THE TRADERS’ BANK
The morning after Halsey’s return was Tuesday. Arnold Armstrong had
been found dead at the foot of the circular staircase at three o’clock
on Sunday morning. The funeral services were to be held on Tuesday, and
the interment of the body was to be deferred until the Armstrongs
arrived from California. No one, I think, was very sorry that Arnold
Armstrong was dead, but the manner of his death aroused some sympathy
and an enormous amount of curiosity. Mrs. Ogden Fitzhugh, a cousin,
took charge of the arrangements, and everything, I believe, was as
quiet as possible. I gave Thomas Johnson and Mrs. Watson permission to
go into town to pay their last respects to the dead man, but for some
reason they did not care to go.
Halsey spent part of the day with Mr. Jamieson, but he said nothing of
what happened. He looked grave and anxious, and he had a long
conversation with Gertrude late in the afternoon.
Tuesday evening found us quiet, with the quiet that precedes an
explosion. Gertrude and Halsey were both gloomy and distraught, and as
Liddy had already discovered that some of the china was broken—it is
impossible to have any secrets from an old servant—I was not in a
pleasant humor myself. Warner brought up the afternoon mail and the
evening papers at seven—I was curious to know what the papers said of
the murder. We had turned away at least a dozen reporters. But I read
over the head-line that ran half-way across the top of the _Gazette_
twice before I comprehended it. Halsey had opened the _Chronicle_ and
was staring at it fixedly.
“The Traders’ Bank closes its doors!” was what I read, and then I put
down the paper and looked across the table.
“Did you know of this?” I asked Halsey.
“I expected it. But not so soon,” he replied.
“And you?” to Gertrude.
“Jack—told us—something,” Gertrude said faintly. “Oh, Halsey, what can
he do now?”
“Jack!” I said scornfully. “Your Jack’s flight is easy enough to
explain now. And you helped him, both of you, to get away! You get that
from your mother; it isn’t an Innes trait. Do you know that every
dollar you have, both of you, is in that bank?”
Gertrude tried to speak, but Halsey stopped her.
“That isn’t all, Gertrude,” he said quietly; “Jack is—under arrest.”
“Under arrest!” Gertrude screamed, and tore the paper out of his hand.
She glanced at the heading, then she crumpled the newspaper into a ball
and flung it to the floor. While Halsey, looking stricken and white,
was trying to smooth it out and read it, Gertrude had dropped her head
on the table and was sobbing stormily.
I have the clipping somewhere, but just now I can remember only the
essentials.
On the afternoon before, Monday, while the Traders’ Bank was in the
rush of closing hour, between two and three, Mr. Jacob Trautman,
President of the Pearl Brewing Company, came into the bank to lift a
loan. As security for the loan he had deposited some three hundred
International Steamship Company 5’s, in total value three hundred
thousand dollars. Mr. Trautman went to the loan clerk and, after
certain formalities had been gone through, the loan clerk went to the
vault. Mr. Trautman, who was a large and genial German, waited for a
time, whistling under his breath. The loan clerk did not come back.
After an interval, Mr. Trautman saw the loan clerk emerge from the
vault and go to the assistant cashier: the two went hurriedly to the
vault. A lapse of another ten minutes, and the assistant cashier came
out and approached Mr. Trautman. He was noticeably white and trembling.
Mr. Trautman was told that through an oversight the bonds had been
misplaced, and was asked to return the following morning, when
everything would be made all right.
Mr. Trautman, however, was a shrewd business man, and he did not like
the appearance of things. He left the bank apparently satisfied, and
within thirty minutes he had called up three different members of the
Traders’ Board of Directors. At three-thirty there was a hastily
convened board meeting, with some stormy scenes, and late in the
afternoon a national bank examiner was in possession of the books. The
bank had not opened for business on Tuesday.
At twelve-thirty o’clock the Saturday before, as soon as the business
of the day was closed, Mr. John Bailey, the cashier of the defunct
bank, had taken his hat and departed. During the afternoon he had
called up Mr. Aronson, a member of the board, and said he was ill, and
might not be at the bank for a day or two. As Bailey was highly thought
of, Mr. Aronson merely expressed a regret. From that time until Monday
night, when Mr. Bailey had surrendered to the police, little was known
of his movements. Some time after one on Saturday he had entered the
Western Union office at Cherry and White Streets and had sent two
telegrams. He was at the Greenwood Country Club on Saturday night, and
appeared unlike himself. It was reported that he would be released
under enormous bond, some time that day, Tuesday.
The article closed by saying that while the officers of the bank
refused to talk until the examiner had finished his work, it was known
that securities aggregating a million and a quarter were missing. Then
there was a diatribe on the possibility of such an occurrence; on the
folly of a one-man bank, and of a Board of Directors that met only to
lunch together and to listen to a brief report from the cashier, and on
the poor policy of a government that arranges a three or four-day
examination twice a year. The mystery, it insinuated, had not been
cleared by the arrest of the cashier. Before now minor officials had
been used to cloak the misdeeds of men higher up. Inseparable as the
words “speculation” and “peculation” have grown to be, John Bailey was
not known to be in the stock market. His only words, after his
surrender, had been “Send for Mr. Armstrong at once.” The telegraph
message which had finally reached the President of the Traders’ Bank,
in an interior town in California, had been responded to by a telegram
from Doctor Walker, the young physician who was traveling with the
Armstrong family, saying that Paul Armstrong was very ill and unable to
travel.
