"I propose to find out before I close my eyes this night," he told her, gravely.



CHAPTER XIII

MISFORTUNE MEDDLES

Shortly before the supper hour, Britt and Starr came into the bank; they wore their overcoats and hats, and were on their way to the tavern, evidently.

"How are you making it, Frank?" the president inquired, with solicitude.

A sympathetic observer would have found a suggestion of captives, caged and hopeless, in the demeanor of the cashier and the bookkeeper behind the grille.

Vaniman peered through the lattice into the gloom where the callers stood and shook his head. "I'm not making it well at all, sir."

"But you must have some idea of what the trouble is."

"There's trouble, all right, Mr. Britt—plenty of it. There's no use in my denying that. But I'm not far enough along to give any sensible explanation."

The president showed real anxiety. "What do you say for a guess?"

"If you are asking me only for a guess, I should say that the ghost of Jim the Penman has been amusing himself with these books," replied the cashier; he was bitter; he was showing the effects of worry that was aggravated by lack of sleep.

"Aha! Plainly not far enough along for a sensible explanation," rumbled Examiner Starr.

"A knave is usually ready with a good story when he has been taken by surprise. Honesty isn't as handy with the tongue. I can only say that something—I don't say somebody—has put these books into a devil of a mess, and I'm doing my best to straighten them."

"I wish you luck," affirmed Starr. "I've been talking with your president and he says everything good about your faithfulness, and about how you have been doing guard duty in the bank of late. Perhaps you're a sleepwalker, Vaniman," he added, with heavy humor.

"I feel like one now," retorted the cashier. "I was awake all last night."

"Ah! Doing what?" asked the examiner, politely, but without interest.

The question hinted that in the talk in Britt's office the president had refrained from mention of Barnes, the broker. Vaniman decided instantly to respect Britt's reticence; the president had shown much caution the night before, even in regard to Squire Hexter. "Oh, merely running around on a little business of my own, Mr. Starr."

Britt did not assist by any reference to his own share in the business. "We may as well start along toward the tavern, Starr." The president took two steps toward the grille and addressed Vona. "I'm going to take Mr. Starr to the show this evening. I want him to see what smart girls we have in Egypt."

Vona did not reply. She turned to Vaniman with the air of one who has suddenly been reminded of something forgotten in the stress of affairs. But before she had an opportunity to speak there was a tramping of hasty feet in the corridor and her father came in through the door that had been left ajar by Britt. "Good evening, all!" hailed Mr. Harnden, cheerily. "But, see here, Vona, my dear girl, we have been waiting supper a whole half hour. You've got scant time to eat and get on your stage togs."

"This has been a pretty busy day in the bank, Harnden," explained Britt. "Meet Mr. Starr, the bank examiner!"

"Oh, hullo, Starr!" cried Mr. Harnden, shoving out a friendly hand. "Heard you were in town. I know Starr," he told Britt. "I know everybody in the state worth knowing. I told you so."

Mr. Starr was not effusive; there was a hint of sarcasm in his inquiry as to how the invention business was coming along.

"Fine and flourishing!" announced Harnden, radiantly. Then he blurted some news which seemed to embarrass Britt very much; the news also provoked intense interest in Vaniman and the daughter. "All I've ever needed is backing, Starr. Now I've got it!" He clapped his hand on the banker's shoulder. "Here's my backer—good as a certified check. Hey, Tasper?"

"I'm—I'm always ready to help develop local talent," Britt admitted, stammering, turning his back on the faces at the grille. "Starr, we'd better get along toward the tavern. I've had some poor luck with Files when he's off his schedule time!"

"The new combination of Harnden and Britt will make 'em sit up and take notice," persisted the inventor. Forgetting Vona, desiring to impress a skeptic from the outside world, he followed Starr and the banker.

Vaniman and the girl listened to the optimist's fervid declarations till the slam of the outside door shut them off.

"That sounds like an interesting investment, Vona," was the cashier's dry comment. "Mr. Britt seems to be swinging that watering pot of his new generosity around in pretty reckless fashion. I wonder what he'll do next!"

"Frank, I'm afraid!" She spoke in a whisper, staring hard at him. "No, no! Not what you think! I am not afraid because he is buying my father. If Mr. Britt thinks I can be included in that bargain he is wiser in making his money than he is in spending it. But there's something dreadful at work against us!" She had her hand on the page of an open ledger.

"The books can be straightened," he insisted. "I can do it. I'll do it, if I have to call in every depositor's pass book." He pointed to the vault. He was keeping the doors open till his work was done. "As long as the money is there, every cent of it, the final checking will show for itself. And the money will be there! I'm answering for that much! I propose to stay with it till that Barnes shows up."

"I remember now that you told me he would come by the stage to-day."

"So Britt gave me to understand, when I reported that he didn't come on the night train."

"But I looked out of the window a little while ago—there was no passenger with Jones."

