ON THE FACE OF IT
Squire Hexter arranged for Vaniman's bail, volunteering for that
service, frankly admitting that he “had seen it coming all along”! But
the Squire was not as ready to serve as Frank's counsel and withstood
that young man's urging for some time. The Squire's solicitude in behalf
of the accused was the reason for this reluctance. “You ought to have
the smartest city lawyer you can hire. I'm only an old country codger,
son!”
“Squire Hexter, I propose to let the other side have a monopoly of the
tricks. I'm depending on my innocence, and I want your honesty back of
it.”
In the hope that the folks of Egypt would recognize innocence when they
saw it, Vaniman daily walked the streets of the village. The pride
of innocence was soon wounded; he learned that his action in “showing
himself under the folks's noses” was considered as bravado. The light of
day showed him so many sour looks that he stayed in the house with Xoa
or in the Squire's office until night. Then he discovered that when he
walked abroad under cover of the darkness he was persistently trailed;
it was evident that the belief that he had hidden the coin of the Egypt
Trust Company was sticking firmly in the noodles of the public.
The bank, of course, was now forbidden ground for him. The affairs of
that unhappy institution were being wound up. Considering the fact that
the stockholders had been assessed dollar for dollar of their holdings,
and that, even with this assessment added to the assets, the depositors
would get back only a fraction of their money, Vaniman could scarcely
marvel at the hard looks and the muttered words he met up with on the
street.
Furthermore, the insurance company took the stand that the bank had
not been burglarized. On the other hand, the security company behind
Vaniman's bond refused to settle, claiming that some kind of a theft
had been committed by outsiders. Only after expensive litigation could
Receiver Waite hope to add insurance and bond money to the assets. The
prospects of getting anything were clouded by the revelations concerning
President Britt's private entrance to the bank vault. But Britt was not
accused of anything except of presuming on too many liberties in running
a one-man bank. Under some circumstances Britt would have been called
to an accounting, without question. But all the venom of suspicion was
wholly engaged with Frank Vaniman, the son of an embezzler.
Squire Hexter, armed with authority and information given him by the
young man, had repeatedly waited on Tasper Britt and had asked what
attitude the president proposed to take at the trial. Britt had said
that he should tell the truth, and that was all any witness could be
expected to do or to promise, furthermore, so he told the Squire, he had
been enjoined by his counsel to make no talk to anybody.
Vaniman was not sure of his self-restraint during that period of
waiting. There were days when he felt like slapping the faces that
glowered when he looked at them. He avoided any meeting with Britt. That
was easy, because Britt swung with pendulum regularity between house and
tavern, tavern and office.
There were days when Vaniman was so thoroughly disheartened that he
pleaded with Vona to make a show of breaking off their friendship. She
had insisted on displaying herself as his champion; obeying her, he
walked in her company to and from the bank with more or less regularity.
His spirit of chivalry made the snubs harder to endure when she was
obliged to share them in his company.
But Vona staunchly refused to be a party to such deception. She borrowed
some figures of speech suggested by the work she was doing in the bank
and declared that her loyalty was not insolvent and that she would not
make any composition with her conscience.
In her zeal to be of service, one day she even volunteered to interview
Tasper Britt on the subject of what had happened to the Egypt Trust
Company. On that fresh April morning they had walked up the slope of
Burkett Hill, where the sward was showing its first green. He had come
to her house earlier than usual so that she might have time for the
little excursion. They hunted for mayflowers and found enough to make a
bit of a bouquet for her desk in the office.
“One just has to feel hopeful in the spring, Frank,” she insisted,
brushing the blossoms gently against his cheek. From the slope they
could look down into the length of Egypt's main street. “Why, there
goes Tasper Britt toward his office and he actually waved his hand to
a man--honest! The spring does soften folks. If he does know something
about the inside of the dreadful puzzle, as you and I have talked so
many times, I do believe I can coax him to tell me.”
“I don't want you to coax him, dear. Squire Hexter has put the thing up
to Britt, man to man, and I think it better to let it stand that way.”
“But if we could get only a little hint to work from!”
“I'm afraid you'll find him as stingy with hints as he is with
everything else. He does know--something! I would not put him above
arranging that frame-up that put me where I was found that night,” he
declared, with bitterness.
“No, Frank, I tell you again that I don't believe he knew it was going
to happen. When I stood there outside the curtain that night I was
looking straight at him, and at nobody else. I don't remember another
face. Tasper Britt is not actor enough to make up the expression that I
saw. It was simple, absolute, flabbergasted fright!”
They started down the slope and walked in silence.
“He's considerable of a coward,” Vaniman admitted, after his pondering.
“I'm depending on that fact, more or less. I don't believe he'll dare to
stand up as a witness in court and perjure himself. Squire Hexter has a
line of questions that he and I have prepared very carefully. Britt will
have to testify that I did not have sole opportunity. In considering
crimes, it's proving sole opportunity that sends folks to prison!”
She turned away her face and set her teeth upon her lower lip,
controlling her agitation.
“I'm trying to face the thing just as bravely as I can, Vona. On the
face of it I'm in bad! When I remember how Britt maneuvered with me, I
feel like running to him and twisting his head off his neck.”
When they arrived in front of Britt Block, Vaniman scowled at the stone
effigy in its niche. Then, when his eyes came down from that complacent
countenance, they beheld the face of Tasper Britt framed in his office
window. The Britt in the bank was distinctly in an ugly mood. And there
was a challenge in his demeanor, a sneer in the twist of his features.