That was how things stood that Tuesday evening. The Traders’ Bank had
suspended payment, and John Bailey was under arrest, charged with
wrecking it; Paul Armstrong lay very ill in California, and his only
son had been murdered two days before. I sat dazed and bewildered. The
children’s money was gone: that was bad enough, though I had plenty, if
they would let me share. But Gertrude’s grief was beyond any power of
mine to comfort; the man she had chosen stood accused of a colossal
embezzlement—and even worse. For in the instant that I sat there I
seemed to see the coils closing around John Bailey as the murderer of
Arnold Armstrong.
Gertrude lifted her head at last and stared across the table at Halsey.
“Why did he do it?” she wailed. “Couldn’t you stop him, Halsey? It was
suicidal to go back!”
Halsey was looking steadily through the windows of the breakfast-room,
but it was evident he saw nothing.
“It was the only thing he could do, Trude,” he said at last. “Aunt Ray,
when I found Jack at the Greenwood Club last Saturday night, he was
frantic. I can not talk until Jack tells me I may, but—he is absolutely
innocent of all this, believe me. I thought, Trude and I thought, we
were helping him, but it was the wrong way. He came back. Isn’t that
the act of an innocent man?”
“Then why did he leave at all?” I asked, unconvinced. “What innocent
man would run away from here at three o’clock in the morning? Doesn’t
it look rather as though he thought it impossible to escape?”
Gertrude rose angrily. “You are not even just!” she flamed. “You don’t
know anything about it, and you condemn him!”
“I know that we have all lost a great deal of money,” I said. “I shall
believe Mr. Bailey innocent the moment he is shown to be. You profess
to know the truth, but you can not tell me! What am I to think?”
Halsey leaned over and patted my hand.
“You must take us on faith,” he said. “Jack Bailey hasn’t a penny that
doesn’t belong to him; the guilty man will be known in a day or so.”
“I shall believe that when it is proved,” I said grimly. “In the
meantime, I take no one on faith. The Inneses never do.”
Gertrude, who had been standing aloof at a window, turned suddenly.
“But when the bonds are offered for sale, Halsey, won’t the thief be
detected at once?”
Halsey turned with a superior smile.
“It wouldn’t be done that way,” he said. “They would be taken out of
the vault by some one who had access to it, and used as collateral for
a loan in another bank. It would be possible to realize eighty per
cent. of their face value.”
“In cash?”
“In cash.”
“But the man who did it—he would be known?”
“Yes. I tell you both, as sure as I stand here, I believe that Paul
Armstrong looted his own bank. I believe he has a million at least, as
the result, and that he will never come back. I’m worse than a pauper
now. I can’t ask Louise to share nothing a year with me and when I
think of this disgrace for her, I’m crazy.”
The most ordinary events of life seemed pregnant with possibilities
that day, and when Halsey was called to the telephone, I ceased all
pretense at eating. When he came back from the telephone his face
showed that something had occurred. He waited, however, until Thomas
left the dining-room: then he told us.
“Paul Armstrong is dead,” he announced gravely. “He died this morning
in California. Whatever he did, he is beyond the law now.”
Gertrude turned pale.
“And the only man who could have cleared Jack can never do it!” she
said despairingly.
“Also,” I replied coldly, “Mr. Armstrong is for ever beyond the power
of defending himself. When your Jack comes to me, with some two hundred
thousand dollars in his hands, which is about what you have lost, I
shall believe him innocent.”
Halsey threw his cigarette away and turned on me.
“There you go!” he exclaimed. “If he was the thief, he could return the
money, of course. If he is innocent, he probably hasn’t a tenth of that
amount in the world. In his hands! That’s like a woman.”
Gertrude, who had been pale and despairing during the early part of the
conversation, had flushed an indignant red. She got up and drew herself
to her slender height, looking down at me with the scorn of the young
and positive.
“You are the only mother I ever had,” she said tensely. “I have given
you all I would have given my mother, had she lived—my love, my trust.
And now, when I need you most, you fail me. I tell you, John Bailey is
a good man, an honest man. If you say he is not, you—you—”
“Gertrude,” Halsey broke in sharply. She dropped beside the table and,
burying her face in her arms broke into a storm of tears.
“I love him—love him,” she sobbed, in a surrender that was totally
unlike her. “Oh, I never thought it would be like this. I can’t bear
it. I can’t.”
Halsey and I stood helpless before the storm. I would have tried to
comfort her, but she had put me away, and there was something aloof in
her grief, something new and strange. At last, when her sorrow had
subsided to the dry shaking sobs of a tired child, without raising her
head she put out one groping hand.
“Aunt Ray!” she whispered. In a moment I was on my knees beside her,
her arm around my neck, her cheek against my hair.
“Where am I in this?” Halsey said suddenly and tried to put his arms
around us both. It was a welcome distraction, and Gertrude was soon
herself again. The little storm had cleared the air. Nevertheless, my
opinion remained unchanged. There was much to be cleared up before I
would consent to any renewal of my acquaintance with John Bailey. And
Halsey and Gertrude knew it, knowing me.