Vaniman was then in no mood to balance the rights and the wrongs of the case. "I have started in on the basis of the whole truth, and I'm coming through, men. I'm following your lead. I was framed in that bank matter.

There was a man who had the opportunity to exchange junk for that gold.

He made that opportunity for himself by working on my good nature. The man is Tasper Britt, who was the president of that bank. He took the money. He knows where it is."

"Do you think he is the only one who knows?"

"Naturally, he wouldn't be pa.s.sing the word around."

"You're a bank man--you had the run of the premises--you had a chance to know the general style of his ways! What do you guess he did with it?"

"I'm sticking to the truth--and what I actually know. I'm not guessing."

"Not even when you say he took the money?"

"I didn't see him take it. But he had a private entrance to the vault.

Everybody was so determined to plaster the guilt on to me that no move was made against Britt on account of that back door of his. I was railroaded by perjurers--and Britt was the captain of 'em."

"There's a corner on 'most everything these days, but it's really too bad for a man like Britt to have a corner on so much valuable knowledge," sighed the short man.

And the tall man sighed and agreed.

Mr. Wagg was catching up. With the appearance of a man who had been running and was out of breath he panted, "What's--what's gong to be done about it?"

Vaniman made no suggestions. Having cut the knot of his own entanglement where these men were concerned, he felt no spirit of alacrity about inviting them farther into his personal affairs; he realized that he had merely shifted the course of their dogged pursuit of that money. In spite of his feelings toward Britt, he was dreading what might come from the disclosures he had just made. He had reason to distrust the tactics such men might employ. His relief arising from the show-down was tinged with regret; he was still sorry for the innocent losers in Egypt. To employ two escaped convicts and a recreant prison guard in his efforts to prevail on Britt and secure the rights due an innocent man promised to involve him more wretchedly.

"Vaniman, suppose you take command and give off your orders," said the short man.

"I haven't any sensible plans. I admit that. I have been so pestered and wrought up by the everlasting bullyragging about the devilish money that I haven't had a chance to figure out a way of getting at the man who has ruined me," Vaniman complained. He strode to and fro, snapping his fingers, revealing his sense of helplessness.

"Suppose we sleep on the thing--the whole four of us," suggested the short man. "I said sleep, please note! This general show-down has cleared the air up here a whole lot, I'll say! And Wagg has steered away the d.i.c.ks! They won't be strolling in, and till we have settled on a plan I'm sure n.o.body will feel like strolling out. The night watch is disbanded."

He marched off toward the camp. The others trailed on behind him.

CHAPTER XXVII

THE STIR OF THE YEAST

Mr. Delmont Bangs was naturally of an observant nature. While he was in Egypt he was keeping his eyes particularly wide open. He was looking for two men wanted by the state. Mr. Bangs was the deputy warden who had gone up to the summit of Devilbrow in order to view the landscape o'er and pa.s.s the word to Mr. Wagg. Mr. Bangs rode along every highway and byway, day after day, not missing a trick. He was not especially sanguine in regard to locating the missing convicts in that section, but he was obeying the warden's orders; after a day or so he was also obeying an impulse to satisfy his curiosity in lines quite apart from his official quest.

He spent his nights at Files's tavern and grabbed his meals wherever he happened to be.

But after a time he found that housewives were unwilling to give him anything to eat. He was sure that they had not soured on him because he was a state catchpole. When he first arrived in town and gave out the news of his mission and issued a general call for tips he was welcomed heartily by everybody; the women, especially, hoped that he would find the villains and put them where they could not threaten unprotected females. Mr. Bangs had not been able to spend his money for food at farmhouses; the women would not accept any pay, and gave him their best.

However all at once they could not be induced to give food or even to sell it. They acted as if they did not care to be bothered; some of them declared that they were too busy to do cooking. They would not allow Mr.

Bangs to stick his nose into their houses; they snapped refusal at him from behind doors only partially opened and foot-braced.

Men with whom Bangs conversed wore an air of abstraction. They plainly were not interested in Mr. Bangs or in the convicts whom he was pursuing. He tackled them on all sorts of subjects, hoping to hit on the topic which was absorbing so much of their attention. He went so far as to ask them bluntly what they were carrying on their minds besides hair.

Those who were not surly looked scared.

