_TROUBLE COMES._
By quarrelling with his wife and kicking the pups Penton managed to
entertain himself, apart from the keg, for over a month. Then he went
and did it again. He took some money to a place called Burnside to
cash cattle tickets for a drover who did business at the Banfield
branch. When he got back he was in a boisterous state of intoxication.
"Hello, old kid!" he said to Henty, whom he met at the door of the bank.
Henty backed up and went in the office again, to consult with the
teller.
"This is getting monotonous," said Nelson. "What would you do about
it, A. P.?"
"Report the son-of-a-gun," said Henty, florid of countenance.
"Sure," said Filter; "he'll be holding us up some of these days at the
point of a gun."
Evan thought over Filter's remark, for he had been tempted to entertain
similar notions himself. What might not happen if Penton got in a
drunken craze? The teller worried more and more as he speculated on
the possible outcome of events.
Mrs. Penton got the manager to bed and then came out to the office.
"Mr. Nelson," she whispered through the cage, "could I speak to you?"
Evan went into the manager's office with her.
"I know you are going to tell head office about it this time," she
said, despairingly. "It isn't right for me to ask any further
consideration from you. The business here will be ruined."
"I won't say anything," replied Nelson, "until some of the customers
begin to kick. I have an idea they will not do any reporting without
warning us, though."
The manager's wife sighed.
"It would be a relief, I sometimes think," she said, "to get back to
the city. Pen was busy there and it kept, his mind occupied. I see
there is no hope for him here. The trouble is head office might drop
him from the service altogether. Of course, his relatives in Berlin
are big depositors--"
"That might help some," said Evan, treasonably. Then, "Don't give up,
Mrs. Penton. We may be able to scare him good for another month or so."
She made an effort to smile, but it was a tired one.
"You are my only hope, Mr. Nelson," she said, forcing back her tears.
"I'm going to tell you something more."
He wondered what was coming next.
"Pen," she continued, "is in debt, I'm afraid. How could he help it
when he spends so much on liquor? His salary here is only nine hundred
dollars and rent, you know."
That seemed a great deal to Evan, who got board for $3.25 per week.
"Do you mean he owes money in town?"
"Yes."
The teller recalled what Filter had said Jack Hunter told him. If the
manager owed Hunter money, he probably was in debt elsewhere, too.
"Well, Mrs. Penton," answered Evan, "I don't know what to say. I wish
I had the money myself to lend. Do you know what I get?"
She blushed.
"It is only your advice I ask, Mr. Nelson," she replied, sadly. "As to
your salary, I think they ought to pay you more than Pen."
Evan's chest went out an inch or two, but he found himself still
unequal to the task of advising her. Things would have to take their
course, as they always do.
Now, in the course of things, there came a very busy day. The manager
had been sober for a fortnight; he sat in his office pulling at that
long upper lip of his, and consuming inwardly with the fierce desire
that drunkards know. Perhaps no one sympathized with him sufficiently.
Who, after all, knows anything about hell but those who have been there?
Before the teller's box thronged women and men from all the country
roundabout, smelling strongly of poultry. It was such a cold day that
the bank was chilly and windows could not be raised. The aroma that
arose before the wickets was indescribably potent. Evan felt his head
swim and his stomach sicken. But work was behind him, pushing him
along; he knew he must get through somehow. Filter was not able to
handle the cash, especially on a market-day, and Evan would not have
trusted Penton in the cage, under the circumstances. If anything
happened the teller was responsible for the cash: he would be taking a
chance on Penton--and a fellow can't afford to be a sport on seven
dollars a week.
When a man fills a position where he is practically indispensable, so
far as the work, not the position, is concerned, his job is his master.
