“'Twere vain to tell thee all I feel,Or say for thee I'd die.Ah, well-a-day, the sweetest melodyCould never, never say one half my love for thee.”
Then, after a moment, she escaped from his ardent embrace.
“Remember that, dearest,” she called from the doorway.
“I'll remember it every time I start with a line of figures, you blessed girl. And then how my pencil will go dancing up the column!”
After she had gone he pulled the curtain cords, raising the curtains so that they covered the lower sashes; he did not care to be seen at his work by the folks who were on their way to the hall.
Squire Hexter, escorting Xoa, took the trouble to step to the window and tap lightly with his cane. He was hoping that the cashier would change his mind and go to the hall. He waited after tapping but Vaniman did not appear at the window. The Squire did not venture to tap again. “He must be pretty well taken up with his work,” he suggested to Xoa when they were on their way. “That's where we get the saying, 'Deaf as an adder.'”
Oblivious to all sounds, bent over his task, Vaniman gave to the exasperating puzzle all the concentration he could muster.
The play that evening at Town Hall dragged after the fashion of amateur shows. The management of the sets and the properties consumed much time. There were mishaps. One of these accidents had to do with the most ambitious scene of the piece, a real brook—the main feature of the final, grand tableau when folks were trying to keep awake at eleven o'clock. The brook came babbling down over rocks and was conveyed off-stage by means of a V-shaped spout. There was much merriment when the audience discovered that the brook could be heard running uphill behind the scenes; two hobble-de-hoy boys were dipping the water with pails from the washboiler at the end of the sluice and lugging it upstairs, where they dumped it into the brook's fount. The brook's peripatetic qualities were emphasized when both boys fell off the top of the makeshift stairs and came down over the rocks, pails and all. Then there was hilarity which fairly rocked the hall.
For some moments another sound—a sound which did not harmonize with the laughter—was disregarded by the audience.
All at once the folks realized that a man was squalling discordantly—his shrieks almost as shrill as a frightened porker's squeals. Heads were snapped around. Eyes saw Dorsey, the municipal watchman, almost the only man of the village of Egypt who was not of the evening's audience in Town Hall. He was standing on a settee at the extreme rear of the auditorium. He was swinging his arms wildly; as wildly was he shouting. He noted that he had secured their attention.
“How in damnation can you laugh” he screamed. “The bank has been robbed and the cashier murdered!”
When the skeow-wowed “brook” twisted the drama into an anticlimax of comicality, the players who were on the stage escaped the deluge by fleeing into the wings.
Vona had been waiting for her cue to join the hero and pledge their vows beside the babbling stream. After one horrified gasp of amazement, she led off the hilarity back-stage. Frank was in her mind at that moment, as he had been all the evening; her zestful enjoyment of the affair was heightened by the thought that she could help him forget his troubles for a little while by the story she would carry to him. Then she and the others in the group heard the piercing squeals of a man's voice.
“Somebody has got hystierucks out of it, and I don't blame him,” stated the manager of the show. He grabbed the handle of the winch and began to let down the curtain. “I reckon the only sensible thing to do is to let Brook Number One and Brook Number Two take the curtain call.”
Then Dorsey's shrill insistence prevailed over the roars of laughter in front; the young folks on the stage heard his bloodcurdling bulletin.
The manager let slip the whirling handle and the pole of the hurrying curtain thumped the platform. Vona had leaped, risking her life, and was able to dodge under the descending pole. For a moment, sick with horror and unutterable woe, she stood there alone against the tawdry curtain, as wide-eyed and white-faced as Tragedy's muse.
Men, women, and children, all the folks of Egypt, were struggling to their feet; the sliding settees squawked and clattered.
She saw Tasper Britt, fighting a path for himself, Starr following. Britt's face, above his blackened beard, was yellow-pale.
Panic was piling the people at the narrow rear doors; the weight of those who were rushing forward wedged all the mass at the exits.
