"I think you ought to go and tell her, Mr. Britt," Vaniman demurred.

"And my standing with Mr. and Mrs. Harnden--"

"I guess your standing will be better from now on," Britt broke in, twisting his face into a wry smile. "I left Harnden with a hot ear on him last night! Furthermore, you'll have to ask her. She declared that if her father or mother or I tried to change her mind about coming back here we'd be wasting breath. Go on! I'll tend bank."

When Frank returned with Vona a half hour later the president beamed on them through the wicket. He immediately left the bank office, giving the bookkeeper a paternal pat on the shoulder as he pa.s.sed her, calling her a good girl. And then the business of the Egypt Trust Company settled back into its usual routine.

During the day customers came to the wicket with notes sanctioned by the president's O. K. and his sprawling initials; Mr. Britt did not trouble himself by consulting the directors in regard to ordinary loans. He was well settled in his autocracy by virtue of the voting proxies which he handled for stockholders, although he had only a modest amount of his own money invested in the stock of the bank. Mr. Britt could use his own money to better advantage. He was permitted to make a one-man bank of the Trust Company because n.o.body in Egypt ventured to dispute his sapience as a financier.

The customers who came that day were plainly having a hard time of it in controlling their desire to share some of their emotions with the cashier. But Vaniman's stolid countenance did not encourage any confidences.

Some of the repression he exercised in the case of customers extended to his communion with Vona during the slack times of the business day.

There seemed to be a tacit agreement between them to keep off the topic of what had happened the night before. Words could not have added to their understanding of their mutual feelings. That understanding had established for them the policy of waiting. Though Frank said but little to the girl about his talk with the president, he imagined he could feel the tingle of Britt's handclasp as he remembered the look on Britt's face, and he pitied the old man. To go on, seizing every opportunity to make love, would seem like "rubbing it in," Frank told himself. He also said something of the sort to Vona, and she agreed with an amiable smile.

And the two of them agreed on one thing, more especially: Tasper Britt must have had a strange housecleaning of the heart during that vigil in his home on the hill.

Among other convincing evidences of Britt's transformation was his treatment of Prophet Elias at the end of that day.

The Prophet did not deliver his usual matutinal taunts in front of Britt Block. But when he came back from the field in the afternoon, he returned from conferences with Egyptian skeptics who had not seen Tasper Britt in his new form, and therefore, perhaps, their a.s.sertions had caused Elias to doubt the evidences of his own senses. At any rate, the Prophet resolved to put the reform of Pharaoh to the test of texts, and he raised his voice and declaimed.

Britt came to the front door and mildly entreated the Prophet to walk in. "I'll be glad to listen to you. Isn't it a good idea to tell me, man to man, in my office what's wrong with me, instead of standing out there in the snow, telling the neighborhood?"

The Prophet went in, having first slapped his hand on his breast, urging action, "'Go in, speak unto Pharaoh, king of Egypt, that he let the children of Israel go out of his hand.'"

He trudged forth, after a time, and walked along slowly toward Usial's house, clawing his hand above his ear with the air of a man trying to solve a perplexing puzzle.

CHAPTER XI

SACKS AND MOUTHS--ALL SEALED

Every now and then the fad of a new trick puzzle--a few bits of twisted wire, or a stick and a string--will as effectually occupy the time of an entire community as a cowbell will take up the undivided attention of a cur, if the bell is. .h.i.tched to the cur's tail.

The folks of Egypt had a couple of brain-twisters to solve.

What had happened to Tasper Britt?

How did it happen that Cashier Vaniman was holding on to his job?

His townsfolk knew Britt's character pretty well, and they had much food for speculation in his case.

There were some who ventured the suggestion that Hittie's remonstrating spirit had come to him in the night watches. Other guesses ran all the way down the scale of probability to the prosaic belief that Britt had decided that it was not profitable to go on making a fool of himself. It was agreed that Britt had a good eye for profit in every line of action; and it was conceded, even by those who did not believe all that was said about spiritist influences in these modern days, that if Hittie really had managed to get at him it was likely that her caustic communications would knock some of the folly out of him.

Egypt did not know Vaniman, the outlander, very well. Gossip about his reasons for remaining were mostly all guess-so; the folks got absolutely nothing from him on the subject. He did not discuss the matter even with Squire Hexter and Xoa. Frank and Vona had definitely adopted the policy of waiting, and he resolved to take no chances on having that policy prejudiced by anybody carrying random stories to Britt, reports that the cashier had said this or the other.