Many a bankboy, on the verge of collapse, is unable to leave for a
single day his unhealthy environment. Some, like Evan, are tied down
by circumstances; the majority of them are bound by their own foolish
tenacity. All of them realize, sooner or later, that their labor was
in vain. When their health is gone, like Jones', and their efforts
stored up in bank buildings, those modern Egyptian obelisks, who knows
or rewards them? If they find themselves, after years of service,
unfitted both mentally and physically for anything but clerical work,
and yet unable to longer endure the strain of it, what are they going
to do? The man who sells his vitality is a fool, but he who gives it
away is worse than a fool. The trouble with us fools is that we don't
believe it about ourselves. Evan was sceptical of the harm bank toil
was working upon his constitution. He would not allow himself to think
his health was failing rapidly--or even slowly.
Silver was always in great demand on market days. In the midst of his
rush, this very busy day, Evan discovered that he had not brought from
the safe enough quarters to carry him through. A murmur arose from the
stampeders when he left his box and walked to the vault. The murmur
became a grumble when he fumbled the vault combination without opening
the door.
"Filter," he called, impatiently, "open this hanged vault, will you? I
can hardly see the numbers."
Calmly the ledger-keeper turned the combination, clicking it open
unhesitatingly. He turned and winked at Henty.
Evan brought out a bag and deposited it on a small table in the cage,
there for the accommodation of odorous money parcels and noon lunches.
On opening the silver he found there were five packages of quarters,
one hundred dollars each. He took one package out, tied up the bag,
and set it under the table out of the way.
His cash was two dollars short that day. Too weary to look for his
"difference" in the mess of work he had gone through, he put it up.
But it worried him. He could not afford even so small a loss, for he
was in debt as it was. His father had sent him a remittance, but he
had sent it back, saying: "If I can't keep myself by this time, I'd
better give it up as a bad job." He was too game, when writing home,
to put blame for failure on the bank, so he took it himself. But he
would not take money.
Locking-up time came late that market day, for the hucksters' list was
enormous. The teller had paid out five hundred dollars in small bills
and silver. He yawned as he packed away the filthy money in his tin
box, and yawned as he carried it into the vault.
Henty and Filter were preparing to go up to supper.
"Wait, fellows," said Evan, "I'll go with you."
Penton sat in his office as the boys passed out. He had not initialed
the teller's book, but had watched him lock the cash in the safe.
"I suppose you'll be back to-night," said the manager, not looking at
any of the boys in particular.
"No," said Evan, "I won't. My head aches already."
But he did come back an hour later, and his head ached worse than ever,
for he was worrying about the bag of silver he had forgotten to take
from under the cage-table and lock up in the safe.
There it was, tied up, and how and where he had left it. With a sigh
of relief he picked it up and locked it in the vault. Only Evan and
Filter had the vault combination. Penton said he preferred not to have
it, as he did not want to accommodate farmers after hours; it had never
been done in the M---- Bank, where he had received his training.
It is customary for a manager to check the teller's cash once in a
while. He is supposed to do it irregularly so as to keep the teller in
constant suspense. Market day at Banfield was Tuesday. Wednesday
afternoon Penton came round to count Nelson's cash. In the morning,
first thing, the bag of silver had been locked in the safe, inside the
vault.
There were two compartments in the safe; in one of them the "treasury"
(a sort of local rest fund) and certain documents were kept; in the
other, the cash box and bags of specie.
Penton first checked the bills and silver in the teller's drawer and
tin box, then got the treasury notes and found them right.
"How much gold have you on hand?" he asked the teller.
Evan told him.
"I guess it's all right, but I'll count it, anyway."
He did, and found it correct.
"Bring me the silver, will you?" he said; "I might as well check
everything while I am at it."
Evan brought several bags from the safe, and stood by while Penton
opened them. When they came to the bag of quarters that had been left
under the table for an hour the previous day, they made a discovery.
At least Evan did. He found a package of one hundred dollars missing.
"What!" exclaimed Penton.
"Yes, there were five yesterday when I opened the bag, and I just took
one out. There are only three here now."
The teller felt his head throb. Penton grinned sceptically.
"My dear man," he said, "you're mixed. The money was only left out for
an hour, you say. No one was in here but myself."
Evan felt a chill. He was just as sure Penton had stolen one of those
hundred dollar packages as he was that one had been stolen.