“Vona!” called the manager, pulling at the edge of the curtain to give her passage. “This way! The side door.”
The summons helped to put away her faintness; her strength came back to her. Her goal was the bank! In the frenzy of her solicitude for her lover she took no thought of herself.
The others stopped to find their wraps. Vona ran down the street as she was, bareheaded, the ribbons of her stage finery fluttering. She was close behind the first arrivals at the open door of Britt Block. All the other portals were wide open, bank door and grille door. But the door of the vault was closed.
She thrust herself resolutely through the group of men and made a frenzied survey of the bank's interior. Her single quest was for Vaniman; he was nowhere in sight. The books of account were open on the desk, mute evidence for her that he had been interrupted suddenly.
She voiced demands in shrill tones, but the men had no information for her. She called his name wildly and there was no reply.
“I found the outside door open,” said Dorsey, raucously hoarse. “I came in, and all was just as you see it.”
“But you said that he—that Frank—” Vona pressed her hands against her throat; she could not voice the terrible announcement that Dorsey had made.
“Well, if it ain't that, what else is it?” insisted the watchman.
Then Tasper Britt arrived in the room, followed by the bank examiner; they entered, breathing heavily and running with the tread of Percherons.
“If it ain't murder and robbery, what is it, Mr. Britt?” Dorsey bawled, evidently feeling the authority was then on the scene and was demanding report and action.
“I don't know—I don't know!” the president quavered, staggering to the grille and clutching the wires with both hands in order to steady himself. He was palpably, unmistakably stricken with a fear that was overpowering him.
The outer office was filling; the corridor was being packed by the arriving throngs.
Examiner Starr took command of the situation. He noted the nickel badge on Dorsey's breast. “Officer, put every person except Mr. Britt out of this building!”
But Watchman Dorsey, though he commanded and pushed, was not able to make any impression.
“By my authority as bank examiner, I order this place cleared!” bellowed Mr. Starr. The folks of Egypt showed that they were greatly interested in the volume of voice possessed by “Foghorn Fremont,” but they did not retreat. For that matter, the crowd in the room was thoroughly blocked at the door by the press in the corridor.
Starr's attention was wholly taken up by one individual for the next few minutes. Prophet Elias boldly advanced, after worming his way out of the throng; he pushed the examiner aside from the door of the grille and went into the inner inclosure. An intruder who was prosaically garbed would not have prevailed as easily as this bizarre individual with the deep-set eyes, assertive mien, and wearing a robe that put him out of the ordinary run of humanity. But Mr. Starr got back his voice and ordered the Prophet to walk out.
Elias turned slowly and faced Starr. The Prophet's feet were hidden by the robe and he came around with the effect of a window dummy revolving on a support. Starr bawled more furious demands.
But the Prophet did not lower his crest. “'Many bulls have compassed me: strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round. They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion.'”
Then the Prophet spatted his palm upon the legend on his breast and clacked a disdainful digit off the pivot of his thumb. Tasper Britt, even in his hottest ire, had been restrained in the past by some influence from laying violent hands on this peculiar personage. It was evident that Starr was controlled by a similar reluctance and that his forbearance was puzzling him. When the Prophet got down on his knees, Starr was silent; it looked as if this zealot intended to offer prayer—and the bank examiner did not care to earn the reputation of being a disturber of a religious gathering. But Elias doubled over and began to crawl around the room on his hands and knees, peering intently and cocking his ear and seeming to take much interest in his undertaking.
Until then, in the rush of events, in the haste of gathering at the scene of the tragedy, in the wild uncertainty as to what had happened, nobody had taken the time to study the details of the conditions in the bank inclosure.
Starr ordered Dorsey to stand in front of the grille door and keep out all persons. The examiner was obliged to urge Britt to unclasp his hands and follow him before the door was closed and locked against the crowd.
