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

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.


CHAPTER XVI
LOOKED AT SQUARELY
The bank examiner and the cashier were down early to breakfast.
Starr had slept well and was vigorously alert. Vaniman was haggard and visibly worried. Both of them were reticent.
Vaniman felt that he had nothing to say, as matters stood.
Starr was thinking, rather than talking. He snapped up Files when the landlord meekly inquired whether there were any clews. Files retreated in a panic.
"Vaniman," said the examiner, when they pulled on their coats under the alligator's gaping espionage, "this is going to be my busy day and I hope you feel like pitching into this thing with me, helping to your utmost."
"You can depend on me, Mr. Starr."
"I don't intend to bother you with any questions at present except to ask about the routine business of the bank. So you can have your mind free on that point."
They went to the bank and relieved Britt.
"Go get your breakfast and come back here as soon as you can," Starr commanded, plunging into matters with the air of the sole captain of the craft. "And call a meeting of the directors."
The examiner had brought a brief-case along with him from the tavern. He pulled out a card. Britt winced when he saw what was printed on the card.
THIS BANK CLOSED
pending examination of resources and liabilities and
auditing of accounts. Per order STATE BANK EXAMINERS.
Mr. Starr ordered Britt to tack that card on the outer door.
"Isn't there any other way but this?" asked the president.
"There's nothing else to be done--certainly not! I'm afraid the institution is in a bad way, Britt. You say you have been calling regular loans in order to build up a cash reserve--and your cash isn't in sight. I reckon it means that the stockholders will be assessed the full hundred per cent of liability."
He bolted the bank door behind the president.
"Now, Vaniman, did you find out anything sensible about those books, as far as you got last evening?"
"Only that the accounts seem to have been willfully tangled up."
"Then we'll let that part of the thing hang. Get out letters to depositors, calling in all pass books."
After Vaniman had set himself down to that task, Starr went about his business briskly. He prepared telegrams and sent his charioteer to put them on the wire at Levant. Those messages were intended to set in operation the state police, a firm of licensed auditors, the security company which had bonded the bank's officials, the insurance corporation which guaranteed the Egypt Trust Company against loss by burglars. Then Starr proceeded with the usual routine of examination as conducted when banks are going concerns.
For the next few days Egypt was on the map.
Ike Jones was obliged to put extra pungs on to his stage line for the accommodation of visitors who included accountants, newspaper reporters, insurance men, and security representatives.
Finally, so far as Starr's concern was involved, the affairs of the Egypt Trust Company were shaken down into something like coherence. The apparent errors in the books, when they had been checked by pass books and notes and securities, were resolved into a mere wanton effort to mix things up.
Mr. Starr took occasion to reassure Miss Harnden in regard to those books; during the investigation the girl had been working with Vaniman in the usual double-hitch arrangement which had prevailed before the day of the disaster. The two plodded steadily, faithfully, silently, under the orders of the examiner.
"Now that I've seen you at work, Miss Harnden, I eliminate carelessness and stupidity as the reasons for the books being as they are. That's the way I'm going at this thing--by the process of elimination. I'm going to say more! I'm eliminating you as being consciously responsible for any of the wrongdoing in this bank. That's about as far as I've got in the matter of elimination." He thumped his fist on a ledger. "It looks to me as if somebody had started to put something over by mixing these figures and had been tripped before finishing the job."
Then Mr. Starr, as if to show his appreciation of a worthy young woman whom he had treated in rather cavalier fashion at their first meeting, made her clerk to the receiver; the receiver was Almon Waite, an amiable old professor of mathematics, retired, who had come back to Egypt to pass his last days with his son. Examiner Starr, having taken it upon himself to put the Egypt Trust case through, had found in Professor Waite a handy sort of a soft rubber stamp.
Every afternoon, day by day, Starr had remarked casually to Vaniman, "Seeing that we have so many things to talk over, you'd better lodge with me at the hotel to-night!" And daily Vaniman agreed without a flicker of an eyelid. In view of the fact that both of them kept sedulously off the bank business after hours, there was a perfect understanding between the examiner and the cashier as to what this espionage meant. And Vaniman knew perfectly well just why a chap named Bixby was in town!
Having a pretty good knowledge of Starr's general opinions and prejudices, the cashier had squared himself to meet things as they came along. Once or twice Starr gave the young man an opportunity to come across with explanations or defense. Vaniman kept silent.
The cashier explained his sentiments to Vona. "It's mighty little ammunition I've got, dear! All I can do now is to keep it dry, and wait till I can see the whites of the enemy's eyes."
He refrained from any comment on the identity of the enemy. He did not need to name names to Vona. The attitude of Tasper Britt, who kept by himself in his own office; who offered not one word of suggestion or explanation or consolation; who surveyed Vaniman, when the two met at the tavern, with the reproachful stare of the benefactor who had been betrayed--Britt's attitude was sufficiently significant. Vaniman was waiting to see what Britt would do in the crisis that was approaching. "At any rate, I must keep silent until I'm directly accused, Vona. Starr is regularly talking with Britt. If I begin now to defend myself by telling about Britt's operations, I'll merely be handing weapons to the enemy. They can't surprise me by any charge they may bring! I have got myself stiffened up to that point. You must make up your mind that it's coming. Pile up courage beforehand!"
It was a valiant little speech. But he was obliged to strive heroically to make his countenance fit his words of courage. In facing the situation squarely he had been trying to make an estimate of the state of mind in Egypt. He bitterly decided that the folks were lining up against the outlander. As hateful as Britt had made himself, he was Egyptian, born and bred. Vaniman knew what the wreck of the little bank signified in that town, which was already staggering under its debt burden. How that bank had been wrecked was not clear to Vaniman, even when he gave the thing profound consideration. He did not dare to declare to himself all that he suspected of the president. Nor did he dare to believe that Britt would dump the whole burden on the cashier. However, if Britt undertook such a play of perfidy, the outlander knew that