"Check your blotter," went on the manager, with a strange accent and a
fearful glow in his colorless eye; "you couldn't possibly have paid out
an extra hundred in silver. Good G----! man, you're crazy."
Mechanically the teller went over the additions in his blotter. That
was always the first thing to do in a cash difference that looked like
a mistake in addition. The blotter was found correct. Next came the
vouchers. Penton worked assiduously on them with the teller. His mind
somewhat clarified by checking, Evan began to think. Penton had said
it was impossible to pay out one hundred dollars too much over the
counter in silver--as it was. If he could trace the silver back to
when the cash had been checked before, the difference could easily be
located in the silver. He offered the suggestion. The manager made a
gesture of impatience.
"I tell you," he said, "there must be a mistake somewhere; either in
your work, or else you paid out one hundred dollars too much in bills
and--you've been counting the silver wrong for days or weeks, that's
it!"
Nelson knew he had not. Fortunately for him the manager had checked
the cash a week before, and initialed it as correct. While Penton
followed with his eyes, Evan ran over his cash-statement book, showing
the decrease in silver each day to be about twenty-five dollars.
Market days always took about one hundred and twenty-five dollars. But
there was a falling off between Monday and Tuesday this week of two
hundred and twenty-eight dollars.
Penton stared glassily a moment, as the boys had often seen him do.
Then his cunning came to the rescue, as it always did.
"That bag you have been counting as five hundred dollars has only
contained four packages. The loss is away back somewhere, and this is
a coincidence. There has been a double error."
Evan knew differently, but felt that he could not say anything
plausible. He was silent. Penton waited a moment before remarking:
"It'll come pretty hard on you, old man, with your salary."
So diabolically triumphant was Penton's tone that it filled Nelson with
a horror.
"I'll quit the bank before I'll put it up," he said, gutturally.
"That would make things look suspicious," replied Penton.
So it would! Evan had not thought of that. Penton seemed to have
figured the situation out fully; directly he said:
"Well, let's sit down and write head office the particulars. They may
let you off, seeing you are getting only three hundred and fifty
dollars."
Realizing his powerlessness, Evan obeyed. For the first time in his
Banfield management Penton took command. He was self-possessed; acted
like one who was right at home. Probably he was, in that kind of a
game.
Nelson wrote unsteadily in longhand to his manager's dictation, and was
strengthened in the conviction that Penton had stolen that parcel of
silver. Usually the manager composed hesitatingly, especially when
addressing head office, but now he was glib, and seemed familiar with
his subject. He even appeared to be in suppressed good humor over the
matter.
"Don't look so grim, old man," he said, oilily, "they'll not make you
put it up. Why, that would be absurd, on your allowance."
An idea struck Evan. Penton, if he had taken the money, probably hoped
his teller's low salary would influence head office toward leniency.
The amount was not so very large; it was, indeed, just about the proper
amount to take. One hundred dollars was such a common loss in banking,
it would not look suspicious. Anything more would have aroused
inquiry, while anything less would scarcely have been worth stealing.
The thing had been well executed; taking one package from the bag and
tying it up again, then innocently desiring to check the cash next day,
all showed thought; and it occurred to Nelson that Penton's head was
just the shape for such thought. He had not been dragging at his upper
lip in vain: he had extracted a piece of strategy, which had originated
in the cerebrum. There was a peculiar sympathy between Penton's lips
and his brain, anyway: what the former craved satisfied the latter.
Women are accused of having a monopoly on intuition, but men have a
corner on "hunches." From the moment his eyes rested on three parcels
of silver where there had been four, Evan had a hunch that Penton was
the thief. The trickery of it was so in accord with the expression of
Penton's eye!
"But who has taken it?" said the manager, when the head office letter
was finished.
"Either you or I," said Evan; "no one else has been here."
Penton grinned. It mattered not what he did, appearances would remain
as they were--and that was not against the manager any more than
against the teller.
"Go home and get a sleep, old man," said Penton; "we may be able to
think the thing out to-morrow."
The tone of the manager's "old man" rang in Nelson's ears all evening.