Vona had stumbled to a chair; she was staring about her, trying to control her horror and steady her mind so that she might comprehend what had happened. Under a stool she saw a crumpled coat; she leaped from her chair, secured it, and sat down again. It was Frank's office coat; both sleeves were ripped and the back breadths were torn. She held it forward in her shaking hands for the inspection of the bank examiner. But Mr. Starr was too intent on other matters to take heed of the pathetic proof of violence. He was particularly concerned with what he had found in one corner.
Literally, thousands of small metal disks were heaped and scattered there. Some of the disks had rolled to all parts of the room. The Prophet had been scraping up handfuls of them, inspecting them, and throwing them toward the corner where the main mass lay.
Starr picked up some of them. They were iron; each disk was perforated.
There were many canvas sacks near the heap of disks; the sacks were ripped and empty. Mr. Starr secured one of them. Its mouth was closed with the seal with which specie sacks are usually secured.
But Mr. Starr saw something else in the corner, an object at which he peered; the gloom made the results of his scrutiny uncertain. He stooped and picked up that object, making it the third of the trinity of exhibits. It was a large square of pasteboard, the backing of an advertising calendar. Starr carried it to the lamp on the table. There was writing on the placard. The characters were large and sprawling. The bank examiner tapped his finger on the writing, calling for the attention of the anguished president. The legend read:
This is ahellof a bank!
“Britt, if this is a sample of your whole stock of specie,” Starr rumbled, holding a disk between thumb and forefinger, “the profanity is sort of excused by the emphasis needed. I really think I would have been obliged to say the same, after counting up.”
“I can't understand it,” the president muttered.
“Did you suppose you carried actual coin in those bags?”
“Yes—gold and some silver.”
“Had you counted it?”
“I left the checking up to the cashier.”
“Where do you think your cashier is, right now?”
Britt flapped his hands, helplessly confessing that he did not know.
In all the room there was a profound hush. The crowd had been straining aural nerves, trying to hear what was being said by the men in authority.
Nobody had been paying any attention to Prophet Elias, who had been crawling like a torpid caterpillar. For some moments he had been rigidly motionless in one spot. He was leaning against the front of the vault, his ear closely pressed to the crevice at the base of the door.
He straightened up on his knees and shouted in such stentorian tones that all in the room jerked their muscles in sudden fright. “Swine! Fools!”
They gaped at him.
“Whilst you're shouting amongst your trash a man is dying on the other side of the door!”
Vona leaped from her chair. She shrieked. She ran to the door and beat her fists against the steel, futilely and furiously.
“In there lies your money-changer, I tell you, Pharaoh, lord of Egypt,” the Prophet shouted. “I hear his groans!”
Britt and Starr rushed to the vault and both of them strove clumsily and ineffectually with the mechanism, giving up their attempts after a few moments.
“It's no use!” Britt gulped. “The time lock must be on.”
“Oh, for the rod of Moses and the ancient faith that smote the rock in twain!” pleaded the Prophet.
“We'd better use rendrock, seeing that we can't depend on a miracle,” called a practical citizen from behind the grille.
“Get sledge hammers and chisels,” shouted somebody else, and there followed a surging of the throng, indicating that concerted action was following the suggestion.
The face of the president was twisted by grimaces which resembled spasms. “Wait! Wait a moment! There may be a way!” he called, chokingly. “Let me out through there!”
Then Vona gave over her insane efforts to pry open the vault door with her finger nails. She ran out past Starr, who stopped to lock the grille door. The examiner was too much taken up by other matters to bother with the Prophet, who held to his place at the vault door and was intently scrutinizing something which he found of interest.
Vona forced herself through the press, in company with Starr, and was at Britt's elbow when he unlocked his office door. He tried to keep her out and called to Dorsey. But she slipped past while the door was open to admit Starr's bulky form. Inside, she turned on Britt, who was in the doorway.
“You don't dare to keep me out, Mr. Britt!” She stamped her foot. Her eyes blazed. “You don't dare!”
