogs and ladies of Banfield. Her husband was the biggest dog of the bunch; he had gone so far as to deck himself in a dress-suit, and his stiff collar was almost the shape of a cuff.
The staff, of course, was invited, and had to go. Evan would gladly have stayed away, but he was afraid of hurting Mrs. Penton's feelings. She gave him a special invitation. He loathed the thought of drinking Penton's cocoa and eating his food. He well knew that the manager had counted on getting business—and forgiveness—for every mouthful of his miserable provender. Also, he was quite sure that the cocoa was either unpaid for or had been bought out of a mysterious silver package.
The teller played cards, for a while, at the same table as Penton, and saw him smirk down upon his guests as no one, surely, but W. W. Penton ever smirked. Evan felt that he would suffocate unless he got away from that table. He wished he could stand on a chair and reveal the character of the manager as he knew it—but a smile from Mrs. Penton reached him, and he filled with pity for her. He knew that a revelation of Penton's real character would sound as strange to her as to any person there. She knew her husband had "faults," but what does that common word signify to a woman in love? The atmosphere became too stifling for Evan. He felt his head throb and threaten to ache. He excused himself, to take air.
He went out through the office and threw open the front door of the bank. It was a clear April night; the air was cool and fresh.
There were only two living creatures visible on the front street. One was a dog, the other a man carrying a small valise and wearing a well-barbered beard. He was walking toward the bank.
The stranger ascended the steps where Evan stood and spoke in a tenor voice:
"Are you Mr. Nelson?"
"Yes, sir."
"I'm Inspector Castle."