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!”
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