He blinked and entered and locked the door.
There was a hanging lamp in Britt's office, and the president hastened to light it.
“Do you mean to say that there's another way of entering that bank vault?” Starr demanded when Britt began to twirl the knob of a steel door that guarded his private vault. “I'm beginning to think that the fellow who wrote on that placard had this joint sized up mighty well.”
Britt went on with the working of the combination. He was deeply stirred; his excitement had made his temper touchy. “I know of no reason why the president of a bank isn't allowed access to the vault.”
“Perhaps not, under proper conditions, but we'll discuss that matter later, Britt. Right now I'm all-fired glad you can get in.” He sneered when he added, “Perhaps a regular, time-locked vault does need a safety outlet. I may recommend it for all state banks.”
Vona took her stand close to the door, trembling with passionate eagerness. Constantly she appealed to Britt to hurry. When he finally swung open the door she leaped into the vault. He dragged her back, handling her roughly, harshly telling her that it was no place for a girl.
“I don't think it is, either,” agreed Starr. “We seem to have considerable love mixed in with this situation, young woman, but this is not the time for it.”
He crowded past her, at the back of Britt.
The man ahead stopped and fumbled at what seemed to be a wall of concrete; he pushed open a narrow door which fitted so closely that it had seemed to be a part of the wall.
Mr. Starr grunted.
There was a passage at the right of the inner safe. The light from the lamp outside shed dim radiance. Britt descended a short flight of cement steps, and Starr, following groping with his feet, realized that the way led under the floor of the corridor. He was obliged to crouch almost double in order to avoid the ceiling.
There was another flight of stairs leading up to the floor level.
The two men, mounting the stairs, heard groans.
Vona, undeterred by her treatment, had followed closely on Starr's heels. She urged them to hurry, calling hysterically.
Again the man ahead fumbled at what seemed to be solid wall. Again he was able to open a door of concrete.
But Britt, when he was through the narrow door in the lead, was blocked and stopped. He lighted a match. One leaf of the double doors of the inner safe of the bank vault was flung back across the narrow passage. He dropped the stub of the match and pushed. The door moved only a few inches; it was opposed by something on the other side. The president lighted another match and held it while he peered over the door; there was a space between the top of the door and the ceiling. “It's Vaniman,” he reported, huskily. “He's lying against this door. I can't push it any further. He's wedged against the front of the vault.”
Then Starr lighted a match. He noted that the space above the door was too narrow for his bulk or Britt's.
“Go tell the guard to send in a chap that's slim and spry,” the examiner commanded the girl. “We've got to boost somebody in over that door.”
“I'll go. I must go. I'm bound and determined to go!” she insisted, pulling at him, trying to crowd past him.
But it was necessary for Starr and Britt to follow her to the wider space below the corridor in order to allow her to pass them. They demurred, still, but she hurried back up the stairs. Britt knelt and gave her his shoulders to serve as a mounting block. She swung herself over the door, and by the light of the match that Starr held she was able to avoid stepping on the prostrate figure when she lowered herself to the floor.
The men outside in the passage detected the odor of chloroform.
“I have lifted him,” the girl cried. “Push back the door.”
Britt obeyed. Then he and Starr took the unconscious cashier by shoulders and heels and carried him to the private office.
Britt's office conveniences did not include a couch; the men propped Vaniman in the desk chair and Vona crouched beside him and took his head on her shoulder.
There were no visible marks of injury. He gave off the scent of chloroform. His wrists were crossed in front of him and were secured with a noose of tape. Starr picked up shears from Britt's desk and cut the tape. “Where's your doctor? Get him in here.”
“He lives in another part of the town. I didn't see him at the hall to-night,” said Britt. “I'll send for him.”
But Vaniman began to show such promising symptoms that the president delayed the message.
There seemed to be magic in the touch of Vona's caressing palm on the stricken man's forehead; the words she was murmuring in his ear were stirring his faculties. He opened his eyes and stared at her and at the two men, vague wonderment in his expression.