He rebelled against Penton's insinuating manner; like the touch of his
hand it was coldly, clammily smooth.
In his room the teller sat worrying. Mrs. Terry called up to him that
he had a visitor. Evan asked her to send him up. It was Henty.
"Here's a letter for you," said the junior; "I didn't see you at the
post office and thought you would be glad to get this. The mail was
just closing when I left."
"Thanks," said Evan. "Wait till I read it; I want to tell you
something."
Henty chewed the end of a fat five-cent cigar while Evan read the
letter, which was from his mother. It read:
"Dear Evan,--We always enjoy getting your letters. They don't tell us
much about yourself, to be sure, except that you are well. That is the
main thing. Be sure and keep on your heavy underwear until the end of
April, and don't wash your hair too often. I do hope that
boarding-house of yours is good to you. I'm making a fruit cake which
we will express to you in a day or two. If you could take care of a
barrel of apples we'd be glad to send one.
"Just think, you have been away from home over two years now. Dear me,
it seems like ten. Lou is still the tantalizer she always was. Father
keeps busy and well as usual. We all look forward to having you back
at summer holidays. When do you expect to arrive? Be sure and let us
know ahead. Frankie Arling was in the other day, and asked about you.
Hoping to hear from you soon.
"MOTHER."
Nelson sighed and handed the letter over to Henty. A. P. blushed as he
read it. His red corpuscles had a habit of rushing to the surface,
like a shoal of small sea-fish, at the slightest disturbance of their
element.
"I guess a fellow never forgets home," he said, thoughtfully.
"No, I guess not," replied Evan. "Every morning when I wake I feel as
if I am somewhere on a visit."
"By gosh," said Henty, "so do I--except that Mrs. Wilson doesn't use me
much like a welcome visitor. I always have to break the ice to get
into my water pitcher."
Nelson did not smile. In fact, he had not heard: he was thinking of
the disappointment coming to his mother if he should have to make good
the one hundred dollars loss and miss his holidays.
"There's trouble down at the office, Henty," he said, slowly.
The genial junior raised his eyes in wonder.
"Drunk again?"
"No," said Evan, "worse than that. Someone has stolen a hundred
dollars."
"The dickens!"
Nelson related him the story. A. P. drank it in with the expression of
a child listening to Andersen's fairy tales. And he asked just as
practical questions as a child asks.
"Do you suspect anybody?"
Evan smiled: he was growing tired of tragedy.
"I sort of suspect Filter," he answered.
Henty was serious.
"You don't like to say, do you?"
"No," said Evan.
The junior was silent a moment, after which he observed, bashfully:
"A certain party certainly needs the coin."
Evan sighed, and Henty looked at him quickly.
"You're lucky it wasn't a thousand, don't you think so?"
The teller had not thought of that. He was surprised both at the idea
and the junior.
"You're right, Henty," he said, with interest, "I'm taking an awful
chance. I believe in my heart Penton is a crook."
"Surest thing in the world!"
Evan thought a while.
"I'm going to write head office," he said finally, "and ask them for a
move--but I can't peach on Penton's doings."
An answer to the manager's letter came from head office, but the teller
did not receive a reply to his own. The one addressed to Penton said
that manager and teller would have to put up $50 each, on account of
the loss, to be paid in monthly instalments. It was a shrewd
compromise, and characteristic of head office.
Penton swore volubly and pretended to be sorely aggravated.
"Well," he said, "_you_ got off easy, anyway."
Filter was professionally indignant when he heard of the affair, but a
man came in who couldn't write his name, and asked to open a savings
account. He so interested Gordon that Gordon forgot all else and
settled in between the covers of his ledger like a pressed moth. He
came out of his shell (to change the simile) toward the close of the
day's work and went into a minute examination of certain deposit slips
that had gone through the day of the shortage, but his interest was
purely clerical, and his sympathy amounted to: "Did you ever see such
rotten writers as these Banfield storekeepers?"