"Has the stage come?" He glanced at the clock and blinked at the girl. "Well, I guess those books had me hypnotized!"

"Small wonder," she said, bitterly. "I tell you I'm afraid, Frank! There's something we don't see through!"

"I don't dare to waste any more time wondering what the trouble is, Vona. I must get on to the job."

"Both of us must."

"It's time for you to be going home."

"I'm going to stay here."

"But, dear girl, there's the play! You have the leading part!"

"The words will stick in my throat and tears will blind me when I think of you working here alone. Frank, I insist! I will not leave you. They must postpone the play."

He went to her and laid her hands, one upon the other, between his caressing palms. "The folks will be there—they are expecting the play—you must not disappoint them. It's as much your duty to go to the hall as it is mine to stay here with the books. And another thing! Think of the stories that will be set going, with the bank examiner here, if it's given out that the play had to be postponed because you couldn't leave the books. Such a report might start a run on the bank. Folks would be sure to think there's trouble here. You must go, Vona. It's for the sake of both of us."

He went and brought her coat and hat.

"I can't go through with the play," she wailed.

"We've got to use all the grit that's in us—whatever it is we're up against. Come! Hold out your arms!" He assisted her with the coat.

He drew her toward the door with his arm about her. "We'll make a good long day of it to-morrow—a holiday. George Washington never told a lie. Perhaps those books will come to themselves in the morning and realize what day it is and will stop lying! Now be brave!"

The kiss he gave her was long and tender; she clung to him. He released her, but she turned in the corridor and hurried back to him. "I shouldn't feel as I do—worried sick about you, Frank! The books must come out right, because both of us have been careful and honest."

"Exactly! The thing will prove itself in the end. The money in that vault will talk for us! I'll do a little talking, myself, when—But no matter now!"

"You have suspicions! I know you have!"

"Naturally, not believing as much in ghosts or demons as I may have intimated to Starr."

She looked apprehensively over her shoulder into the dark corners of the corridor. Then she drew his face down close to hers. "And it's hard to believe in the reformation of demons," she whispered.

"I'm doing a whole lot of thinking, little girl. But I don't want to talk now. Do your best at the play. Hide your troubles behind smiles—that's real fighting! And we'll see what to-morrow will do for us."

"Yes, to-morrow!" She ran away, but again she returned. "And nothing can happen to you here, in a quiet town like this, can it, Frank?" she asked.

"Nothing but what can be taken care of with that shotgun in the back room! But don't look frightened, precious girl! There's nothing—"

But even Vaniman was startled, the next moment. The girl leaped into his embrace and cowered. Something was clattering against a window of the bank. But only the mild face of Squire Hexter was framed in the lamplight cast on the window. He called, when he got a peep at the cashier, who came hastening back inside the grille: "Supper, boy! Supper! Come along!"

Frank threw up the window. "I'll make what's left over from my lunch do me, Squire. I'm tied up here with my work."

"I'll allow the new Starr in our local sky to keep you away from euchre," the Squire grumbled, "but I swanny if I'll let your interest in astronomy, all of a sudden, keep you away from the hot vittles you need. You come along with me to the house."

"Squire, I can't lock the vault yet awhile. I don't want to leave things as they are. I must not."

Vona had come to his side, she understood the nature of his anxiety. "I am just starting for my house, Squire Hexter. I'm going to hurry back with Frank's supper, so that he won't be bothered."

"Bless your soul, sis, even Xoa will be perfectly satisfied with that arrangement when I explain," said the Squire, gallantly. "I'm tempted to stay, myself, if Hebe is going to serve." He backed away and did a grand salaam, flourishing the cane whose taps on the window had startled the lovers.

"You must not take the time, Vona," protested the young man.

"I'll bring the supper when I'm on my way to the hall. Not another word! If I'm to lose the best part of my audience from the hall to-night, I can, at least, have that best part give me a compliment on my new gown—and give me," she went on, reassuring him by a brave little smile, "a whole lot of courage by a dear kiss."

She hurried away.

He was hard at work when she returned, carrying a wicker basket.

Again he protested because she was taking so much trouble, but she laid aside her coat and insisted on arranging the food on a corner of the table, a happy flush on her cheeks, giving him thanks with her eyes when he praised her gown.

"I'm going to look in on you after the show," she declared. "Father will come with me."

Vona remained with him until the wall clock warned her.

She asked him to wait a moment when he brought her wraps. She stood before him in her gay garb, wistfully appealing. "Frank, I was intending to have a little play of my own with you at the hall to-night. I was going to look right past that Durgin boy, straight down into your eyes, when I came to a certain place in the play. I was intending to let the folks of Egypt know something, providing they all don't know it by now. This is what I have to say, and now I'm saying it to the only audience I care for:

"'Twere vain to tell thee all I feel, Or say for thee I'd die. Ah, well-a-day, the sweetest melody Could 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!"