Even the barn doors were no longer frankly open. There was a mysterious sort of subsurface stir everywhere. There was expectancy that was ill disguised. Mr. Bangs, a stranger, perceived that strangers, for some unexplained reason, had ceased to be popular in Egypt. One day a man gruffly told him that detectives would do well to go off and do their detecting in some other place. That was pretty blunt, and Mr. Bangs informed his helper that he, personally, had had about enough of the gummed-up, infernal town. He declared that he was going to leave. Mr.

Bangs was more certain about his departure when he arrived back at Files's tavern that evening. Mr. Files informed him that there would be no more accommodations at the tavern after that night. Mr. Files, questioned, refused to say whether he intended to close the tavern or was merely going away; he would reveal nothing about his further plans.

Mr. Bangs went out and sat on the porch bench with his helper, and irefully asked that bewildered person what the ding-dong the matter was with the dad-fired town, anyway?

In default of specific knowledge the aide tried to be humorous. He told Mr. Bangs that it looked as if the hive was getting ready to swarm. His facetiousness fell flat; Mr. Bangs scowled. The helper became serious.

"I've been watching the old hystrampus they call the Prophet. Everywhere we've been the past few days, he seems to be just coming or just going.

Noticed him, haven't you?"

"Of course I've noticed him."

"I don't know what his religious persuasion is, because he hasn't done any talking where I could overhear him. But he seems to be getting busier all the time. Do you know what he preaches?"

"I'm working for the state prison, not the state insane asylum."

"Well," drawled the other, "though I don't know what he's preaching, the general fussed-up condition here in this town reminds me of what happened in Carmel when I lived there as a boy. One of them go-upper preachers struck town. He finally got most of our neighbors into a state of whee-ho where the womenfolks made ascension robes for all concerned and the menfolks built a high platform and they all climbed up on it and waited all one night for Gabr'el's trump to sound."

"What's that got to do with this town?" demanded Mr. Bangs, impatiently.

"Why, considering how near busted the town is--and all the timber cut off and the farms run out--I wouldn't wonder a mite if the right kind of a preacher could get 'em into a frame of mind where they'd be willing to start for anywhere--even straight down, provided they couldn't arrange matters so as to go straight up, like the Carmel folks planned on. Not as how I say that these folks are going to get up and hump it out of Egypt! But there's a whole lot of restle-ness in 'em! That's plain enough to be seen!"

"If there's half as much of it in 'em as there is in me, right now, they'll all follow me when I drive out of town in the morning," declared Mr. Bangs. "And what that king pin, name o' Britt, is building that palace over there for is beyond my guess."

"Expects to grab off the girl of the Vaniman case," said the aide, who had put himself in the way of hearing all the local gossip.

Mr. Bangs lighted a fresh cigar. "Say, I'd like to find out whether this stir here is a go-upper proposition. I'd join the party and go up, too, if I thought I could locate that cashier and find out where he hid that mess of gold."

"Try the ouija board," giggled the aide.

However, in his desperate desire for information in general Mr. Bangs proceeded to try something which suited better his practical turn of mind.

He hailed Prophet Elias, who had appeared in the open door of Usial Britt's shop. The gloom of the autumn evening was deepened by vapor which came drifting from the lowlands after the night air had chilled the moisture evoked by the sun from the soil. The open door set a patch of radiance on the dun robe of the dusk. The light spread upon the vapor, was diffused in it, furnished an aura of soft glow in the center of which stood the robed figure.

Deputy Bangs's first hail, when Elias opened the door and stood revealed, was contemptuously brusque; he used the tone he commonly employed toward his charges in prison; he perceived at first only the queer old chap, the dusty plodder of the highways, the man of cracked wits. Bangs spoke as an officer, peremptorily: "Say, you! Come over here. I want to talk with you!"

The Prophet made no move, either with his feet or his tongue. In the haze that lay between him and Bangs, the man of the robe seemed to tower and to take on a mystic dignity which had been lacking in the candid light of day. After the silence had continued for some time Bangs spoke again. His new manner showed that his eyes had been reprimanding his tongue. "Excuse me! I didn't mean to sound short. But would you kindly step across here? Or"--the eyes certainly had shamed the tongue and had humbled it--"or I'll come over there, if you'd rather have it that way."

The Prophet strode along the misty path of light and stood in the middle of the road. "Talk--but I must ask you to talk to the point and in few words. I have no time to waste on gossip."

"All right! Few words it is! What's the matter with this town all of a sudden?"

"Ask Pharaoh. The kingdom is his."

"I don't get you!"

The deputy's helper pulled his chief's sleeve and hissed some rapid words of explanation, more fruit gathered from local gossip.