A sheet of note paper lying on the desk caught Jimmie Dale’s eyes. He stepped forward, picked it up—and his lips drew tight together, as he read the two or three miserable lines that were scrawled upon it:
What’s left is in the middle drawer of the desk. There’s only one way out now—I don’t see any other way. I thought that I could get—but what does that matter! God help me! I’m sorry.
Fleming P. Forrester.
I’m sorry! It was a pitiful epitaph for a man’s life! I’m sorry! Jimmie Dale’s face softened a little—the man was dead now. “I’m sorry…. Fleming P. Forrester”—he had seen that signature on bank paper a hundred times in the old days; he had little thought ever to see it on a document such as this!
He stared at the paper for a long time, and then, from the paper, his eyes travelled over the desk, then shifted again to Forrester—and then, for the second time, he knelt beside the other on the floor. For the moment, what was referred to as “being all that was left” in the middle drawer of the desk could wait. There was another matter now. He felt hurriedly through Forrester’s vest and coat pockets—and from one of the pockets drew out a folded piece of paper. It was not what he was looking for, but it was all that rewarded his search. He unfolded the paper. It was dirty and crumpled, and the few lines written upon it were badly penned and illiterate:
The ante’s gone up—get me? Six thousand bucks. You come across with that to-morrow morning by ten o’clock—or I’ll spill the beans. And I ain’t got any more paper to write any more letters on either—savvy? This is the last.
There was no signature. Jimmie Dale read it again—and abruptly put it in his own pocket. Yes, he had liked Forrester—well enough for this anyway! The man might have a mother perhaps—it would be bad enough in any case. And those other things, the empty bottle, the sheet of note paper with its scrawled confession—what about them? He returned with a queer sort of hesitant indecision to the desk. He had no right of course to touch them unless—
He shook his head sharply, as he pulled open the middle drawer of the desk.
“Newspapers—publicity—rotten!” he muttered savagely. “One chance in ten, and—ah!”
From the back of the drawer where it had been tucked in under a mass of papers, he had extracted a little bundle of documents that were held together by an elastic band. He snapped off the band, and ran through the papers rapidly. For the most part they were bonds and stock certificates indorsed by their owners, and evidently had been held by the bank as collateral for loans.
And then suddenly Jimmie Dale straightened up, tense and alert. He had no desire, very far from any desire to be caught here, or to figure publicly in any way in the case. The street door had opened and closed again. Footsteps, those of three men, his acute, trained hearing told him, sounded on the stairs. Again there came that queer, hesitant indecision as he stood there, while his eyes travelled in swift succession from the bank’s securities in his hand to the note on the desk, to the empty bottle on the floor, to the white, upturned face of the silent form huddled against the couch.
“One chance in ten,” muttered Jimmie Dale through his set lips. “One chance in ten—and I guess I’ll take it!”
The footsteps came nearer—they were almost at the head of the stairs now. But now Jimmie Dale was in action—swift as a flash and silent as a shadow in every movement. The bundle of securities was thrust into his pocket, the sheet of note paper followed, and, as a knock sounded on the door, he stooped, picked up the bottle from the floor, and darted into the adjoining room—and in another instant he had reached the locked door and was working at it silently and swiftly with a picklock.
Chapter XVII.
The Defaulter
At the other door the knocking still continued—and then it was opened—and there came a chorus of low, horrified, startled cries, and the quick rush of feet into the room.
The picklock went back into Jimmie Dale’s pocket, and crouched, now, his hand on the knob, turning it gradually without a sound, drawing the door ajar inch by inch, he kept his eyes on the doorway connecting with the other room. He could see the three men bending over Forrester. Their voices came in confused, broken, snatches:
“… Dead!… Good God!… Are you sure?… Perhaps he’s only fainted…. No, he’s dead, poor devil!…”
And then one of the men, the youngest of the three, a slight-built, clean-shaven, dark-eyed man of perhaps twenty-eight or thirty, rose abruptly, and glanced sharply around the room.
“Yes, he’s dead!” he said bitterly. “Any one could tell that! But he wouldn’t be dead, and this would never have happened if you’d done what I wanted you to do when you first came to the bank this afternoon. I wanted you to have him arrested then, didn’t I?”
One of the others—and it was obvious that the others were the two bank examiners—a man of middle age, answered soberly.
“You’re upset, Dryden,” he said. “You know we couldn’t do that—”
“On a teller’s word against the cashier’s—of course not!” the young man broke in caustically. “Well, you see now, don’t you?”
“We couldn’t do it then without proof,” amended the bank examiner quietly.
“Proof!” Dryden exclaimed. “My God—proof! Who tipped your people off to have you drop in there this afternoon? I did, didn’t I? Do you think I’d do that without knowing what I was about! Didn’t I tell you that there was nothing but the office fixtures left! Didn’t I? There were only the two of us on the staff, and didn’t I tell you that I had discovered that the books were cooked from cover to cover? Yes, I did! And you had to get your pencils out and start in on a thumb-rule examination, as though nothing were the matter! Well, what did you find? The securities in a mess, what there was left of them—and what was supposed to be twenty thousand dollars that came out from the city yesterday nothing but a package of blank paper!”
“You didn’t know that yourself until half an hour ago when we started to check up the cash,” returned the other a little sharply.
“Well, perhaps, I didn’t,” admitted Dryden; “but I knew about the books.”
“Besides that,” continued the bank examiner, “Mr. Forrester was in town this afternoon when we got to the bank and this is the first time we have seen him, so we could not very well have done anything other than we have done in any case. I mention this because you are talking wildly, and that sort of talk, if it gets out, won’t do any of us any good. You don’t want to blame Mr. Marner here and myself for Mr. Forrester’s death, do you?”
“No—of course, I don’t!” said Dryden, in a more subdued voice. “I don’t mean that at all. I guess you’re right—I’m excited. I—well”—he motioned jerkily toward the form on the floor—“I’m not used to walking into a room and finding that.”
It