GERALD SUFFERS AN INDIGNITY.
There was a dead silence in that gloomy place for the space of a
full minute after John Hubbard’s terrible announcement.
“It cannot be possible!” Gerald finally gasped, as he staggered
back against the side of the vault, almost paralyzed from horror.
As he did so, the topmost box in his hands slipped from his grasp,
and fell with a crash to the floor.
The lock was either broken or forced from its socket by the
concussion, and the lid flew back, thus disclosing to the curious
eyes of John Hubbard various articles of valuable jewelry.
“Aha! diamonds! pearls! rubies and emeralds!” he exclaimed, as
he stooped to examine them more closely. “Truly, young man, you
were taking time by the forelock to feather your nest before an
inventory could be taken of your employer’s effects.”
“What do you mean, sir?” he exclaimed, starting forward, a
dangerous gleam in his eyes. “Do you dare assert that I knew that
Mr. Brewster was not living, and stole here to rob him?”
“I am forced to admit that it looks very much like it,” was the
deliberate and cruel response.
A terrible shock went quivering through Gerald at these words, for
he realized but too well that the man would do his utmost to injure
him by putting the worst possible construction upon the situation.
“You know better!” he cried, hot indignation and resentment flaming
up within him; “you know I would not touch a penny that did not
belong to me.”
“Ahem! that all sounds very well, my would-be paragon of honor,”
sneered the expert, “but you will have to prove it, you know.”
“Prove it! Why, of course, I can prove it,” replied Gerald, a
little smile of scorn for his recent fear curling his lips, and a
consciousness of rectitude and security supplanting it, “I have Mr.
Brewster’s note of yesterday, asking me to come to him, as he had a
special commission for me, and then the very fact of my having his
keys proves that I am here under orders,” and again he held them up
to his companion’s view.
“H’m! so he wrote you to come to him, did he?” queried John Hubbard
thoughtfully. “Where is the note? I should like to see it.”
Gerald put his hand into his coat-pocket; then suddenly remembered
that he had put on his best suit that morning.
“Ah!” he said, “it is in the pocket of my other coat.”
John Hubbard’s eyes gleamed with a cunning light at this
information.
“Well, you will doubtless need all the proof you can bring to
get you out of this scrape,” he gruffly observed. “Maybe you can
produce such a note, but I doubt it. Did any one see Mr. Brewster
give you those keys?”
Gerald’s heart sank at the question, as he remembered that he and
his employer had been utterly alone throughout their interview,
except for the few minutes that Allison was in the room, and he was
sure she had heard nothing that would prove the truth of what he
had asserted. At least he knew she was not there when the keys were
given to him.
“You have no right to question me like this, or to doubt my word,
and I will have no further conversation with you about the matter,”
he responded, after a moment of thought.
But he was deathly pale as he stooped to recover the box that had
fallen. He found that it was not broken; the lock had only been
forced by the fall. He carefully arranged the jewels which had been
somewhat displaced, although, fortunately, none had been spilled;
then, shutting the box, he relocked it with the key which he took
from his vest-pocket.
John Hubbard watched him warily while he was thus engaged. “I will
take charge of those things,” he sternly observed, as Gerald was
about to replace the key in his pocket.
“Excuse me; but I do not think you will,” the young man coldly
returned.
“I am Mr. Brewster’s attorney, and it will be my duty to settle his
estate; consequently all his property will pass through my hands.
Give me those boxes!” the man concluded authoritatively.
“No, sir. Mr. Brewster authorized me to take them to his house; I
shall do as he ordered, and since you say he is no longer living,
give them to Miss Brewster; he stated that he wanted the jewels for
her.”
And he started to leave the vault as he concluded.
“You will do no such thing, you young upstart!” snarled John
Hubbard, at the same time making an agile spring backward out of
the vault, when he swung to the ponderous door almost before Gerald
comprehended his intention.
“Now, you beggarly upstart, I have you just where I want you,”
he cried, in a cruel, exultant tone, and putting his lips to the
keyhole, “I once gave you an object-lesson regarding your fate if
you continued to stand in my way.”
Gerald did not deign to reply to these taunts and presently he
knew, by the closing of the outer door of the bank, that he was
alone.
His heart was very heavy, for he began to realize that his case was
desperate. Fate and his evil-minded foe had conspired to so involve
him in a network of compromising circumstances, it seemed likely
that he was destined to be proved a graceless scamp and a daring
robber.
His employer, the only one who had it in his power to exonerate him
from blame and prove his innocence, was dead.
He felt almost sure that John Hubbard intended to bring an officer
there to arrest him, with the evidences of his guilt around him.
With this thought there came the temptation to restore those boxes
to the secret vault from which he had taken them.
Mr. Brewster had said that no one, save himself and the man who
constructed it, knew of its existence. If he should conceal those
jewels and the other box, there would be no evidence, beyond John
Hubbard’s word, to prove that he had attempted to take them from
the bank. His word would be just as good as that of his enemy, upon
whom the burden of proving his own accusations would have to rest.
“But I should have to deny all knowledge of them. I should be
obliged to lie, and that I will not do, even to save my--myself
from prison,” he said to himself, with an air of proud resolution.
“No, I will tell the truth and take my chance; I have Mr.
Brewster’s note telling me to come to him; I have also his keys,
and the two taken together ought to be strong points in my defense.”
Nevertheless, these arguments were small consolation in view of his
unfortunate situation.
Then his thoughts reverted to Mr. Brewster, and hot tears rushed
into his eyes as he realized that the man was lying still in
death, and they would never meet in this life again. He was still
weak from the shock he had experienced upon learning the fact so
suddenly, and he wondered what could have caused the unlooked-for
attack.