CHAPTER XIV

A BANK TURNED INSIDE OUT

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 a hell of 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.



CHAPTER XV

VIA THE PRESIDENT'S PRIVATE WAY

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 know that, 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? Walked in?" 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.



CHAPTER XVI

LOOKED AT SQUARELY

The bank examiner and the cashier were down early to breakfast.

Starr had slept well and was vigorously alert. Vaniman was haggard and visibly worried. Both of them were reticent.

Vaniman felt that he had nothing to say, as matters stood.

Starr was thinking, rather than talking. He snapped up Files when the landlord meekly inquired whether there were any clews. Files retreated in a panic.

"Vaniman," said the examiner, when they pulled on their coats under the alligator's gaping espionage, "this is going to be my busy day and I hope you feel like pitching into this thing with me, helping to your utmost."

"You can depend on me, Mr. Starr."

"I don't intend to bother you with any questions at present except to ask about the routine business of the bank. So you can have your mind free on that point."

They went to the bank and relieved Britt.

"Go get your breakfast and come back here as soon as you can," Starr commanded, plunging into matters with the air of the sole captain of the craft. "And call a meeting of the directors."

The examiner had brought a brief-case along with him from the tavern. He pulled out a card. Britt winced when he saw what was printed on the card.

THIS BANK CLOSED

pending examination of resources and liabilities and

auditing of accounts. Per order STATE BANK EXAMINERS.

Mr. Starr ordered Britt to tack that card on the outer door.

"Isn't there any other way but this?" asked the president.

"There's nothing else to be done—certainly not! I'm afraid the institution is in a bad way, Britt. You say you have been calling regular loans in order to build up a cash reserve—and your cash isn't in sight. I reckon it means that the stockholders will be assessed the full hundred per cent of liability."

He bolted the bank door behind the president.

"Now, Vaniman, did you find out anything sensible about those books, as far as you got last evening?"

"Only that the accounts seem to have been willfully tangled up."

"Then we'll let that part of the thing hang. Get out letters to depositors, calling in all pass books."

After Vaniman had set himself down to that task, Starr went about his business briskly. He prepared telegrams and sent his charioteer to put them on the wire at Levant. Those messages were intended to set in operation the state police, a firm of licensed auditors, the security company which had bonded the bank's officials, the insurance corporation which guaranteed the Egypt Trust Company against loss by burglars. Then Starr proceeded with the usual routine of examination as conducted when banks are going concerns.

For the next few days Egypt was on the map.

Ike Jones was obliged to put extra pungs on to his stage line for the accommodation of visitors who included accountants, newspaper reporters, insurance men, and security representatives.

Finally, so far as Starr's concern was involved, the affairs of the Egypt Trust Company were shaken down into something like coherence. The apparent errors in the books, when they had been checked by pass books and notes and securities, were resolved into a mere wanton effort to mix things up.

Mr. Starr took occasion to reassure Miss Harnden in regard to those books; during the investigation the girl had been working with Vaniman in the usual double-hitch arrangement which had prevailed before the day of the disaster. The two plodded steadily, faithfully, silently, under the orders of the examiner.

"Now that I've seen you at work, Miss Harnden, I eliminate carelessness and stupidity as the reasons for the books being as they are. That's the way I'm going at this thing—by the process of elimination. I'm going to say more! I'm eliminating you as being consciously responsible for any of the wrongdoing in this bank. That's about as far as I've got in the matter of elimination." He thumped his fist on a ledger. "It looks to me as if somebody had started to put something over by mixing these figures and had been tripped before finishing the job."

Then Mr. Starr, as if to show his appreciation of a worthy young woman whom he had treated in rather cavalier fashion at their first meeting, made her clerk to the receiver; the receiver was Almon Waite, an amiable old professor of mathematics, retired, who had come back to Egypt to pass his last days with his son. Examiner Starr, having taken it upon himself to put the Egypt Trust case through, had found in Professor Waite a handy sort of a soft rubber stamp.

Every afternoon, day by day, Starr had remarked casually to Vaniman, "Seeing that we have so many things to talk over, you'd better lodge with me at the hotel to-night!" And daily Vaniman agreed without a flicker of an eyelid. In view of the fact that both of them kept sedulously off the bank business after hours, there was a perfect understanding between the examiner and the cashier as to what this espionage meant. And Vaniman knew perfectly well just why a chap named Bixby was in town!

Having a pretty good knowledge of Starr's general opinions and prejudices, the cashier had squared himself to meet things as they came along. Once or twice Starr gave the young man an opportunity to come across with explanations or defense. Vaniman kept silent.

The cashier explained his sentiments to Vona. "It's mighty little ammunition I've got, dear! All I can do now is to keep it dry, and wait till I can see the whites of the enemy's eyes."

