LARRY GOES WALKING
The brick story made good reading, even if it was but a record of
failure, and, for that matter, almost anything that was printed about
the great bank mystery was eagerly pored over by the general public.
Larry’s account of how he sought to establish a clew by the bricks was
another “beat,” and many city editors of other papers administered
severe rebukes to their reporters, who were covering the bank story,
because they had not thought to try that means of solving the mystery.
“How did you do it, Larry?” asked Peter Manton, with a rueful
countenance, for Peter was one of those who had been “called down” for
failing to get a good story of the developments of the robbery.
“Oh, just by thinking,” answered Larry, with a laugh.
“What are you going to do next?” Peter wanted to know. “Though of
course I don’t expect you to tell me,” he added, with a sigh at his
failure.
“Well, to tell you the truth, I don’t know what I _am_ going to do
next,” replied Larry. “I don’t know what there is to do. I’m at the end
of my rope again. The brick clew failed, just as the others did. But
I’m not going to give up.”
Indeed, it was hard to know what next step to take. Larry had several
talks with his city editor, who suggested some new ideas. President
Bentfield, likewise, was appealed to, but he could offer nothing new.
“All we want, Larry, is to get the thief,” he said. “And the money,
too, if you can, for though the directors have made good the loss, it
was a heavy blow to them.”
“Are the police and private detectives still seeking clews, and
investigating the records of the different clerks and employees?” asked
Larry.
“Yes, and I might say that the police are rather put out at me for
allowing you to work on the case. I fancy, though, that they are
nettled because they did not think to try the valise and brick clews,
and you got all the credit for that I’m not going to take you off the
case, though, Larry, so don’t worry.”
“Well, the valise clew didn’t amount to any more than the brick one
did,” said the reporter ruefully, “though it did bring out the fact
that a man with a black beard bought the satchel. And you have no
bearded employees in the bank.”
“Only myself,” admitted the president, with a smile, “and my beard is
white. I didn’t dye it in order to purchase the valise, either,” he
added laughing.
“Of course the real thief might have had a confederate purchase the
valise for him,” suggested Larry. “And that makes it all the harder.
Miss Mason gave me all the help she could, but she did not take much
notice of the man, except that he looked like Harrison Witherby from
the back.”
“Not a very safe clew to go on,” commented the bank president.
“Besides, Mr. Witherby is one of our most trusted employees, and has
been with us for years. I would as soon think of suspecting myself as
him.”
Larry did not impose such unbounded confidence in the clerk who had
proved himself such a bully, but he did not care to tell Mr. Bentfield
this. Nor, in fact, had the young reporter come to the point of
seriously suspecting Witherby. Larry was only “keeping his eyes open.”
Several days passed, the detectives meanwhile using all their skill to
unearth the thief, or discover the hiding-place of the million dollars.
Naturally, to be under observation, as the bank employees were all
the while, made them feel unpleasant, but there was no help for it,
and they accepted it with the best grace possible. There was a mutual
feeling of distrust and annoyance, for it had now come to be accepted
as a fact that if some one actually employed in the bank had not taken
the money, at least they had aided in its disappearance. Still, there
was no change in the situation, and every clerk, teller and cashier
stayed at his post.
“That thief, whoever he is, has the best nerve of any one I ever heard
off,” thought Larry one day, after a visit to Mr. Bentfield. The young
reporter looked into the brass “cage” where the clerks were, wondering
which of them would finally prove to have been concerned in the robbery.
At this moment Witherby looked up, and, catching Larry’s glance, he
frowned. A little later, just as Larry was going out, Director Wilson
entered, and the reporter heard him tell a messenger that he wanted to
speak to Witherby.
“They’re getting thicker than ever,” mused Larry. “But I don’t know
that it has any significance. Mr. Wilson hasn’t much use for me, and
he laughed at my efforts. But so far I’ve showed that I was partly
right, and, before I’m through with this case, I’ll show him that I’m
altogether right. But what shall I do next?”
