The Circular Staircase, Mary Roberts Rinehart [classic novels for teens .txt] 📗

from your mother; it isn’t an Innes trait. Do you know that every dollar you have, both of you, is in that bank?”

Gertrude tried to speak, but Halsey stopped her.

“That isn’t all, Gertrude,” he said quietly; “Jack is—under arrest.”

“Under arrest!” Gertrude screamed, and tore the paper out of his hand. She glanced at the heading, then she crumpled the newspaper into a ball and flung it to the floor. While Halsey, looking stricken and white, was trying to smooth it out and read it, Gertrude had dropped her head on the table and was sobbing stormily.

I have the clipping somewhere, but just now I can remember only the essentials.

On the afternoon before, Monday, while the Traders’ Bank was in the rush of closing hour, between two and three, Mr. Jacob Trautman, President of the Pearl Brewing Company, came into the bank to lift a loan. As security for the loan he had deposited some three hundred International Steamship Company 5’s, in total value three hundred thousand dollars. Mr. Trautman went to the loan clerk and, after certain formalities had been gone through, the loan clerk went to the vault. Mr. Trautman, who was a large and genial German, waited for a time, whistling under his breath. The loan clerk did not come back. After an interval, Mr. Trautman saw the loan clerk emerge from the vault and go to the assistant cashier: the two went hurriedly to the vault. A lapse of another ten minutes, and the assistant cashier came out and approached Mr. Trautman. He was noticeably white and trembling. Mr. Trautman was told that through an oversight the bonds had been misplaced, and was asked to return the following morning, when everything would be made all right.

Mr. Trautman, however, was a shrewd business man, and he did not like the appearance of things. He left the bank apparently satisfied, and within thirty minutes he had called up three different members of the Traders’ Board of Directors. At three-thirty there was a hastily convened board meeting, with some stormy scenes, and late in the afternoon a national bank examiner was in possession of the books. The bank had not opened for business on Tuesday.

At twelve-thirty o’clock the Saturday before, as soon as the business of the day was closed, Mr. John Bailey, the cashier of the defunct bank, had taken his hat and departed. During the afternoon he had called up Mr. Aronson, a member of the board, and said he was ill, and might not be at the bank for a day or two. As Bailey was highly thought of, Mr. Aronson merely expressed a regret. From that time until Monday night, when Mr. Bailey had surrendered to the police, little was known of his movements. Some time after one on Saturday he had entered the Western Union office at Cherry and White Streets and had sent two telegrams. He was at the Greenwood Country Club on Saturday night, and appeared unlike himself. It was reported that he would be released under enormous bond, some time that day, Tuesday.

The article closed by saying that while the officers of the bank refused to talk until the examiner had finished his work, it was known that securities aggregating a million and a quarter were missing. Then there was a diatribe on the possibility of such an occurrence; on the folly of a one-man bank, and of a Board of Directors that met only to lunch together and to listen to a brief report from the cashier, and on the poor policy of a government that arranges a three or four-day examination twice a year. The mystery, it insinuated, had not been cleared by the arrest of the cashier. Before now minor officials had been used to cloak the misdeeds of men higher up. Inseparable as the words “speculation” and “peculation” have grown to be, John Bailey was not known to be in the stock market. His only words, after his surrender, had been “Send for Mr. Armstrong at once.” The telegraph message which had finally reached the President of the Traders’ Bank, in an interior town in California, had been responded to by a telegram from Doctor Walker, the young physician who was traveling with the Armstrong family, saying that Paul Armstrong was very ill and unable to travel.

That was how things stood that Tuesday evening. The Traders’ Bank had suspended payment, and John Bailey was under arrest, charged with wrecking it; Paul Armstrong lay very ill in California, and his only son had been murdered two days before. I sat dazed and bewildered. The children’s money was gone: that was bad enough, though I had plenty, if they would let me share. But Gertrude’s grief was beyond any power of mine to comfort; the man she had chosen stood accused of a colossal embezzlement—and even worse. For in the instant that I sat there I seemed to see the coils closing around John Bailey as the murderer of Arnold Armstrong.

Gertrude lifted her head at last and stared across the table at Halsey.

“Why did he do it?” she wailed. “Couldn’t you stop him, Halsey? It was suicidal to go back!”