He refrained from any comment on the identity of the enemy. He did not need to name names to Vona. The attitude of Tasper Britt, who kept by himself in his own office; who offered not one word of suggestion or explanation or consolation; who surveyed Vaniman, when the two met at the tavern, with the reproachful stare of the benefactor who had been betrayed—Britt's attitude was sufficiently significant. Vaniman was waiting to see what Britt would do in the crisis that was approaching. "At any rate, I must keep silent until I'm directly accused, Vona. Starr is regularly talking with Britt. If I begin now to defend myself by telling about Britt's operations, I'll merely be handing weapons to the enemy. They can't surprise me by any charge they may bring! I have got myself stiffened up to that point. You must make up your mind that it's coming. Pile up courage beforehand!"

It was a valiant little speech. But he was obliged to strive heroically to make his countenance fit his words of courage. In facing the situation squarely he had been trying to make an estimate of the state of mind in Egypt. He bitterly decided that the folks were lining up against the outlander. As hateful as Britt had made himself, he was Egyptian, born and bred. Vaniman knew what the wreck of the little bank signified in that town, which was already staggering under its debt burden. How that bank had been wrecked was not clear to Vaniman, even when he gave the thing profound consideration. He did not dare to declare to himself all that he suspected of the president. Nor did he dare to believe that Britt would dump the whole burden on the cashier. However, if Britt undertook such a play of perfidy, the outlander knew that the native would have the advantage in the exchange of accusation.

Vaniman perceived the existing state of affairs in the demeanor of the men whom he met on the street, going to and from the tavern. He heard some of their remarks. He strove to keep a calm face while his soul burned!

Then, at last, Examiner Starr acted. He employed peculiar methods to fit a peculiar case.

One afternoon Starr sat and stared for some time at Vaniman. They were alone in the bank. Receiver Waite and Vona had gone away.

"Would you relish a little show?" inquired the examiner.

Vaniman had nerved himself against all kinds of surprise, he thought, but he was not prepared for this proffer of entertainment. He frankly declared that he did not understand.

"Seeing that you are doubtful, we'll have the show, anyway, and you can tell me later whether or not you relish it." He opened the door and called. Bixby came in. It was evident that Bixby had been waiting.

"All ready!" said Starr.

"All right!" said Bixby.

"I'll say that Bixby, here, is an operator from a detective agency, in case you don't know it," explained the examiner.

"I do know it, sir!"

Bixby pulled off his overcoat. Under it he wore a mohair office coat. He yanked off that garment, ripped the sleeves, tore the back breadth, and threw the coat under a stool. Then he secured a dustcloth from a hook, produced a small vial of chloroform, and poured some of the liquid on the cloth. He poured more of the chloroform on his hair and his vest. Then he laid down the cloth and got a roll of tape out of a drawer. He cut off a length and made a noose, slipped it over his wrists, bent down and laid the end of the tape on the floor, stood on it, and pulled taut the noose until the flesh was ridged. He stooped again and picked up two metal disks which Starr tossed on the floor; the detective did this easily, although his writs were noosed.

"Not the exact program, perhaps, but near enough," Starr commented.

With equal ease Bixby laid the disks carefully on the flange of the sill of the vault. Then he took the cloth from the desk, went to the vault, stooped and thumped his head up against the projecting lever. He went into the vault and carefully pulled the door shut after him, both hands on the main bolt.

Starr was silent for some moments, exchanging looks with the cashier.

"Any comments?" inquired the manager of the show.

"None, sir."

"I'll simply say that the chloroform cloth can be put to the nose as occasion calls for. Bixby isn't doing that. I told Bixby that for the purposes of demonstration he might count one hundred slow and then figure that he had used up the oxygen in the vault, and then, if nobody came to open the door, he could—well, he isn't in there to commit suicide, but only to create an impression. I ask again—any comments?"

Vaniman shook his head.

Then the door swung open. Bixby was on his back, his heels in the air. He had pushed the door with his feet, his shoulders against the inner door. He rose and came out. Starr cut the tape with the office shears.

"That's all!" said the manager.

Bixby, not troubling about the torn office jacket, put on his overcoat and departed.

Starr took a lot of time in lighting a cigar and getting a good clinch on the weed with his teeth. He spoke between those teeth. "It's your move, Vaniman."

"I haven't agreed to sit in at that kind of a game," stated the young man, firmly.

"But you'll have to admit that I'm playing mighty fair," insisted the examiner. "When we talked in Britt's office, you and I agreed that it wasn't likely that a chap would run risks or commit suicide by shutting himself up in a bank vault with a time lock on. That's about the only point we did agree on. I'm showing you that I don't agree with you now, even on that point. That being the case, you've got to—show me." Starr emphasized the last two words by stabbing at his breast with the cigar.

"The idea is, Mr. Starr, you believe that I framed a fake robbery, or something that looked like a robbery, in order to cover myself." Frank stood up and spoke hotly.