Vaniman took occasion to rea.s.sure Mr. Britt on that point, and the latter had displayed much grat.i.tude. "If you don't hurt _me_, Frank, I won't hurt _you_!" Then the usurer's eyes hardened. "Of course I can't expect you to forget that I threatened to blacken your name in banking circles. But in our new understanding I guess we can afford to call it a stand-off."

"If I were staying here simply to wheedle you into pa.s.sing me on with a high testimonial, I'd be playing a selfish game, and that isn't my att.i.tude, sir. I was anxious to get this job. I felt that I had a right to stand for myself, on my own honesty. But I shall tell the whole story the next time I apply for a position. I'm getting to understand big financiers better," he added, with bitterness.

"Yes, finance is very touchy on certain points," admitted the president.

"But I'm glad you're not going to do any more talking here in town.

You're somewhat of a new man here, and you don't know the folks as I do. I suppose some talk will have to be made as to why you and I are sticking along together, after you slapped my face in public. You'd better let me manage the story."

"You may say what you think is best, Mr. Britt."

"They're a suspicious lot, the men in this town." The banker surveyed Vaniman, making slits of his eyes. "However, I've grown used to all this recent talk about me being a fool. If it's also said that I'm a fool for keeping you here, I won't mind it. And you mustn't mind if it's hinted around that you're hanging on in the bank because you've got private reasons that you're not talking about."

The cashier greeted that sentiment with an inquiring frown.

"Oh, don't be nervous, Frank!" Mr. Britt flapped his hand, making light of the matter. He grinned. "I won't set you out as being the leader of a robber gang. I'm not like the peaked-billed old buzzards of this place--bound to say the worst of every stranger. You'd better turn to and hate the critters here, just as I do."

Britt's tones rasped when he said that; his feelings were getting away from him. The young man's expression hinted that he was trying to reconcile this rancorous mood with Britt's recent declarations of a new view of life.

"What I really meant to say, Frank, was that such has been my feeling in the past. I'm trying to change my nature. If I forget and slip once in a while, don't lay it up against me."

After that the president and the cashier in their daily conferences confined their discourse to the business of the bank. Britt got into the way of asking Vaniman's advice and of deferring to it when it had been given. "You're running the bank. You know the trick better than I do."

Therefore, it was perfectly natural for the president to bring up a topic of the past, a matter where Frank had given advice that had been scornfully rejected. "I've been thinking over what you said about that stock of hard money in the vault needing a guard. That fool of a Stickney has started a lot of gossip, in spite of my warning to him.

There's no telling how far the gossip has spread."

"That kind of news travels fast, sir."

Britt showed worry. "Perhaps I undertook too much of a ch.o.r.e for a little bank like ours. But because we are little and because this town isn't able to support the bank the way I had hoped, I thought I'd turn a trick that would net us more of a handy surplus in a modest sort of a way."

Britt did not trouble himself to explain to the cashier that, by a private arrangement with the city broker, the deal would also turn a neat sum into the pocket of the president of the Egypt Trust Company, hidden in the charge of "commission and expenses," split with due regard to the feelings of broker and president.

"The big fellows are grabbing off twenty-five or thirty per cent in their foreign money deals," went on the banker. "Tightening home credits so as to do it! What's fair for big is fair for little!"

"The profit is attractive, surely," the cashier stated.

"Our stockholders have honored me right along, and I'd like to show 'em that I deserve my reputation as a financier. I'm just finicky enough to want to clean up the last cent there is in it--and that's why I'm waiting for the right market. We've got to hold on for a few days, at any rate. But I reckon you feel as I do, that we're taking chances, now that gossip is flying high!"

"I think the vault should be guarded, Mr. Britt."

"Any suggestions as to a man?"

"I don't know the men here well enough to choose."

"And I know 'em so blasted well that I'm in the same box as you are.

They're numbheads."

The two men sat and looked at each other in silence; the matter seemed to be hung up right there, like a log stranded on a bank--"jillpoked,"

as rivermen say.

"There's one way out of it, Frank," blurted the president. "n.o.body cares when I come or go, nights. I may as well sleep here as in my house, all alone. I'll have a cot put in the back room." He pointed to a door in the rear of the bank office.

Vaniman came forward with instant and eager proffer. "That's a job for me, Mr. Britt."

In spite of an effort to seem casual, Britt could not keep significance out of his tone. "It's too bad to pen a young man up of an evening, when he can be enjoying himself somewhere."