A BANK TURNED INSIDE OUT
When the skeow-wowed “brook” twisted the drama into an anticlimax of
comicality, the players who were on the stage escaped the deluge by
fleeing into the wings.
Vona had been waiting for her cue to join the hero and pledge their vows
beside the babbling stream. After one horrified gasp of amazement, she
led off the hilarity back-stage. Frank was in her mind at that moment,
as he had been all the evening; her zestful enjoyment of the affair was
heightened by the thought that she could help him forget his troubles
for a little while by the story she would carry to him. Then she and the
others in the group heard the piercing squeals of a man's voice.
“Somebody has got hystierucks out of it, and I don't blame him,” stated
the manager of the show. He grabbed the handle of the winch and began to
let down the curtain. “I reckon the only sensible thing to do is to let
Brook Number One and Brook Number Two take the curtain call.”
Then Dorsey's shrill insistence prevailed over the roars of laughter in
front; the young folks on the stage heard his bloodcurdling bulletin.
The manager let slip the whirling handle and the pole of the hurrying
curtain thumped the platform. Vona had leaped, risking her life, and was
able to dodge under the descending pole. For a moment, sick with horror
and unutterable woe, she stood there alone against the tawdry curtain,
as wide-eyed and white-faced as Tragedy's muse.
Men, women, and children, all the folks of Egypt, were struggling to
their feet; the sliding settees squawked and clattered.
She saw Tasper Britt, fighting a path for himself, Starr following.
Britt's face, above his blackened beard, was yellow-pale.
Panic was piling the people at the narrow rear doors; the weight of
those who were rushing forward wedged all the mass at the exits.
“Vona!” called the manager, pulling at the edge of the curtain to give
her passage. “This way! The side door.”
The summons helped to put away her faintness; her strength came back
to her. Her goal was the bank! In the frenzy of her solicitude for her
lover she took no thought of herself.
The others stopped to find their wraps. Vona ran down the street as she
was, bareheaded, the ribbons of her stage finery fluttering. She was
close behind the first arrivals at the open door of Britt Block. All the
other portals were wide open, bank door and grille door. But the door of
the vault was closed.
She thrust herself resolutely through the group of men and made a
frenzied survey of the bank's interior. Her single quest was for
Vaniman; he was nowhere in sight. The books of account were open on the
desk, mute evidence for her that he had been interrupted suddenly.
She voiced demands in shrill tones, but the men had no information for
her. She called his name wildly and there was no reply.
“I found the outside door open,” said Dorsey, raucously hoarse. “I came
in, and all was just as you see it.”
“But you said that he--that Frank--” Vona pressed her hands against her
throat; she could not voice the terrible announcement that Dorsey had
made.
“Well, if it ain't that, what else is it?” insisted the watchman.
Then Tasper Britt arrived in the room, followed by the bank examiner;
they entered, breathing heavily and running with the tread of
Percherons.
“If it ain't murder and robbery, what is it, Mr. Britt?” Dorsey bawled,
evidently feeling the authority was then on the scene and was demanding
report and action.
“I don't know--I don't know!” the president quavered, staggering to
the grille and clutching the wires with both hands in order to steady
himself. He was palpably, unmistakably stricken with a fear that was
overpowering him.
The outer office was filling; the corridor was being packed by the
arriving throngs.
Examiner Starr took command of the situation. He noted the nickel badge
on Dorsey's breast. “Officer, put every person except Mr. Britt out of
this building!”
But Watchman Dorsey, though he commanded and pushed, was not able to
make any impression.
“By my authority as bank examiner, I order this place cleared!” bellowed
Mr. Starr. The folks of Egypt showed that they were greatly interested
in the volume of voice possessed by “Foghorn Fremont,” but they did not
retreat. For that matter, the crowd in the room was thoroughly blocked
at the door by the press in the corridor.
Starr's attention was wholly taken up by one individual for the next few
minutes. Prophet Elias boldly advanced, after worming his way out of
the throng; he pushed the examiner aside from the door of the grille and
went into the inner inclosure. An intruder who was prosaically garbed
would not have prevailed as easily as this bizarre individual with the
deep-set eyes, assertive mien, and wearing a robe that put him out
of the ordinary run of humanity. But Mr. Starr got back his voice and
ordered the Prophet to walk out.
Elias turned slowly and faced Starr. The Prophet's feet were hidden by
the robe and he came around with the effect of a window dummy revolving
on a support. Starr bawled more furious demands.
But the Prophet did not lower his crest. “'Many bulls have compassed
me: strong bulls of Bashan have beset me round. They gaped upon me with
their mouths, as a ravening and a roaring lion.'”
