When Egypt Went Broke, Holman Day [free ereaders .txt] 📗

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