It was a hard question to answer. In lieu of something better to do
Larry called at police headquarters, where he was well known. He found
several friends there, one of whom, Detective Nyler, had done some work
on the bank mystery.
“Larry, what are you going to pull off next?” asked Nyler, who had
followed Larry’s stories in the _Leader_ closely. “You are putting it
all over us down here. What’s next?”
“I don’t know, Billy. I wish I did. I thought maybe I could get some
points from you.”
“Nothing doing. I’m off that case now. Working on a good second-story
job, though. When I get my man I’ll give you the story.”
“Thanks. Anything else new?”
“No; but say, Larry, if I were you I’d keep on with that brick end of
the game a little longer.”
“What’s the use? Those bricks might have been picked up at any one of
fifty buildings. I never could find which one, and, if I did, what good
would it do me?”
“Larry, I think there’s just one point you overlooked,” said Detective
Bill Nyler earnestly.
“What?” asked Larry eagerly.
“Well, I’ll grant that you’re a better detective than lots that are
in the business,” went on the headquarters man, “but you’ve still
something to learn. Now, I read in the paper about how you played the
brick end of it up, but you didn’t go quite far enough with it.”
“Why not?”
“Look here. It’s pretty certain, isn’t it, that the man who ‘switched’
the satchel full of money, for one with bricks in, prepared the dummy
valise outside the bank?”
“Sure. That’s easy to guess.”
“Then where did he do it? Not at the corner of Broadway and Wall
street, that’s sure. He’d pick out the most secluded place he could
find, and that would be his own room.
“Now then, there are several fellows who work in the Consolidated Bank.
Any one of them may have committed this robbery, and, again, it may
have been done by some clever outsider, though I’m not strong on that
theory. If it was a bank clerk he fixed that bag up in his room. A
room is in a house--which, though it sounds like a lesson in the first
reading book, isn’t so simple as it seems.
“What I mean is, that the thief wouldn’t go too far from his room in
order to get the bricks. He’d pick out some place as near his house,
and room, as possible.”
“Why?” asked Larry.
“So as to make the chance of him being seen with the bricks so much
less. He picked up the bricks at some building at night, you say, and I
believe it.”
“There’s hardly a doubt of that,” spoke Larry. “For he wouldn’t risk
going up in an open manner and asking some mason for the bricks.
Whoever he asked for them would have remembered it, when the story came
out, and we’d have more evidence--which we now haven’t. So I believe he
took the bricks at night, from some building, without asking any one.”
“Of course,” agreed the detective, “and he’d want to travel as short a
distance afterward as possible. For, look you, Larry, a fellow with a
load of bricks might meet a policeman, or a detective, who, naturally,
would be suspicious. So I think the thief just slipped out of his
house, went a short distance, picked up the bricks, and skipped back.”
“By Jove! I never thought of that!” exclaimed Larry. “You mean----”
“I mean that you ought to get a list, showing where every employee of
the bank lives. Then take a walk around each of their houses, and see
if there isn’t a new building going up near some of them, where these
bricks are being used. Then you may have something to work on.”
“I will!” cried Larry, the light of a new hope shining in his eyes.
“This is great, Bill! I guess I’ve got lots to learn, after all. I will
take a walk around, and keep my eyes open.”
“There’s only one trouble,” suggested the detective, with a twinkle
in his eyes; “you may find half a dozen new houses with these bricks
scattered about them, and some bank employee may live near each one.
Then you’ll have six fellows to be suspicious of.”
“That’s better than having a whole bankful,” replied the young
reporter. “I’m off now.”
His first care was to get from Mr. Bentfield a list of the residences
of all the bank employees. Nor would he say why he wanted it. Then
Larry began a sort of walking tour, intending to cover a good part of
New York. He would first locate the house of some employee, and then
circle about it to find a building in course of erection--a building
where the bricks were used that had played such a part in the robbery.
“Million-dollar bricks,” Larry called them, and it is as good a term as
any other to employ in describing them.
“Well, this may make a good story, even if I don’t get any real clew
out of it,” mused Larry, as he began his walk.