CHAPTER IXLARRY GOES WALKING
Thebrick story made good reading, even if it was but a record of failure, and, for that matter, almost anything that was printed about the great bank mystery was eagerly pored over by the general public.
Larry’s account of how he sought to establish a clew by the bricks was another “beat,” and many city editors of other papers administered severe rebukes to their reporters, who were covering the bank story, because they had not thought to try that means of solving the mystery.
“How did you do it, Larry?” asked Peter Manton, with a rueful countenance, for Peter was one of those who had been “called down” for failing to get a good story of the developments of the robbery.
“Oh, just by thinking,” answered Larry, with a laugh.
“What are you going to do next?” Peter wanted to know. “Though of course I don’t expect you to tell me,” he added, with a sigh at his failure.
“Well, to tell you the truth, I don’t know what Iamgoing to do next,” replied Larry. “I don’t know what there is to do. I’m at the end of my rope again. The brick clew failed, just as the others did. But I’m not going to give up.”
Indeed, it was hard to know what next step to take. Larry had several talks with his city editor, who suggested some new ideas. President Bentfield, likewise, was appealed to, but he could offer nothing new.
“All we want, Larry, is to get the thief,” he said. “And the money, too, if you can, for though the directors have made good the loss, it was a heavy blow to them.”
“Are the police and private detectives still seeking clews, and investigating the records of the different clerks and employees?” asked Larry.
“Yes, and I might say that the police are rather put out at me for allowing you to work on the case. I fancy, though, that they are nettled because they did not think to try the valise and brick clews, and you got all the credit for that I’m not going to take you off the case, though, Larry, so don’t worry.”
“Well, the valise clew didn’t amount to any more than the brick one did,” said the reporter ruefully, “though it did bring out the fact that a man with a black beard bought the satchel. And you have no bearded employees in the bank.”
“Only myself,” admitted the president, with a smile, “and my beard is white. I didn’t dye itin order to purchase the valise, either,” he added laughing.
“Of course the real thief might have had a confederate purchase the valise for him,” suggested Larry. “And that makes it all the harder. Miss Mason gave me all the help she could, but she did not take much notice of the man, except that he looked like Harrison Witherby from the back.”
“Not a very safe clew to go on,” commented the bank president. “Besides, Mr. Witherby is one of our most trusted employees, and has been with us for years. I would as soon think of suspecting myself as him.”
Larry did not impose such unbounded confidence in the clerk who had proved himself such a bully, but he did not care to tell Mr. Bentfield this. Nor, in fact, had the young reporter come to the point of seriously suspecting Witherby. Larry was only “keeping his eyes open.”
Several days passed, the detectives meanwhile using all their skill to unearth the thief, or discover the hiding-place of the million dollars. Naturally, to be under observation, as the bank employees were all the while, made them feel unpleasant, but there was no help for it, and they accepted it with the best grace possible. There was a mutual feeling of distrust and annoyance, for it had now come to be accepted as a fact that if some one actually employed in the bank had not taken the money, at least they had aided in its disappearance. Still, there was no change in the situation,and every clerk, teller and cashier stayed at his post.
“That thief, whoever he is, has the best nerve of any one I ever heard off,” thought Larry one day, after a visit to Mr. Bentfield. The young reporter looked into the brass “cage” where the clerks were, wondering which of them would finally prove to have been concerned in the robbery.
At this moment Witherby looked up, and, catching Larry’s glance, he frowned. A little later, just as Larry was going out, Director Wilson entered, and the reporter heard him tell a messenger that he wanted to speak to Witherby.
“They’re getting thicker than ever,” mused Larry. “But I don’t know that it has any significance. Mr. Wilson hasn’t much use for me, and he laughed at my efforts. But so far I’ve showed that I was partly right, and, before I’m through with this case, I’ll show him that I’m altogether right. But what shall I do next?”