Mr. Starr jumped up and was just as heated in his retort. "Yes!"

"But the whole thing—the muddling of the bank's books—the disks—a man shoving himself into the vault—I'd have to be a lunatic to perform in that fashion!"

"They say there's nothing new under the sun! There is, just the same! Some crook is thinking up a new scheme every day!"

"By the gods, you shall not call me a crook!"

"You, yourself, are drawing that inference. But I don't propose to deal in inferences—"

"Starting in the first day you struck this town, hounding me on account of matters I had no knowledge of, Mr. Starr, was drawing a damnable inference."

"It has been backed up by some mighty good evidence!"

"What is your evidence?"

The examiner blew a cloud of smoke, then he fanned the screen away and squinted at Vaniman. "If you ever hear of me giving away the state's case in any matter where I'm concerned you'll next hear of me committing suicide by locking myself into a bank vault. Calm down, Mr. Cashier!"

Starr walked close to Vaniman and tapped a stubby forefinger against the young man's heaving breast. "I'm going to give you a chance, young fellow! I staged that little play a few moments ago so that you'd see what a fool house of cards you're living in! I hope you noted carefully that we did not need to go off the premises for any of our props. I, myself, had noted in your case that everything that was used came from the premises. Real robbers usually bring their own stuff. Even that chloroform—"

"I know nothing about the chloroform, sir."

"Well, the vial was here that night, anyway! It's a small thing to waste time on! I don't profess to be at the bottom of the affair, Vaniman. I'll admit that it looks as if there's a lot behind this thing—plenty that is interesting. I've got my full share of human curiosity. I'd like to be let in on this thing, first hand. Now come across clean! The whole story! Tell me where the coin is! It's certainly a queer case, and there must be some twist in it where I can do you a good turn. I've giving you your chance, I say!"

"I have no more idea where that coin is than you have, Mr. Starr. I never touched it. I have already told the whole truth, so far as I know facts."

"Now listen, Vaniman! This town is already down! If that gold isn't recovered this bank failure will put the town out! The folks are ugly. They're talking. Britt says they believe you have hidden the money!"

"He does say it!" Vaniman fairly barked the words. "No doubt he has been telling 'em so!"

Starr proceeded remorselessly. "I have heard all the gossip about the trouble between you and Britt. But that gossip doesn't belong in this thing right now. Vaniman, you know what a country town is when it turns against an outsider! If you go before a jury on this case—and that money isn't in sight—you don't stand the show of a wooden latch on the back door of hell's kitchen! They'll all come to court with what they can grub up in the way of brickbats—facts, if they can get 'em, lies, anyway! Come, come, now! Dig up the coin!"

Starr's bland persistency in taking for granted the fact that Vaniman was hiding the money snapped the overstrained leash of the cashier's self-restraint. In default of a general audience of the hateful Egyptian vilifiers, he used Starr as the object of his frenzied vituperation.

Mr. Starr listened without reply.

As soon as it was apparent to the bank examiner that the cashier did not intend to take advantage of the chance that had been offered, Starr marched to the door, opened it, and called. The corridor, it seemed, was serving as repository for various properties required in the drama which Mr. Starr had staged that day. The man who entered wore a gold badge—and a gold badge marks the high sheriff of a county. Starr handed a paper to the officer. "Serve it," he commanded, curtly.

The sheriff walked to Vaniman and tapped him on the shoulder. "You're under arrest."

"Charged with what?"

"I'm making it fairly easy for you," explained, Starr, dryly, appearing to be better acquainted with the nature of the warrant than the sheriff was. "Burglary, with or without accomplices, might have been charged—seeing that the coin has been removed—in the nighttime, of course! But we're simply making the charge embezzlement!"



CHAPTER XVII

ON THE FACE OF IT

Squire Hexter arranged for Vaniman's bail, volunteering for that service, frankly admitting that he "had seen it coming all along"! But the Squire was not as ready to serve as Frank's counsel and withstood that young man's urging for some time. The Squire's solicitude in behalf of the accused was the reason for this reluctance. "You ought to have the smartest city lawyer you can hire. I'm only an old country codger, son!"

"Squire Hexter, I propose to let the other side have a monopoly of the tricks. I'm depending on my innocence, and I want your honesty back of it."

In the hope that the folks of Egypt would recognize innocence when they saw it, Vaniman daily walked the streets of the village. The pride of innocence was soon wounded; he learned that his action in "showing himself under the folks's noses" was considered as bravado. The light of day showed him so many sour looks that he stayed in the house with Xoa or in the Squire's office until night. Then he discovered that when he walked abroad under cover of the darkness he was persistently trailed; it was evident that the belief that he had hidden the coin of the Egypt Trust Company was sticking firmly in the noodles of the public.