“What is it—what has happened?” he muttered.
“That's what we want to know,” said Starr. “What did happen? Who got afoul of you?”
“I don't know. Who brought me in here?”
“We got you out of the bank vault and brought you here by the way of Britt's private passage.”
Vaniman seemed to find that statement unconvincing.
“He didn't know about that passage,” stammered the president. “I—I never bothered to speak about it. I suppose I ought to have told you, Frank. That cement panel is a door—with the handle on this side.”
The cashier shook his head slowly, as if giving up the attempt to understand.
“I guess the panel fits so closely that you never noticed it was a door,” Britt went on, with the manner of one trying to set himself right. “I meant to tell you about it.”
“But what happened?” the examiner insisted.
“I don't know, sir.”
“Look here! You must know something!”
“Mr. Starr, this is no time to shout and bellow at this poor boy who has barely got his senses back,” Vona protested, indignantly.
“You mustn't blame Mr. Starr, dear,” said the cashier, patting her hand. “Of course, he and Mr. Britt are much stirred up over the thing. I'm not trying to hide anything, gentlemen. You say you found me in the vault! What is the condition of things in the bank?” He struggled and sat up straighter in the chair. He was showing intense anxiety as his senses cleared.
Examiner Starr, though present officially, was in no mood to make any report on bank conditions just then. “Vaniman, you'd better do your talking first.”
“I'll tell all I know about it. I was working on the books, my attention very much taken up, of course. I felt a sudden shock, as I remember it. Everything went black. As to what has been going on from that moment, whenever it was, till I woke up here, I'll have to depend on you for information.”
“That's straight, is it?” demanded the examiner, grimly.
“On my honor, sir.”
“There's a lot to be opened out and what you have said doesn't help.”
“I wish I could help more. I understand fully what a fix I'm in unless this whole muddle is cleared up,” confessed the cashier, plaintively. He had been putting his hand to his head. “I think I must have been stunned by a blow.”
Starr, without asking permission, ran his hand over Vaniman's head. “No especially big lump anywhere!”
Vaniman spanned a space on his head between thumb and forefinger. “I feel a particular ache right about there, sir.”
“Britt, get down that lamp!”
The president brought the lamp from the hanging bracket and held it close to Vaniman's head while Starr carefully parted the hair and inspected. “There's a red strip, but it's not much swollen,” he reported. “Of course, we know all about those rubber wallopers that—But this is not a time for guesswork. Now, Vaniman, how about this chloroform odor? Remember anything about an attempt to snuff you that way?”
“No, sir!”
“Why don't you wait until to-morrow and let Frank's mind clear up?” Vona pleaded. She had been standing with her arm about the young man's shoulders, insisting on holding her position even when Starr crowded close in making his survey of the cashier's cranium.
“Young woman, the first statements in any affair are the best statements when there's a general, all-round desire to get to bottom facts,” said the examiner, sternly.
“That's my desire, sir,” declared Vaniman, earnestly. “But I have told you all I know.”
President Britt had replaced the lamp in the bracket. He waited for a moment while Starr regarded the cashier with uncompromising stare, as if meditating a more determined onslaught in the way of the third degree. Britt, restraining himself during the interview, had managed to steady himself somewhat, but he was much perturbed. He ventured to put in a word. “Mr. Starr, don't you think that Vona's idea is a good one—give Frank a good night's rest? He may be able to tell us a whole lot more in the morning.”
Then the bank examiner delivered the crusher that he had been holding in reserve. “Vaniman, you may be able to tell me in the morning, if not now, how it happens that all your specie bags were filled with—not with the gold coin that ought to have been there, but with”—Starr advanced close to the cashier and shook a big finger—“mere metal disks!” He shouted the last words.
Whether Starr perceived any proof of innocence in Vaniman's expression—mouth opening, eyes wide, face white with the pallor of threatened collapse—the bank examiner did not reveal by any expression of his own.