He had appeared to be very comfortable, and hopeful of soon getting
out again, when he had seen him the previous day, and it seemed
awful to him that he should have been so ruthlessly cut down, just
in the prime of life, and in the height of prosperity.
He was wild with impatience to learn the particulars, and chafed
restively against his confinement in that tomb-like place.
“Poor Allison! It will be a terrible blow to her,” he mused; “she
will be all alone in the world now; but she is fortunate to be left
an heiress, and thus shielded from the hardships of life.”
Alas! he little thought that the fortune which would fall to the
girl was destined to bring upon her dangers and trials from which
he would have shrunk appalled could he have foreseen them.
He sprang to his feet and began to pace the vault restlessly,
for a feeling of faintness and sickness came over him; he also
experienced a difficulty in breathing, as the air in the place
began to be vitiated.
Suppose John Hubbard should not return in season to release him
before suffocation overtook him, he thought, a nervous chill
creeping over him; but he discarded it with a bitter smile.
He well knew that the man would not dare to let him die there--that
he was planning for him a worse fate than death, out of a cruel
spirit of revenge, because he had dared to love the girl whom he,
for some strange reason, coveted. He believed that he meant to so
crush and humiliate him that he would never want to seek Allison
Brewster again, or meet the gaze of her pure, clear eyes.
“He shall not do it! by Heaven! he shall not succeed in his
atrocious designs!” he cried out, in a sudden anguish, as those
torturing thoughts flitted through his brain. “I am an honest man,
and I swear I will yet prove it to the world, in spite of the worst
that he can do.”
A little later he heard the outer door of the bank open and close
again, then the sound of steps and voices drawing near him, until
presently, the bolt which fastened the door of the vault was shot
back, and the next moment John Hubbard, accompanied by a policeman,
stood in his presence.
“Here, Mr. Officer, is your prisoner, and that,” pointing to the
two boxes upon the floor, “is the booty with which he was about to
make off when I caught him,” the man explained, as he shot a look
of malignant triumph at his victim.
“Humph!” ejaculated the officer, as he darted a comprehensive
glance around the place, and at the same time taking the measure of
Gerald.
“It is very fortunate that I happen here just as I did,” Mr.
Hubbard went on. “I seldom come to the bank on Sunday, but there
were some papers here which I was obliged to have to-day, and thus
I came upon him in the midst of his depredations.”
“H’m! you look rather young and green to be a bank-robber,” the
policeman remarked, not unkindly, as he searched the pale, handsome
face of his prisoner; “you don’t seem like the sort, either, that
would be up to such business.”
“I am no bank-robber,” said Gerald, with quiet dignity, and meeting
the man’s searching look unflinchingly, “I am here under orders.”
“Whose orders?”
“My employer’s, Mr. Brewster’s,” and Gerald proceeded to give him
a brief account of the facts of the case, though he said nothing
about the secret vault.
“That sounds all straight and right,” said the policeman, as he
gravely turned to Mr. Hubbard.
“Yes; he tells a very plausible story,” was the sneering response,
“but it is perfectly absurd, when you come to think of it, that
Mr. Brewster should intrust such a commission to a mere boy, when
I have been his attorney, and have conducted his affairs for
years; and on Sunday, with so much secrecy, too! That was not Adam
Brewster’s way of doing business; it is far more likely that he
would have sent for what he wanted, openly and aboveboard, and on
some day during regular banking hours. No, sir; he can’t pull the
wool over my eyes; and as I feel bound to protect the interests of
my late client, I shall expect you to do your duty, and take the
fellow in charge,” he concluded authoritatively.
“Well, I suppose I must,” the man responded, with evident
reluctance, adding, as he drew from a capacious pocket a pair of
steel bracelets, “hold out your hands, my young man.”
Gerald shrank back a step.
“Oh! not that!” he said, with pale lips; “I beg you will not
handcuff me. I will go with you peaceably.”
“Well, maybe you would. I’m inclined to believe you; but it’s my
rule to make sure of my birds, and I don’t make any exceptions,”
said the man, as he dexterously slipped the shackles upon the
wrists of his prisoner; but with an air that betrayed he did not
very much relish the business in hand.
“The keys, Mr. Officer; I must have the keys,” John Hubbard
interposed, as they were about to leave the vault.
“Where are they, youngster?” demanded the man. “Hand them over.”
“They are in the left pocket of my coat,” said Gerald, with
difficulty repressing a groan over his ignominious and utter
failure to execute his employer’s commission.
He was impressed that the larger box contained some secret which
Mr. Brewster would not, on any account, have made known to the
world, and he could not bear the thought that John Hubbard would
now learn it, and perhaps put it to an ignoble use.
The expert plunged his hand into the pocket designated, and drew
forth the keys, after which he stooped to secure the boxes, and
left the vault, followed by the officer and his prisoner.
“Now you may go and cage your bird,” he remarked to the former. “I
will let you out of the bank, but I have some business here, and
shall remain a while longer.”
He unlocked the outer door, and the two men passed out into the
storm. John Hubbard stood looking after them for a few moments, a
fiendish expression on his thin face.
“Gad! what luck!” he muttered. “If ever I made a shrewd move, it
was in coming here this morning to get those papers.”
He returned to the vault, which he securely locked, also the gate
to the iron inclosure.
Then, taking the two boxes, he went inside the banker’s private
office, and deposited them upon the table there.
“Humph!” he observed, as he fastened a keen, curious glance upon
the larger, “there is no key to that, but I’m going to know what it
contains, all the same.”
Whereupon he sat down, drew it to him, and deliberately began to
pick the lock.