The bank, of course, was now forbidden ground for him. The affairs of that unhappy institution were being wound up. Considering the fact that the stockholders had been assessed dollar for dollar of their holdings, and that, even with this assessment added to the assets, the depositors would get back only a fraction of their money, Vaniman could scarcely marvel at the hard looks and the muttered words he met up with on the street.

Furthermore, the insurance company took the stand that the bank had not been burglarized. On the other hand, the security company behind Vaniman's bond refused to settle, claiming that some kind of a theft had been committed by outsiders. Only after expensive litigation could Receiver Waite hope to add insurance and bond money to the assets. The prospects of getting anything were clouded by the revelations concerning President Britt's private entrance to the bank vault. But Britt was not accused of anything except of presuming on too many liberties in running a one-man bank. Under some circumstances Britt would have been called to an accounting, without question. But all the venom of suspicion was wholly engaged with Frank Vaniman, the son of an embezzler.

Squire Hexter, armed with authority and information given him by the young man, had repeatedly waited on Tasper Britt and had asked what attitude the president proposed to take at the trial. Britt had said that he should tell the truth, and that was all any witness could be expected to do or to promise, furthermore, so he told the Squire, he had been enjoined by his counsel to make no talk to anybody.

Vaniman was not sure of his self-restraint during that period of waiting. There were days when he felt like slapping the faces that glowered when he looked at them. He avoided any meeting with Britt. That was easy, because Britt swung with pendulum regularity between house and tavern, tavern and office.

There were days when Vaniman was so thoroughly disheartened that he pleaded with Vona to make a show of breaking off their friendship. She had insisted on displaying herself as his champion; obeying her, he walked in her company to and from the bank with more or less regularity. His spirit of chivalry made the snubs harder to endure when she was obliged to share them in his company.

But Vona staunchly refused to be a party to such deception. She borrowed some figures of speech suggested by the work she was doing in the bank and declared that her loyalty was not insolvent and that she would not make any composition with her conscience.

In her zeal to be of service, one day she even volunteered to interview Tasper Britt on the subject of what had happened to the Egypt Trust Company. On that fresh April morning they had walked up the slope of Burkett Hill, where the sward was showing its first green. He had come to her house earlier than usual so that she might have time for the little excursion. They hunted for mayflowers and found enough to make a bit of a bouquet for her desk in the office.

"One just has to feel hopeful in the spring, Frank," she insisted, brushing the blossoms gently against his cheek. From the slope they could look down into the length of Egypt's main street. "Why, there goes Tasper Britt toward his office and he actually waved his hand to a man—honest! The spring does soften folks. If he does know something about the inside of the dreadful puzzle, as you and I have talked so many times, I do believe I can coax him to tell me."

"I don't want you to coax him, dear. Squire Hexter has put the thing up to Britt, man to man, and I think it better to let it stand that way."

"But if we could get only a little hint to work from!"

"I'm afraid you'll find him as stingy with hints as he is with everything else. He does know—something! I would not put him above arranging that frame-up that put me where I was found that night," he declared, with bitterness.

"No, Frank, I tell you again that I don't believe he knew it was going to happen. When I stood there outside the curtain that night I was looking straight at him, and at nobody else. I don't remember another face. Tasper Britt is not actor enough to make up the expression that I saw. It was simple, absolute, flabbergasted fright!"

They started down the slope and walked in silence.

"He's considerable of a coward," Vaniman admitted, after his pondering. "I'm depending on that fact, more or less. I don't believe he'll dare to stand up as a witness in court and perjure himself. Squire Hexter has a line of questions that he and I have prepared very carefully. Britt will have to testify that I did not have sole opportunity. In considering crimes, it's proving sole opportunity that sends folks to prison!"

She turned away her face and set her teeth upon her lower lip, controlling her agitation.

"I'm trying to face the thing just as bravely as I can, Vona. On the face of it I'm in bad! When I remember how Britt maneuvered with me, I feel like running to him and twisting his head off his neck."

When they arrived in front of Britt Block, Vaniman scowled at the stone effigy in its niche. Then, when his eyes came down from that complacent countenance, they beheld the face of Tasper Britt framed in his office window. The Britt in the bank was distinctly in an ugly mood. And there was a challenge in his demeanor, a sneer in the twist of his features.

"Vona, I'm going in there," Vaniman declared. "There's got to be a showdown, but it's no job for you!"

She offered neither protest nor advice. At that moment the young man was manifestly in a state of mind which sudden resolution had inflamed with something like desperation. When he strode in through the front door Britt disappeared from the window.

Vona, following her lover, put her hand on his arm when he arrived in front of the office door. "Don't you need me with you in there?" She could not hide her apprehensiveness.

"I'm going to hold myself in, dear! Don't be worried. But it's best for me to see him alone."

He waited until she had gone into the bank office.

He did not bother to knock on Britt's door. When he twisted the handle he found that the door was locked. He called, but Britt did not reply. He put his mouth close to the door. "Mr. Britt, I have some business to talk over with you. Please let me in!"