“This is wicked—wicked!” gasped Vona.
“Young woman, step away!” Starr yanked her arm from Vaniman's shoulder and pushed her to one side. “Did you knowthat, Mr. Cashier—suspect that—have any least idea of that?”
“I did not know it, sir.”
“Why didn't you know it?”
Vaniman tried to say something sensible about this astounding condition of affairs and failed to utter a word, he shook his head.
“How had you verified the specie?”
“By checking the sacks as received—by weighing them.”
“Expect somebody else to take 'em in the course of business on the same basis?”
“I was intending—”
Starr waited for the explanation and then urged the cashier out of his silence.
“I intended to have President Britt and a committee of the directors count up the coin with me, sir. But it can't be possible—not with the Sub-treasury seal—not after—”
“If you're able to walk, you'd better go over into the bank and take a look at what was in those sacks, Mr. Cashier.” The examiner put a sardonic twist upon the appellation. “The sight may help your thoughts while you are running over the matter in your mind between now and to-morrow morning.”
Vaniman rose from the chair. He was flushed. “Mr. Starr, I protest against this attitude you're taking! From the very start you have acted as if I am a guilty man—guilty of falsifying accounts, and now of stealing the bank's money.”
There was so much fire in Vaniman's resentment that Starr was taken down a few pegs. He replied in a milder tone: “I don't intend to put any name on to the thing as it stands. But I'm here to examine a bank, and I find a combination of crazy bookkeeping and a junk shop. My feelings are to be excused.”
“I'll admit that, sir. But you found something else! You found me in the vault, you say. It is plain that I was shut in that vault with the time lock on; otherwise it wouldn't have been necessary to lug me out by that other way, whatever it is!” He snapped accusatory gesture at the open door of Britt's vault and flashed equally accusatory gaze at the president. “Do you think I was trying to commit suicide by that kind of lingering agony?”
“Seeing how you admit that you excuse my feelings, Vaniman, I'll admit, for my part, that you've certainly got me on that point. It doesn't look like a sensible plan of doing away with yourself, provided there is any sense in suicide, anyway! You say you were not aware of Mr. Britt's private passage?” he quizzed.
“Most certainly I knew nothing about it.”
“I suppose, however, the vault door is time-locked. To be sure, we were pretty much excited when we tried to open it—”
“Verily, ye were!”
The voice was deep and solemn. The sound jumped the four persons in Britt's office. Framed in the door of Britt's vault was Prophet Elias.
“How did you get in here?” thundered “Foghorn Fremont,” first to get his voice.
“Not by smiting with the rod of Moses,” returned the Prophet, considerable ire in his tone. “I pulled open the door of the bank vault and walked in.”
“Britt, you'd better put up a sign of 'Lunatic Avenue' over that passage and invite a general parade through,” barked Starr. “I've had plenty of nightmares in my life, but never anything to equal this one, take it by and large!”
It was evident from President Britt's countenance that a great many emotions were struggling in him; but the prevailing expression—the one which seemed to embrace all the modifications of his emotions—indicated that he felt thoroughly sick. He gazed at the open door of his vault and looked as a man might appear after realizing that the presentation of a wooden popgun had made him turn over his pocketbook to a robber. “Walked in?Walkedin?” he reiterated.
The stress of the occasion seemed to have made the Prophet less incoherent than was his wont; or perhaps he found no texts to fit this situation. “I did not dive through your solid steel, Pharaoh! I used my eyes, after I had used my ears. Here!” His fists had been doubled. He unclasped his hands and held them forward. In each palm was one of the metal disks. “Your bank-vault door was trigged with these—wedged in the crack of the outer flange. I saw, I pulled hard on the big handle—and here I am!”
“But the bolts—” Starr stopped, trying to remember about the bolts.
“The bolts were not shot. You were trying to push back what had already been pushed.”