It was a hard question to answer. In lieu of something better to do Larry called at police headquarters, where he was well known. He found several friends there, one of whom, Detective Nyler, had done some work on the bank mystery.
“Larry, what are you going to pull off next?” asked Nyler, who had followed Larry’s stories in theLeaderclosely. “You are putting it all over us down here. What’s next?”
“I don’t know, Billy. I wish I did. I thought maybe I could get some points from you.”
“Nothing doing. I’m off that case now. Working on a good second-story job, though. When I get my man I’ll give you the story.”
“Thanks. Anything else new?”
“No; but say, Larry, if I were you I’d keep on with that brick end of the game a little longer.”
“What’s the use? Those bricks might have been picked up at any one of fifty buildings. I never could find which one, and, if I did, what good would it do me?”
“Larry, I think there’s just one point you overlooked,” said Detective Bill Nyler earnestly.
“What?” asked Larry eagerly.
“Well, I’ll grant that you’re a better detective than lots that are in the business,” went on the headquarters man, “but you’ve still something to learn. Now, I read in the paper about how you played the brick end of it up, but you didn’t go quite far enough with it.”
“Why not?”
“Look here. It’s pretty certain, isn’t it, that the man who ‘switched’ the satchel full of money, for one with bricks in, prepared the dummy valise outside the bank?”
“Sure. That’s easy to guess.”
“Then where did he do it? Not at the corner of Broadway and Wall street, that’s sure. He’d pick out the most secluded place he could find, and that would be his own room.
“Now then, there are several fellows who work in the Consolidated Bank. Any one of them may have committed this robbery, and, again, it may have been done by some clever outsider, though I’m not strong on that theory. If it was a bank clerk he fixed that bag up in his room. A room is in a house—which, though it sounds like a lesson in the first reading book, isn’t so simple as it seems.
“What I mean is, that the thief wouldn’t go too far from his room in order to get the bricks. He’d pick out some place as near his house, and room, as possible.”
“Why?” asked Larry.
“So as to make the chance of him being seen with the bricks so much less. He picked up the bricks at some building at night, you say, and I believe it.”
“There’s hardly a doubt of that,” spoke Larry. “For he wouldn’t risk going up in an open manner and asking some mason for the bricks. Whoever he asked for them would have remembered it, when the story came out, and we’d have more evidence—which we now haven’t. So I believe he took the bricks at night, from some building, without asking any one.”
“Of course,” agreed the detective, “and he’d want to travel as short a distance afterward as possible. For, look you, Larry, a fellow with a load of bricks might meet a policeman, or a detective, who, naturally, would be suspicious. SoI think the thief just slipped out of his house, went a short distance, picked up the bricks, and skipped back.”
“By Jove! I never thought of that!” exclaimed Larry. “You mean——”
“I mean that you ought to get a list, showing where every employee of the bank lives. Then take a walk around each of their houses, and see if there isn’t a new building going up near some of them, where these bricks are being used. Then you may have something to work on.”
“I will!” cried Larry, the light of a new hope shining in his eyes. “This is great, Bill! I guess I’ve got lots to learn, after all. I will take a walk around, and keep my eyes open.”
“There’s only one trouble,” suggested the detective, with a twinkle in his eyes; “you may find half a dozen new houses with these bricks scattered about them, and some bank employee may live near each one. Then you’ll have six fellows to be suspicious of.”
“That’s better than having a whole bankful,” replied the young reporter. “I’m off now.”
His first care was to get from Mr. Bentfield a list of the residences of all the bank employees. Nor would he say why he wanted it. Then Larry began a sort of walking tour, intending to cover a good part of New York. He would first locate the house of some employee, and then circle about it to find a building in course of erection—a building where the bricks were used that hadplayed such a part in the robbery. “Million-dollar bricks,” Larry called them, and it is as good a term as any other to employ in describing them.
“Well, this may make a good story, even if I don’t get any real clew out of it,” mused Larry, as he began his walk.