He waited. The man inside did not move or speak. "I'm coming in there, Britt, even if I have to kick this door down."

But the threat did not produce any results. Vaniman stepped back and drove his foot against the panel, but not with enough force to break the lock. His kick was in the way of admonition. After a few moments Britt opened the door; he had an iron poker in his hand. Vaniman marched in. "You don't need any weapon, sir."

"I think I do, judging from the way you came rushing into this building. Vaniman, I protest. I have said my say to your attorney. I have nothing more to add."

"I'm not here to try the case, Mr. Britt. I'll confess that I did not intend to waste my breath in talking with you. But I could not resist the feeling that came over me a few moments ago." He was standing just inside the door. He closed it. "You informed Squire Hexter that you intend to tell the truth at the trial. That's all right! I hope so. I have no criticism to offer on that point. But there's a matter of man's business between us two, and it belongs here rather than in a courtroom. Do you intend to tell the truth about how you framed me?"

"I don't understand what you mean," returned Britt, stiffly.

"I'll put it so that you can't help understanding, sir. You rigged a plan to have me sleep in the bank nights."

"That was your own suggestion. You asked to be allowed to sleep here."

"You intend to say that in your testimony, do you?"

Britt took a firm hold on the poker. "I most certainly do."

"You cooked up an excuse to send me off on a wild-goose chase in the night."

"I know nothing about your going anywhere in the night—except that Files's hostler is saying that you hired a hitch for some purpose."

Vaniman knew that appeal and protest would be futile—realizing the full extent of Britt's effrontery. However, in his amazement he began to rail at the president.

Britt broke in on the anathema. "I was not nigh the bank that night. I was asleep in my own house. You'd better not try any such ridiculous story in court—it will spoil any defense Hexter may manage to put up for you. Vaniman, it's plain enough why you hired that hitch! Why don't you tell where you hauled that money?"

"I'm not going to do to you what I ought to do, Britt. I'm into the hole deep enough as it is! But let me ask you if any jury is going to believe that I was lunatic enough to hire a livery hitch, if I was hauling away loot?"

"It's my idea, Vaniman, that you were trying to work a hold-up game on the bank, knowing that you were done here," stated Britt, coolly. "But something went wrong before you had a chance to offer a compromise. Naturally, you thought we'd do 'most anything to keep our little bank from failing."

The young man beat his fist upon his breast. "Have you the damnation cheek, Britt, to use me, the victim, to rehearse your lies on?"

"I'm giving you a little glimpse of the evidence. If the hint is of any use to you, you're welcome."

"Britt, have you turned into a demon?" Vaniman demanded. He stared at the usurer with honest incredulity.

"I've had enough setbacks, in recent days, to craze 'most any man, I'll admit. But I'm keeping along in my usual course, doing the right thing as I see it."

"Britt, I have never done you an injury. Are you going to ruin me because a good girl loves me?"

"I have too much respect for that young lady to allow her name to be dragged into a mess of this sort," stated the amazing Britt. "And I think that she'll wake up after she has come to a realizing sense of what a narrow escape she has had."

Vaniman stood there, his hands closing and unclosing, his palms itching to feel the contact of Britt's cheeks. There was venom in Britt's eyes. This outrageous baiting was satisfying the older man's rancor—the ugly grudge that clawed and tore his soul when he sat alone in his chamber and gazed on the girl's pictured beauty. Every night, after he puffed out his light, he muttered the same speech—it had become the talisman of his ponderings. "Whilst I'm staying alone here he'll be alone in a cell in state prison."

Vaniman understood.

He turned on his heel and walked out of Britt's office.

In the street the young man met Prophet Elias, who was adventuring abroad under his big umbrella. Vaniman was in a mood to poke ruthless facts against his aches. "Prophet, you ought to know whether any of the folks in this town believe that I'm innocent. Are there any?"

Elias, ever since he had flung to the cashier the sage advice about keeping his eye peeled, had used texts rarely in his infrequent talks with Vaniman.

"Oh yes, there are a few," he said, with matter-of-fact indifference. "But they didn't lose money by the bank failure."

"What do you think about me?"

The Prophet cocked his eyebrow. "'Can a man take fire into his bosom, and his clothing not be burned?' Britt, the bank, the girl! Three hot torches, young sir! Very hot torches!" He walked on. Then he turned and came back and patted Vaniman's arm. "You didn't keep your eye peeled! The young are thoughtless. But four good old eyes will be serving you while you're—away! Mine and Brother Usial's."

"Thank you!" said the young man, and he went on his way. He was reflecting on that text the Prophet had enunciated.

Might it not apply as well to Tasper Britt?



CHAPTER XVIII

A PERSISTENT BELIEF

Vaniman was indicted; he was tried; he was convicted; he was sentenced to serve seven years in the state prison. He refused to allow Squire Hexter to appeal the case. He had no taste for further struggle against the circumstantial evidence that was reinforced by perjury. His consciousness of protesting innocence was subjugated by the morose determination to accept the unjust punishment.