Starr began to scratch the back of his head, in the process tipping his hat low over his eyes. He turned those eyes on Vaniman. “Speaking of pushing—of being able to push—” But the examiner did not allow himself to go any farther at that time. “Vaniman,” he blurted, after a few moments of meditation, “I want you to volunteer to do something—of your own free will, understand!”
Vaniman, pallid again, was fully aware of the effect of this new revelation on his position, already more than questionable. “I'll follow any suggestion, of my own free will, sir.”
“We'd better arrange to have a private talk to-night before we go to sleep, and another talk when we wake up. I suggest that you come to the tavern and lodge with me.”
“It's a good plan, Mr. Starr,” the cashier returned, bravely.
But in the distressed glance which Frank and Vona exchanged they both confessed that they knew he was politely and unofficially under arrest.
“I'll keep Dorsey on the premises and will stay here, myself,” proffered the president. “You can be sure that things will take no harm during the night, Mr. Starr.”
“So far as your bank goes, there doesn't seem to be much left to harm, Britt,” snapped back the examiner. He fished one of the disks from his vest pocket and surveyed it grimly. “As to these assets, whatever they may be, I don't think you need to fear—except that small boys may want to steal 'em to use for sinkers or to scale on the water next summer. What are they, anyway? Does anybody know?”
Britt had plucked one of the disks from his pocket and was inspecting it. He hastened to say that he had never seen anything of the sort till that evening.
Prophet Elias seemed to be taking no further interest in affairs. He went to the door leading into the corridor. It was locked. “I'd like to get out,” he suggested.
“Now that the other way through the vaults had become the main-traveled avenue of the village, why don't you go out as you came in?” was Starr's sardonic query.
The Prophet was not ruffled. “I would gladly do so, but the door of the grille is locked.”
“Ah, that accounts for the fact that everybody else in Egypt isn't in this office on your heels! Britt, let him out!”
The president obeyed, unlocking the door, and the Prophet joined the crowd in the corridor. Starr went to the door and addressed the folks. “Allow me to call your attention, such of you as are handy to this door, to Cashier Vaniman.” He jerked a gesture over his shoulder. “You can see that he is all right. We are giving out no information to-night. I order you, one and all, to leave this building at once. I mean business!”
He waited till the movement of the populace began, gave Dorsey some sharp commands, and banged the door. But when he turned to face those in the office he reached behind himself and opened the door again; the sight of the girl had prompted him. “I suggest that this is a good time for you to be going along, Miss Harnden. You'll have plenty of company.”
But she showed no inclination to go. She was exhibiting something like a desperate resolve. “Will you please shut the door, Mr. Starr?”
He obeyed.
“It's in regard to those disks! They are coat weights!”
Starr fished out his souvenir once more and inspected it; his face showed that he had not been illuminated especially.
“Women understand such things better than men, of course,” she went on. “Dressmakers stitch those weights into the lower edges of women's suit coats to make the fabric drape properly and hang without wrinkling.”
“You're a woman and you probably know what you're talking about on that line,” admitted the examiner. “But because you're a woman I don't suppose you can tell me how coat weights happen to be the main cash assets of this bank!” Mr. Starr's manner expressed fully his contemptuous convictions on that point.
“I certainly cannot say how those weights happen to be in the bank, sir. But I feel that this is the time for everybody in our town to give in every bit of information that will help to clear up this terrible thing. I'm taking that attitude for myself, Mr. Starr, and I hope that all others are going to be as frank.” She gave President Britt a fearless stare of challenge. “My father has recently had a great deal of new courage about some of the inventions he hopes to put through. He has told me that Mr. Britt is backing him financially.”
“Your father is everlastingly shinning up a moonbeam, and you know it,” declared Britt.
Starr shook his hand, pinching the disk between thumb and forefinger. “Young woman, I'm interested only in this, if you have any information to give me in regard to it.”
Vaniman was displaying an interest of his own that was but little short of amazement.
