Page:The achievements of Luther Trant - Balmer and MacHarg - 1910.djvu/141

Rh has been completely valueless, the sole object being apparently to plague the man. But it has shaken Gordon amazingly, incomprehensibly. And this morning, when he found some one had been trying to break into an old typewriter desk in his office—though it was entirely empty, even the typewriter having been taken out of it two days ago—he went absolutely to pieces, and made the statement about robbing the safe which I have just repeated to you."

"That is very strange," said Trant, thoughtfully. "So these apparently senseless tricks terrorize your cashier! He was not keeping anything in the typewriter desk, was he?"

"He told me not," Howell answered. "Gordon might conceal something from me; but he would not lie."

"Tell me," Trant demanded, suddenly, "what was the defalcation in the bank, which, as you just mentioned, so greatly affected your cashier just before your father left for Europe?"

"Ten thousand dollars was taken; in plain words stolen outright by young Robert Gordon, the cashier's—William Gordon's—son."

"The cashier's son!" Trant replied with interest.

"His only son," Howell confirmed. "A boy about twenty. Gordon has a daughter older. The boy seemed a clean, straightforward fellow like his father, who has been with us forty years, twenty years our cashier; but something was different in him underneath, for the first time he had the chance he stole from the bank."

"And the particulars?" Trant requested quickly.