Henty looked up from a sponge, which, he said, he was training to lick
stamps and envelopes, but did not speak. Words would have added
nothing to the humor of his expression.
For two weeks after the affair of the silver, Penton surpassed himself
in signing his name. Also he took a social turn, and began once more
to hypnotize the good people of Banfield. He had a faculty for
ingratiating himself with people who were not great students of human
nature. The town mayor was a particularly easy victim of his.
"Hello, Mr. Muir," Penton would say as the mayor entered the office,
"I'm glad to see you looking so well. How's Mrs. Muir? I understand
you are doing big things on the dam." (Here Henty would emphatically
repeat the word from his desk in the rear of the office.) The mayor
would grin and begin divulging municipal secrets. Penton always made a
point of talking loudly with Muir and laughing yet more vociferously at
his jokes.
There were women in Banfield, too, who were not impervious to Penton's
flattery. He had a way of looking into their eyes and speaking softly
that charmed them.
Nelson knew that Penton could have managed the branch well if he had
gone to work; Penton was, evidently, familiar with the great circus
man's aphorism about humbugging people, and could have given them all
they wanted of it--to the bank's profit. It was, no doubt, owing to
this hypocritical asset and the appreciation of it by head office
officials, that Penton was managing a branch.
There is a certain stock-company actor in the States who periodically
goes on a spree, comes back and weeps to his audience, and is forgiven.
That is virtually what Penton was doing. He had hit upon the scheme as
by inspiration, and it worked well. He asked a young dentist and wife
down to his apartments behind the bank and feted them on the best in
town. Above all, he flattered them, and he made Mrs. Penton help him
do it. She was, in fact, blind to the greater part of his badness, and
was so anxious to help him into the favor of Banfield's best customers
that she was willing to do a little wrong in his behalf. The surprise
he perpetrated on her and the town, his new policy of ingratiation,
gave her hope and made her rather proud of his versatility. She was
very agreeable indeed to the dentist and his wife.
In a little town like Banfield good tidings spread just as rapidly as
bad, among the better souls. News of the Pentons' hospitality and
geniality went abroad until many of the ladies of Banfield desired to
see more of Mrs. Penton, and, incidentally, her husband. Using the
dentist's wife as a medium, they secured introductions to Mrs. Penton.
Soon pink-teas began to be stylish.
It was about a fortnight after the affair of the silver. Mrs. Penton
was giving a euchre party (whist was unknown in Banfield, and bridge
was considered a sin) for the big dogs and ladies of Banfield. Her
husband was the biggest dog of the bunch; he had gone so far as to deck
himself in a dress-suit, and his stiff collar was almost the shape of a
cuff.
The staff, of course, was invited, and had to go. Evan would gladly
have stayed away, but he was afraid of hurting Mrs. Penton's feelings.
She gave him a special invitation. He loathed the thought of drinking
Penton's cocoa and eating his food. He well knew that the manager had
counted on getting business--and forgiveness--for every mouthful of his
miserable provender. Also, he was quite sure that the cocoa was either
unpaid for or had been bought out of a mysterious silver package.
The teller played cards, for a while, at the same table as Penton, and
saw him smirk down upon his guests as no one, surely, but W. W. Penton
ever smirked. Evan felt that he would suffocate unless he got away
from that table. He wished he could stand on a chair and reveal the
character of the manager as he knew it--but a smile from Mrs. Penton
reached him, and he filled with pity for her. He knew that a
revelation of Penton's real character would sound as strange to her as
to any person there. She knew her husband had "faults," but what does
that common word signify to a woman in love? The atmosphere became too
stifling for Evan. He felt his head throb and threaten to ache. He
excused himself, to take air.
He went out through the office and threw open the front door of the
bank. It was a clear April night; the air was cool and fresh.
There were only two living creatures visible on the front street. One
was a dog, the other a man carrying a small valise and wearing a
well-barbered beard. He was walking toward the bank.
The stranger ascended the steps where Evan stood and spoke in a tenor
voice:
"Are you Mr. Nelson?"
"Yes, sir."
"I'm Inspector Castle."