Page:Cornelia Meigs-The Pirate of Jasper Peak.djvu/191

 John’s books and the state in which the bank’s affairs had been left. For a moment Edmonds looked astonished, dismayed and angry, then he  laughed.

Three of his clerks had gone to war, he explained, and he was so short-handed that he used to work fourteen, sixteen, eighteen hours at a  time, trying to keep things going, reeling with  exhaustion, his brain at last so weary and confused with illness that he scarcely knew what he  was doing.

“Now my head is cleared up again,” he said, “I begin to realize what queer things I must have  done to those books. The expert who is trying to make them out must be having a glorious time  of it. I wonder how far he has got and what he thinks he has found.”

Then Oscar broached the plan that he had evidently been turning over and over in his mind. Edmonds must get back to Rudolm as soon as possible, he said, for affairs must be cleared up  and the anxiety of bank directors and stock-holders must be brought to an end. The moment