Every now and then the fad of a new trick puzzle—a few bits of twisted wire, or a stick and a string—will as effectually occupy the time of an entire community as a cowbell will take up the undivided attention of a cur, if the bell is hitched to the cur's tail.
The folks of Egypt had a couple of brain-twisters to solve.
What had happened to Tasper Britt?
How did it happen that Cashier Vaniman was holding on to his job?
His townsfolk knew Britt's character pretty well, and they had much food for speculation in his case.
There were some who ventured the suggestion that Hittie's remonstrating spirit had come to him in the night watches. Other guesses ran all the way down the scale of probability to the prosaic belief that Britt had decided that it was not profitable to go on making a fool of himself. It was agreed that Britt had a good eye for profit in every line of action; and it was conceded, even by those who did not believe all that was said about spiritist influences in these modern days, that if Hittie really had managed to get at him it was likely that her caustic communications would knock some of the folly out of him.
Egypt did not know Vaniman, the outlander, very well. Gossip about his reasons for remaining were mostly all guess-so; the folks got absolutely nothing from him on the subject. He did not discuss the matter even with Squire Hexter and Xoa. Frank and Vona had definitely adopted the policy of waiting, and he resolved to take no chances on having that policy prejudiced by anybody carrying random stories to Britt, reports that the cashier had said this or the other.
Vaniman took occasion to reassure Mr. Britt on that point, and the latter had displayed much gratitude. “If you don't hurt me, Frank, I won't hurt you!” Then the usurer's eyes hardened. “Of course I can't expect you to forget that I threatened to blacken your name in banking circles. But in our new understanding I guess we can afford to call it a stand-off.”
“If I were staying here simply to wheedle you into passing me on with a high testimonial, I'd be playing a selfish game, and that isn't my attitude, sir. I was anxious to get this job. I felt that I had a right to stand for myself, on my own honesty. But I shall tell the whole story the next time I apply for a position. I'm getting to understand big financiers better,” he added, with bitterness.
“Yes, finance is very touchy on certain points,” admitted the president. “But I'm glad you're not going to do any more talking here in town. You're somewhat of a new man here, and you don't know the folks as I do. I suppose some talk will have to be made as to why you and I are sticking along together, after you slapped my face in public. You'd better let me manage the story.”
“You may say what you think is best, Mr. Britt.”
“They're a suspicious lot, the men in this town.” The banker surveyed Vaniman, making slits of his eyes. “However, I've grown used to all this recent talk about me being a fool. If it's also said that I'm a fool for keeping you here, I won't mind it. And you mustn't mind if it's hinted around that you're hanging on in the bank because you've got private reasons that you're not talking about.”
The cashier greeted that sentiment with an inquiring frown.
“Oh, don't be nervous, Frank!” Mr. Britt flapped his hand, making light of the matter. He grinned. “I won't set you out as being the leader of a robber gang. I'm not like the peaked-billed old buzzards of this place—bound to say the worst of every stranger. You'd better turn to and hate the critters here, just as I do.”
Britt's tones rasped when he said that; his feelings were getting away from him. The young man's expression hinted that he was trying to reconcile this rancorous mood with Britt's recent declarations of a new view of life.
“What I really meant to say, Frank, was that such has been my feeling in the past. I'm trying to change my nature. If I forget and slip once in a while, don't lay it up against me.”
After that the president and the cashier in their daily conferences confined their discourse to the business of the bank. Britt got into the way of asking Vaniman's advice and of deferring to it when it had been given. “You're running the bank. You know the trick better than I do.”
Therefore, it was perfectly natural for the president to bring up a topic of the past, a matter where Frank had given advice that had been scornfully rejected. “I've been thinking over what you said about that stock of hard money in the vault needing a guard. That fool of a Stickney has started a lot of gossip, in spite of my warning to him. There's no telling how far the gossip has spread.”
“That kind of news travels fast, sir.”
Britt showed worry. “Perhaps I undertook too much of a chore for a little bank like ours. But because we are little and because this town isn't able to support the bank the way I had hoped, I thought I'd turn a trick that would net us more of a handy surplus in a modest sort of a way.”
Britt did not trouble himself to explain to the cashier that, by a private arrangement with the city broker, the deal would also turn a neat sum into the pocket of the president of the Egypt Trust Company, hidden in the charge of “commission and expenses,” split with due regard to the feelings of broker and president.
“The big fellows are grabbing off twenty-five or thirty per cent in their foreign money deals,” went on the banker. “Tightening home credits so as to do it! What's fair for big is fair for little!”
“The profit is attractive, surely,” the cashier stated.
“Our stockholders have honored me right along, and I'd like to show 'em that I deserve my reputation as a financier. I'm just finicky enough to want to clean up the last cent there is in it—and that's why I'm waiting for the right market. We've got to hold on for a few days, at any rate. But I reckon you feel as I do, that we're taking chances, now that gossip is flying high!”
“I think the vault should be guarded, Mr. Britt.”
“Any suggestions as to a man?”
“I don't know the men here well enough to choose.”
“And I know 'em so blasted well that I'm in the same box as you are. They're numbheads.”
The two men sat and looked at each other in silence; the matter seemed to be hung up right there, like a log stranded on a bank—“jillpoked,” as rivermen say.
“There's one way out of it, Frank,” blurted the president. “Nobody cares when I come or go, nights. I may as well sleep here as in my house, all alone. I'll have a cot put in the back room.” He pointed to a door in the rear of the bank office.
