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.
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