Then the Prophet spatted his palm upon the legend on his breast and
clacked a disdainful digit off the pivot of his thumb. Tasper Britt,
even in his hottest ire, had been restrained in the past by some
influence from laying violent hands on this peculiar personage. It was
evident that Starr was controlled by a similar reluctance and that his
forbearance was puzzling him. When the Prophet got down on his knees,
Starr was silent; it looked as if this zealot intended to offer
prayer--and the bank examiner did not care to earn the reputation of
being a disturber of a religious gathering. But Elias doubled over and
began to crawl around the room on his hands and knees, peering
intently and cocking his ear and seeming to take much interest in his
undertaking.
Until then, in the rush of events, in the haste of gathering at the
scene of the tragedy, in the wild uncertainty as to what had happened,
nobody had taken the time to study the details of the conditions in the
bank inclosure.
Starr ordered Dorsey to stand in front of the grille door and keep out
all persons. The examiner was obliged to urge Britt to unclasp his hands
and follow him before the door was closed and locked against the crowd.
Vona had stumbled to a chair; she was staring about her, trying to
control her horror and steady her mind so that she might comprehend what
had happened. Under a stool she saw a crumpled coat; she leaped from her
chair, secured it, and sat down again. It was Frank's office coat; both
sleeves were ripped and the back breadths were torn. She held it forward
in her shaking hands for the inspection of the bank examiner. But Mr.
Starr was too intent on other matters to take heed of the pathetic proof
of violence. He was particularly concerned with what he had found in one
corner.
Literally, thousands of small metal disks were heaped and scattered
there. Some of the disks had rolled to all parts of the room. The
Prophet had been scraping up handfuls of them, inspecting them, and
throwing them toward the corner where the main mass lay.
Starr picked up some of them. They were iron; each disk was perforated.
There were many canvas sacks near the heap of disks; the sacks were
ripped and empty. Mr. Starr secured one of them. Its mouth was closed
with the seal with which specie sacks are usually secured.
But Mr. Starr saw something else in the corner, an object at which he
peered; the gloom made the results of his scrutiny uncertain. He
stooped and picked up that object, making it the third of the trinity
of exhibits. It was a large square of pasteboard, the backing of an
advertising calendar. Starr carried it to the lamp on the table. There
was writing on the placard. The characters were large and sprawling.
The bank examiner tapped his finger on the writing, calling for the
attention of the anguished president. The legend read:
This is a _hell_ of a bank!
“Britt, if this is a sample of your whole stock of specie,” Starr
rumbled, holding a disk between thumb and forefinger, “the profanity is
sort of excused by the emphasis needed. I really think I would have been
obliged to say the same, after counting up.”
“I can't understand it,” the president muttered.
“Did you suppose you carried actual coin in those bags?”
“Yes--gold and some silver.”
“Had you counted it?”
“I left the checking up to the cashier.”
“Where do you think your cashier is, right now?”
Britt flapped his hands, helplessly confessing that he did not know.
In all the room there was a profound hush. The crowd had been straining
aural nerves, trying to hear what was being said by the men in
authority.
Nobody had been paying any attention to Prophet Elias, who had been
crawling like a torpid caterpillar. For some moments he had been rigidly
motionless in one spot. He was leaning against the front of the vault,
his ear closely pressed to the crevice at the base of the door.
He straightened up on his knees and shouted in such stentorian tones
that all in the room jerked their muscles in sudden fright. “Swine!
Fools!”
They gaped at him.
“Whilst you're shouting amongst your trash a man is dying on the other
side of the door!”
Vona leaped from her chair. She shrieked. She ran to the door and beat
her fists against the steel, futilely and furiously.
“In there lies your money-changer, I tell you, Pharaoh, lord of Egypt,”
the Prophet shouted. “I hear his groans!”
Britt and Starr rushed to the vault and both of them strove clumsily and
ineffectually with the mechanism, giving up their attempts after a few
moments.
“It's no use!” Britt gulped. “The time lock must be on.”
“Oh, for the rod of Moses and the ancient faith that smote the rock in
twain!” pleaded the Prophet.
“We'd better use rendrock, seeing that we can't depend on a miracle,”
called a practical citizen from behind the grille.
“Get sledge hammers and chisels,” shouted somebody else, and there
followed a surging of the throng, indicating that concerted action was
following the suggestion.
The face of the president was twisted by grimaces which resembled
spasms. “Wait! Wait a moment! There may be a way!” he called, chokingly.
“Let me out through there!”
Then Vona gave over her insane efforts to pry open the vault door with
her finger nails. She ran out past Starr, who stopped to lock the grille
door. The examiner was too much taken up by other matters to bother with
the Prophet, who held to his place at the vault door and was intently
scrutinizing something which he found of interest.
Vona forced herself through the press, in company with Starr, and was at
Britt's elbow when he unlocked his office door. He tried to keep her out
and called to Dorsey. But she slipped past while the door was open to
admit Starr's bulky form. Inside, she turned on Britt, who was in the
doorway.
“You don't dare to keep me out, Mr. Britt!” She stamped her foot. Her
eyes blazed. “You don't dare!”
He blinked and entered and locked the door.