“Vona, I'm going in there,” Vaniman declared. “There's got to be a
showdown, but it's no job for you!”
She offered neither protest nor advice. At that moment the young man was
manifestly in a state of mind which sudden resolution had inflamed with
something like desperation. When he strode in through the front door
Britt disappeared from the window.
Vona, following her lover, put her hand on his arm when he arrived in
front of the office door. “Don't you need me with you in there?” She
could not hide her apprehensiveness.
“I'm going to hold myself in, dear! Don't be worried. But it's best for
me to see him alone.”
He waited until she had gone into the bank office.
He did not bother to knock on Britt's door. When he twisted the handle
he found that the door was locked. He called, but Britt did not reply.
He put his mouth close to the door. “Mr. Britt, I have some business to
talk over with you. Please let me in!”
He waited. The man inside did not move or speak. “I'm coming in there,
Britt, even if I have to kick this door down.”
But the threat did not produce any results. Vaniman stepped back and
drove his foot against the panel, but not with enough force to break the
lock. His kick was in the way of admonition. After a few moments Britt
opened the door; he had an iron poker in his hand. Vaniman marched in.
“You don't need any weapon, sir.”
“I think I do, judging from the way you came rushing into this building.
Vaniman, I protest. I have said my say to your attorney. I have nothing
more to add.”
“I'm not here to try the case, Mr. Britt. I'll confess that I did not
intend to waste my breath in talking with you. But I could not resist
the feeling that came over me a few moments ago.” He was standing just
inside the door. He closed it. “You informed Squire Hexter that you
intend to tell the truth at the trial. That's all right! I hope so. I
have no criticism to offer on that point. But there's a matter of man's
business between us two, and it belongs here rather than in a courtroom.
Do you intend to tell the truth about how you framed me?”
“I don't understand what you mean,” returned Britt, stiffly.
“I'll put it so that you can't help understanding, sir. You rigged a
plan to have me sleep in the bank nights.”
“That was your own suggestion. You asked to be allowed to sleep here.”
“You intend to say that in your testimony, do you?”
Britt took a firm hold on the poker. “I most certainly do.”
“You cooked up an excuse to send me off on a wild-goose chase in the
night.”
“I know nothing about your going anywhere in the night--except that
Files's hostler is saying that you hired a hitch for some purpose.”
Vaniman knew that appeal and protest would be futile--realizing the full
extent of Britt's effrontery. However, in his amazement he began to rail
at the president.
Britt broke in on the anathema. “I was not nigh the bank that night.
I was asleep in my own house. You'd better not try any such ridiculous
story in court--it will spoil any defense Hexter may manage to put up
for you. Vaniman, it's plain enough why you hired that hitch! Why don't
you tell where you hauled that money?”
“I'm not going to do to you what I ought to do, Britt. I'm into the hole
deep enough as it is! But let me ask you if any jury is going to believe
that I was lunatic enough to hire a livery hitch, if I was hauling away
loot?”
“It's my idea, Vaniman, that you were trying to work a hold-up game on
the bank, knowing that you were done here,” stated Britt, coolly. “But
something went wrong before you had a chance to offer a compromise.
Naturally, you thought we'd do 'most anything to keep our little bank
from failing.”
The young man beat his fist upon his breast. “Have you the damnation
cheek, Britt, to use me, the victim, to rehearse your lies on?”
“I'm giving you a little glimpse of the evidence. If the hint is of any
use to you, you're welcome.”
“Britt, have you turned into a demon?” Vaniman demanded. He stared at
the usurer with honest incredulity.
“I've had enough setbacks, in recent days, to craze 'most any man, I'll
admit. But I'm keeping along in my usual course, doing the right thing
as I see it.”
“Britt, I have never done you an injury. Are you going to ruin me
because a good girl loves me?”
“I have too much respect for that young lady to allow her name to be
dragged into a mess of this sort,” stated the amazing Britt. “And I
think that she'll wake up after she has come to a realizing sense of
what a narrow escape she has had.”
Vaniman stood there, his hands closing and unclosing, his palms itching
to feel the contact of Britt's cheeks. There was venom in Britt's eyes.
This outrageous baiting was satisfying the older man's rancor--the ugly
grudge that clawed and tore his soul when he sat alone in his chamber
and gazed on the girl's pictured beauty. Every night, after he puffed
out his light, he muttered the same speech--it had become the talisman
of his ponderings. “Whilst I'm staying alone here he'll be alone in a
cell in state prison.”
Vaniman understood.
He turned on his heel and walked out of Britt's office.
In the street the young man met Prophet Elias, who was adventuring
abroad under his big umbrella. Vaniman was in a mood to poke ruthless
facts against his aches. “Prophet, you ought to know whether any of the
folks in this town believe that I'm innocent. Are there any?”
Elias, ever since he had flung to the cashier the sage advice about
keeping his eye peeled, had used texts rarely in his infrequent talks
with Vaniman.
“Oh yes, there are a few,” he said, with matter-of-fact indifference.
“But they didn't lose money by the bank failure.”
“What do you think about me?”
The Prophet cocked his eyebrow. “'Can a man take fire into his bosom,
and his clothing not be burned?' Britt, the bank, the girl! Three hot
torches, young sir! Very hot torches!” He walked on. Then he turned and
came back and patted Vaniman's arm. “You didn't keep your eye peeled!
The young are thoughtless. But four good old eyes will be serving you
while you're--_away_! Mine and Brother Usial's.”
“Thank you!” said the young man, and he went on his way. He was
reflecting on that text the Prophet had enunciated.
Might it not apply as well to Tasper Britt?