The general opinion was that he was a very refractory young man because he would not disclose the hiding place of the gold.

Even the warden of the prison had some remarks to make on that subject. The chaplain urged Vaniman to clear his conscience and do what he could to aid the distressed inhabitants of a bankrupt town. This conspiracy of persistent belief in his guilt put a raw edge on his mental suffering.

His only source of solace was the weekly letter from Vona. Her fortitude seemed to be unaffected; her loyalty heartened him. And after a time hope intervened and comforted him; although Vaniman had only a few friends on the job for him in Egypt, he reflected that Tasper Britt had plenty of enemies who would operate constantly and for the indirect benefit of Britt's especial victim. The young man felt that accident might disclose the truth at any time. But every little while he went through a period of acute torture; he had a wild desire to break out of his prison, to be on the ground in Egypt, to go at the job of unmasking Britt as only a man vitally interested in the task could go at it!

Sometimes his frenzy reached such a height that it resembled the affliction that pathologists call claustrophobia. He stamped to and fro in his cell, after the bolts had been driven for the night; he lamented and he cursed, muffling his tones. And a man named Bartley Wagg, having taken it upon himself to keep close tabs on Vaniman's state of mind, noted the prisoner's rebellious restlessness with deepening interest and coupled a lot of steady pondering with his furtive espionage.

Wagg was a prison guard.

After Vaniman was committed, Wagg complained of rheumatism and asked the warden to transfer him from the wall where he had been doing sentry-go with a rifle and give him an inside job as night warder. And the warden humored Wagg, who was a trusted veteran.

Wagg made regular trips along the cell tiers during the night. He padded as noiselessly as a cat, for he had soles of felt on his shoes. Many times, keeping vigil when his emotions would not allow him to sleep, Vaniman saw Wagg halt and peer through the bars of the cell. The corridor light showed his face. But Wagg did not accost the prisoner. The guard acted like a man who, whatever might be his particular interest in Vaniman, proposed to take plenty of time in getting acquainted.

Once, after midnight, Wagg found the prisoner pacing; Vaniman dared to relieve his feelings by groans, for the chorus of snores served as a sound-screen.

"Sick?" inquired the guard, whispering.

"No."

"If you ever are, don't be afraid to call on me when I pass. I've got a good heart."

"Thank you!"

"I've really got too good a heart to be tied up to a prison job," volunteered Wagg. "I hate to see sorrow."

"Sorrow is about all you have a chance to see in this place."

"Yes," admitted the guard, sliding away.

The warden had given Vaniman a bookkeeper's job. But the prison office was a gloomy place and the windows were hatefully barred Through the bars he could see convict toilers wheeling barrows of dirt. They were filling up a lime-quarry pit within the walls. In the old days convicts had quarried lime rocks. But in the newer days of shops the quarry was abandoned and had been gradually filled with stagnant water. When the prison commissioners decided that the pool was a menace to health, a crew was set at work filling the pit. Vaniman envied the men who could work in the sunshine. He was everlastingly behind bars; the office was not much better than his cell. The bars shut him away from opportunity to make a man's fight for himself. Every time he looked at a window he was reminded of his helplessness. It seemed to him that if he could get out into the sunshine and toil till his muscles ached he would be able to endure better the night of confinement in the cell.

He blurted out that much of confession to Wagg when the guard discovered him pacing in the narrow space a few nights later.

"I sympathize!" whispered Wagg. "I know all about your case!" Then Wagg passed on.

The next night he halted long enough to say that, knowing all about the case from what the newspapers printed, he realized just why Vaniman found it so tough to be locked up.

Then Wagg refrained from saying anything for several nights. The prisoner was quite sure that the guard had something on his mind outside of a mere notion of being polite; in the case of Wagg, so hardened a veteran, politeness to a prisoner would have been heresy. Wondering just what Wagg was driving at, Vaniman found the guard's leisurely methods tantalizing in the extreme. One night the prisoner ventured to take the initiative; he stuck out his hand to signal the guard.

Wagg, it was manifest, was not so much a master of facial control that he could suppress all signs of satisfaction. He looked pleased—like a man who had employed tactics that were working according to plans and hopes.

"Sick?"

"Yes—heart and soul! Body, too! Isn't there any way of my getting a job wheeling that dirt?"

Wagg made his noiseless getaway. He departed suddenly, without a word. Until the next night Vaniman was left to wonder to what extent he had offended the official.

But Wagg showed no signs of unfriendliness when he halted, after midnight, at the cell door. "Feel any better?"

"No!"

"I reckon I understand. Of course I understand! Most of 'em that's in here haven't anything special to look forward to when they get out. Your case is different. Everything to look forward to! No wonder you walk the cell."