IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT
While Kusiak slept that night the wind shifted. It came roaring across
the range and drove before it great scudding clouds heavily laden with
sleety snow. The howling storm snuffed out the moonlight as if it had
been a tallow dip and fought and screamed around the peaks, whirling
down the gulches with the fury of a blizzard.
From dark till dawn the roar of the wind filled the night. Before
morning heavy drifts had wiped out the roads and sheeted the town in
virgin white unbroken by trails or furrows.
With the coming of daylight the tempest abated. Kusiak got into its
working clothes and dug itself out from the heavy blanket of white that
had tucked it in. By noon the business of the town was under way again.
That which would have demoralized the activities of a Southern city made
little difference to these Arctic Circle dwellers. Roads were cleared,
paths shoveled, stores opened. Children in parkas and fur coats trooped
to school and studied through the short afternoon by the aid of electric
light.
Dusk fell early and with it came a scatter of more snow. Mrs. Selfridge
gave a dinner-dance at the club that night and her guests came in furs
of great variety and much value. The hostess outdid herself to make
the affair the most elaborate of the season. Wally had brought the
favors in from Seattle and also the wines. Nobody in Kusiak of any
social importance was omitted from the list of invited except Gordon
Elliot. Even the grumpy old cashier of Macdonald's bank--an old bachelor
who lived by himself in rooms behind those in which the banking was
done--was persuaded to break his custom and appear in a rusty old dress
suit of the vintage of '95.
The grizzled cashier--his name was Robert Milton--left the clubhouse
early for his rooms. It was snowing, but the wind had died down.
Contrary to his custom, he had taken two or three glasses of wine. His
brain was excited so that he knew he could not sleep. He decided to read
"Don Quixote" by the stove for an hour or two. The heat and the reading
together would make him drowsy.
Arrived at the bank, he let himself into his rooms and locked the
door. He stooped to open the draft of the stove when a sound stopped
him halfway. The cashier stood rigid, still crouched, waiting for a
repetition of the noise. It came once more--the low, dull rasping of
a file.
Shivers ran down the spine of Milton and up the back of his head to
the roots of his hair. Somebody was in the bank--at two o'clock in the
morning--with tools for burglary. He was a scholarly old fellow, brought
up in New England and cast out to the uttermost frontier by the malign
tragedy of poverty. Adventure offered no appeal to him. His soul quaked
as he waited with slack, feeble muscles upon the discovery that only a
locked door stood between him and violent ruffians.
But though his knees trembled beneath him and the sickness of fear was
gripping his heart, Robert Milton had in him the dynamic spark that
makes a man. He tiptoed to his desk and with shaking fingers gripped the
revolver that lay in a drawer.
The cashier stood there for a moment, moistening his dry lips with
his tongue and trying to swallow the lump that rose to his throat and
threatened to stop his breathing. He braced himself for the plunge,
then slowly trod across the room to the inner, locked door. The palsied
fingers of his left hand could scarce turn the key.
It seemed to him that the night was alive with the noise he made in
turning the lock and opening the door. The hinges grated and the floor
squeaked beneath the fall of his foot as he stood at the threshold.
Two men were in front of the wire grating which protected the big safe
that filled the alcove to the right. One held a file and the other a
candle. Their blank, masked faces were turned toward Milton, and each
of them covered him with a weapon.
"W-what are you doing here?" quavered the cashier.
"Drop that gun," came the low, sharp command from one of them.
Under the menace of their revolvers the heart of Milton pumped water
instead of blood. The strength oozed out of him. His body swayed and he
shut his eyes. A hand groped for the casement of the door to steady him.
"Drop it--quick."
Some old ancestral instinct in the bank cashier rose out of his panic
to destroy him. He wanted to lie down quietly in a faint. But his mind
asserted its mastery over the weakling body. In spite of his terror, of
his flaccid will, he had to keep the faith. He was guardian of the bank
funds. At all costs he must protect them.
His forearm came up with a jerk. Two shots rang out almost together. The
cashier sagged back against the wall and slowly slid to the floor.
* * * * *
The guests of Mrs. Selfridge danced well into the small hours. The
California champagne that Wally had brought in stimulated a gayety that
was balm to his wife's soul. She wanted her dinner-dance to be smart, to
have the atmosphere she had found in the New York cabarets. If everybody
talked at once, she felt they were having a good time. If nobody
listened to anybody else, it proved that the affair was a screaming
success.
Mrs. Wally was satisfied as she bade her guests good-bye and saw them
pass into the heavy snow that was again falling. They all assured her
that there had not been so hilarious a party in Kusiak. One old-timer, a
trifle lit up by reason of too much hospitality, phrased his enjoyment a
little awkwardly.
"It's been great, Mrs. Selfridge. Nothing like it since the days of the
open dance hall."
Mrs. Mallory hastily suppressed an internal smile and stepped into the
breach. "_How_ do you do it?" she asked her hostess enviously.
"My dear, if _you_ say it was a success--"
"What else could one say?"
Genevieve Mallory always preferred to tell the truth when it would do
just as well. Now it did better, since it contributed to her own ironic
sense of amusement. Macdonald had once told her that Mrs. Selfridge made
him think of the saying, "Monkey sees, monkey does." The effervescent
little woman had never had an original idea in her life.
Most of those who had been at the dance slept late. They were oblivious
of the fact that the storm had quickened again into a howling gale.
Nor did they know the two bits of news that were passing up and down
the main street and being telephoned from house to house. One of the
items was that the stage for Katma had failed to reach the roadhouse at
Smith's Crossing. The message had come over the long-distance telephone
early in the morning. The keeper of the roadhouse added his private
fears that the stage, crawling up the divide as the blizzard swept down,
must have gone astray and its occupants perished. The second bit of news
was local. For the first time since Robert Milton had been cashier the
bank had failed to open on the dot. The snow had not been cleared from
the walk in front and no smoke was pouring from the chimney of the
building.