“The information I have is this, sir! My father said that Mr. Britt's help had enabled him to start in manufacturing a patent door which requires the use of many washers with small holes, and he was saying at home that he'd be obliged to have them turned out by a blacksmith. I happened to be making over something for mother and I had some coat weights on my table. I showed them to my father and he said they were just the thing. He found out where they were made and he ordered a quantity—they came in little kegs and he stored them in the stable. That's all, Mr. Starr!”
“All? Go ahead and tell me—”
“I have told you all I know, sir! That's the stand I'm taking, whatever may come up. If you expect me to tell you that these are the disks my father stored in the stable, I shall do no such thing. The kegs and the disks may be there right now, for all I know.” She faced the examiner with an intrepidity which made that gentleman blink. It was plain enough that he wanted to say something—but he did not venture to say it.
“And now I'll go! I think my father must be out there waiting for me. If you care to stay here long enough, I'll have him hurry back from our home and report whether the kegs are still in the stable.”
“We'll wait, Miss Harnden!” Starr opened the door.
After she had gone, Britt closed the door of his vault and shot the bolts.
The three men kept off the dangerous topic except as they conferred on the pressing business in hand. They helped Dorsey hurry the lingerers from the building. Then they went into the bank, stored the books in the vault, and locked it.
Starr, especially intent on collecting all items of evidence, found in the vault, when he entered, a cloth that gave off the odor of chloroform. On one corner of the cloth was a loop by which it could be suspended from a hook.
“Is this cloth anything that has been about the premises?” asked the official.
“It's Vona's dustcloth,” stated Britt. He had watched the girl too closely o' mornings not to know that cloth!
That information seemed to prick Starr's memory on another point. From his trousers pocket he dug the tape which he had cut from Vaniman's wrists. He glanced about the littered floor. There was the remnant of a roll of tape on the floor. Mr. Starr wrapped the fragment of tape in a sheet of paper along with the roll.
Then Mr. Harnden arrived. The outer door had been left open for him. He had run so fast that his breath came in whistles with the effect of a penny squawker. As the movie scenarios put it, he “got over,” with gestures and breathless mouthings rather than stated in so many words, that the kegs of disks were gone—all of them.
Replying with asthmatic difficulty to questions put to him by Starr, Mr. Harnden stated that he could not say with any certainty when the kegs had been taken, nor could he guess who had taken them. He kept no horse or cow and had not been into the stable since he put the kegs there. The stable was not locked. He had always had full faith in the honesty of his fellow-man, said the optimist.
Mr. Starr allowed that he had always tried to feel that way, too, but stated that he had been having his feelings pretty severely wrenched since he had arrived in the town of Egypt.
Then he and Vaniman left the bank to go to the tavern.
Outside the door, a statue of patience, Squire Hexter was waiting.
“I didn't use my pull as a director to get underfoot in there, Brother Starr. No, just as soon as I heard that the boy, here, was all right I stepped out and coaxed out all the others I could prevail on. What has been done about starting the general hue and cry about those robbers?”
Starr stammered when he said that he supposed that the local constable had notified the sheriff.
“I attended to that, myself! Dorsey could think of only one thing at a time. But I reckoned you had taken some steps to make the call more official. The state police ought to be on the job.”
“I'll attend to it.” But Mr. Starr did not display particularly urgent zeal.
“Well, son, we'll toddle home! What say?”
Vaniman did not say. He was choking. Reaction and grief and anxiety were unnerving him. Starr did the saying. “The cashier and I have a lot of things to go over, Squire, and he plans to spend the night with me at the tavern.”
“I see!” returned the notary, amiably, showing no surprise. He called a cheery “Good night!” when he left them at the tavern door.
Landlord Files gave them a room with two beds. Without making any bones of the thing, Examiner Starr pushed his bed across the door and then turned in and snored with the abandon of one who had relieved himself of the responsibility of keeping vigil.