Vaniman came forward with instant and eager proffer. “That's a job for me, Mr. Britt.”
In spite of an effort to seem casual, Britt could not keep significance out of his tone. “It's too bad to pen a young man up of an evening, when he can be enjoying himself somewhere.”
“It's because I'm young that I'm insisting, sir.”
“And I suppose I'm so old that no husky robber would be afraid of me,” returned Britt, dryly. “So you insist, do you?”
“I do.”
“I must ask you to remember that you're doing it only because you have volunteered.”
“I'll be glad to have you tell the directors that I volunteered and insisted.”
“Very well! We'll have the thing understood, Frank. I wouldn't want to have 'em think I was obliging you to do more than your work as cashier.”
Therefore, Vaniman had a cot brought down from Squire Hexter's house, and borrowed a double-barreled shotgun from the same source. He did not consider that his new duty entailed any hardship. He had his evenings for the pachisi games. Xoa insisted on making a visit to the bank and putting the back room in shape for the lodger. But she vowed that she was more than ever convinced that money was the root of all evil.
Frank's slumbers were undisturbed; he found the temporary arrangement rather convenient than otherwise. He kindled his furnace fire before going to the Squire's for breakfast and Britt Block was thoroughly warm when he returned.
There was only one break in this routine, one occasion for alarm, and the alarm was but temporary. Frank heard footsteps in the corridor one evening after he had come back to the bank from the Squire's house. Almost immediately Mr. Britt used his key and appeared to the young man. “I waited till I was sure you were here,” the president explained. “What Hexter doesn't know won't hurt him—and I thought I'd better not come to the house for you. I'm sorry it's so late.” Britt was anxiously apologetic.
“It isn't very late, sir.”
“But it's late, considering what's on my mind, Frank. And now that I'm here I hate to tell you what my errand is.” He fumbled in his pocket and brought out a letter, tapped it with his forefinger, and replaced it. “I got it in the mail after you had gone to supper.”
“If it's any matter where I can be of help, sir, you needn't be a bit afraid to speak out.”
“You can help, but—” After his hesitation Britt plunged on. “I wrote to that broker that I was feeling a little under the weather and was postponing my trip to the city, and now that fool of a Barnes writes back that he's starting right behind his letter to come up here to arrange about taking over the specie and closing the deal, because the market is just right to act. And the through train, the one he'll be sure to take, hits Levant about two o'clock to-morrow morning. He asks me to send somebody down to meet him. That's all one of those taxicab patronizers knows about traveling conditions in the country. Frank, unless you'll volunteer to go I'll have to go myself. I don't want that man talking all the way up here with old Files's gabby hostler, or with anybody else I send from the village.”
Vaniman, even though he tried to make Britt's reasons for the request seem convincing, could not help feeling that the financier's natural secretiveness in matters of personal business was stretched somewhat in this instance. But he gulped back any hesitation and offered to go on the errand.
“Frank, when I was having my run of foolishness I was sorry that you are young. Now I'm mighty glad of it,” declared Britt. “I can take your place in yonder on the cot for the night—and I'm going to do it. But I'll be frank enough to say that I'd rather you'd ride to Levant and back in a sleigh to-night than do it myself. Go rout up Files's hostler, borrow his fur coat, and bundle up warm. It's good slipping along the road, and the trip may have a little pep for you, after all.”
And, putting away his momentary doubts, Frank reflected on the matter and was honestly glad to vary the monotony of his close confinement to the bank.
So he went and roused Files's hostler, bundled himself in the coat and the sleigh robes, and made a really joyous experience out of the trip to Levant, under the stars and over the snow that was crisped by the night's chill.
He waited beside the station platform, standing up in the sleigh and peering eagerly after the train stopped. He called the name, “Mr. Barnes,” until the few sleepy, slouching, countrified passengers who alighted had passed on their way.
It was perfectly apparent that Broker Barnes was not present to answer roll call.
And after waiting, in whimsical delay, to make sure that Mr. Barnes had not come footing it behind the train, Frank whipped up and drove back to Egypt. He felt no pique; he had enjoyed the outing in the sparkling night.
In the gray dawn he again routed out Files's yawning hostler and turned the equipage over to him.
“Hope you found it a starry night for a ramble,” suggested the hostler, willing to be informed as to why a bank cashier had been gallivanting around over the country between days, turning in a sweating horse at break of dawn.
Vaniman allowed that it was a starry night, all right, and left the topic there, with a period set to it by the snap of his tone.
He went directly to the bank and admitted himself with his keys.
President Britt came from the back room, with yawns that matched those of the hostler.
“What time did Barnes say he'd be down here from the tavern in the morning?”
“Mr. Barnes did not come on that train, sir.”
“Well, I'll be—” rapped Britt, snapping shut his jaws.
“But I haven't minded the trip—I really enjoyed the ride,” insisted the messenger.
“Don't tell that to Barnes when he shows up to-night on Ike Jones's stage,” commanded Britt. “I propose to have a few words to say about what it means in the country when a city fathead changes his mind about the train he'll take.” He was looking past the cashier while he talked. He turned away and picked up his hat and coat from a chair. “I'll be going along to my house, I reckon. You'd better catch a cat-nap on the cot. I found it comfortable. I've slept every minute since you've been gone.”
Then Britt hurried out, locking the door behind him.
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