Halsey was looking steadily through the windows of the breakfast-room, but it was evident he saw nothing.

“It was the only thing he could do, Trude,” he said at last. “Aunt Ray, when I found Jack at the Greenwood Club last Saturday night, he was frantic. I can not talk until Jack tells me I may, but—he is absolutely innocent of all this, believe me. I thought, Trude and I thought, we were helping him, but it was the wrong way. He came back. Isn’t that the act of an innocent man?”

“Then why did he leave at all?” I asked, unconvinced. “What innocent man would run away from here at three o’clock in the morning? Doesn’t it look rather as though he thought it impossible to escape?”

Gertrude rose angrily. “You are not even just!” she flamed. “You don’t know anything about it, and you condemn him!”

“I know that we have all lost a great deal of money,” I said. “I shall believe Mr. Bailey innocent the moment he is shown to be. You profess to know the truth, but you can not tell me! What am I to think?”

Halsey leaned over and patted my hand.

“You must take us on faith,” he said. “Jack Bailey hasn’t a penny that doesn’t belong to him; the guilty man will be known in a day or so.”

“I shall believe that when it is proved,” I said grimly. “In the meantime, I take no one on faith. The Inneses never do.”

Gertrude, who had been standing aloof at a window, turned suddenly. “But when the bonds are offered for sale, Halsey, won’t the thief be detected at once?”

Halsey turned with a superior smile.

“It wouldn’t be done that way,” he said. “They would be taken out of the vault by some one who had access to it, and used as collateral for a loan in another bank. It would be possible to realize eighty per cent. of their face value.”

“In cash?”

“In cash.”

“But the man who did it—he would be known?”

“Yes. I tell you both, as sure as I stand here, I believe that Paul Armstrong looted his own bank. I believe he has a million at least, as the result, and that he will never come back. I’m worse than a pauper now. I can’t ask Louise to share nothing a year with me and when I think of this disgrace for her, I’m crazy.”

The most ordinary events of life seemed pregnant with possibilities that day, and when Halsey was called to the telephone, I ceased all pretense at eating. When he came back from the telephone his face showed that something had occurred. He waited, however, until Thomas left the dining-room: then he told us.

“Paul Armstrong is dead,” he announced gravely. “He died this morning in California. Whatever he did, he is beyond the law now.”

Gertrude turned pale.

“And the only man who could have cleared Jack can never do it!” she said despairingly.

“Also,” I replied coldly, “Mr. Armstrong is for ever beyond the power of defending himself. When your Jack comes to me, with some two hundred thousand dollars in his hands, which is about what you have lost, I shall believe him innocent.”

Halsey threw his cigarette away and turned on me.

“There you go!” he exclaimed. “If he was the thief, he could return the money, of course. If he is innocent, he probably hasn’t a tenth of that amount in the world. In his hands! That’s like a woman.”

Gertrude, who had been pale and despairing during the early part of the conversation, had flushed an indignant red. She got up and drew herself to her slender height, looking down at me with the scorn of the young and positive.

“You are the only mother I ever had,” she said tensely. “I have given you all I would have given my mother, had she lived—my love, my trust. And now, when I need you most, you fail me. I tell you, John Bailey is a good man, an honest man. If you say he is not, you—you—”

“Gertrude,” Halsey broke in sharply. She dropped beside the table and, burying her face in her arms broke into a storm of tears.

“I love him—love him,” she sobbed, in a surrender that was totally unlike her. “Oh, I never thought it would be like this. I can’t bear it. I can’t.”

Halsey and I stood helpless before the storm. I would have tried to comfort her, but she had put me away, and there was something aloof in her grief, something new and strange. At last, when her sorrow had subsided to the dry shaking sobs of a tired child, without raising her head she put out one groping hand.

“Aunt Ray!” she whispered. In a moment I was on my knees beside her, her arm around my neck, her cheek against my hair.

“Where am I in this?” Halsey said suddenly and tried to put his arms around us both. It was a welcome distraction, and Gertrude was soon herself again. The little storm had cleared the air. Nevertheless, my opinion remained unchanged. There was much to be cleared up before I would consent to any renewal of my acquaintance with John Bailey. And Halsey and Gertrude knew it, knowing me.