The Roystone Bank Case

By Julian Hawthorne

AMES THORPE ALLINGHAM was sixty years old; his compactly molded face and dark eyes, in which there was often an ironic expression, showed few marks of time; but his close-cut, silvered hair betrayed him. He was a slightly-built man, little above medium height, but wiry and active, yet with a vein of the voluptuous, indolent Oriental in him. His bristly, short beard, trimmed to a point in the French style, had more of the original black in it than his hair. A fire was wont to sparkle from his eyes, intolerantly if he were annoyed or opposed; but imperiously and audaciously, under the influence of beautiful women. His small head was packed full of a fine and strong brain, clear, cold and penetrating; acting upon his emotional nature, it had made him skeptical; a deep sense of humor wrought the skepticism into a chuckling, disconcerting mockery. He dominated most men, and no woman who had known him well ever forgot him.

He was a university graduate, a reader of books of science, familiar with good literature, of bold views, independent in thought. He had the finest breeding, easy, confident and quiet. He dressed correctly, but wore his clothes carelessly. He had inherited a fortune from his father, had taken up banking twenty-five years ago, and achieved more wealth. A first wife had died while he was in his early thirties; he had married again at forty, and had a daughter now nineteen years old, whom he loved. His present wife, a religious, simple woman, had brought him this daughter and money, but nothing else that he valued. He was a man of power and leading in the city of Pennborough, where he had lived since founding his bank. He had been offered, and had refused, high political preferment. He lived like a prince in his big house on Curzon street. In business he was thought keen but conservative, and his financial credit was unquestioned. The Roystone National Bank was the best bank in the city, and the best people kept their accounts at it.

Olympia Allingham had had her coming-out party a few weeks before this narrative begins. he was a handsome, innocent, tender-hearted, high-spirited girl, with dark hair and blue eyes. She loved her father devotedly, and honored him religiously. At the time of her coming-out, her engagement to Stephen Bentinck, a young physician of ability and reputation, had been announced. It was a love-match. Stephen had a good practice, but was not rich; but Allingham favored him, and the financial path would be made smooth for the young couple. It was now early June; they were to be married in October.

Allingham sat in his private office, though it was after banking hours; for Eugene Calverly, the cashier, had said he wished to speak with him that afternoon. Calverly, a man of forty, had entered the bank young, as a clerk, and in fifteen years had attained his. present position. He was methodical, intelligent, and perfectly trustworthy. His deep-set gray eyes were steady; his utterance meas and emphatic. His mind plodded where Allingham's leaped or flew; but the latter knew his value. Allingham was accustomed to rally him and break jests upon him, but he respected him. He was also aware that Calverly loved Olympia with a worshiping passion, the only one of his sober life. It had probably never been other than a hopeless passion; certainly, Allingham himself, ever since he had surmised it, had always frankly discouraged and even ridiculed it. Olympia had never known anything of the matter; she was very kind and familiar with poor Calverly. He had sometimes held her in his arms when she was a baby; she did not suspect what he would have given to do so now. This was one of the silent, honorable tragedies. When the engagement between her and Stephen Bentinck was made known, Calverly seemed to become more round-shouldered and methodical, but he said nothing.

The theme of his present interview with the president of the bank was not an agreeable one, but it had to do with business, not romance. We need not follow it in detail. Owing to various causes, capital had been flowing away from the bank, and little had been coming in. The balance on hand was dangerously small. Unless this situation were soon changed for the better, calamity was at hand. No breath of suspicion had as yet blown upon the credit of the institution; but were a few large depositors to draw heavily, the secret would out. That was the gist of his statement. Had Mr. Allingham any suggestions or information to give?

The banker's pointed, aggressive chin seemed to thrust out through his grizzled beard as he turned on his cashier with a smile, looking him in the eyes.

“Aren't getting scared, are you?” he said, in his quick way, with a sort of chuckle running through the words. “Any time you think you're over your depth, swim ashore, you know. You can get a position somewhere; I'll see to that.”

“No; if we go down, I sha'n't want to swim any more, Mr. Allingham,” replied the other. “In any other place than this, I should be out of my element, if not out of my depth. But I would drown, or do anything else, to help you and yours,” he added.

“Oh! Well, suppose you begin with cooking the books for the state examiner,” Allingham suggested, still smiling.

Calverly accepted this as an instance of his employer's irony.

“I shouldn't think of asking for your confidence, beyond the limited extent which my position necessitates,” he said, with a sigh. “You have the responsibility, and you do the business; the directors leave it all to you. I only thought, if you should care to talk over anything with me—any service I could perform—I am at your disposal.”

“I see—very nice of you—faithful retainer of the house, and so forth! Possibly, too, you may be influenced by the prospect of seeing Olympia thrown out on the streets to beg her living, and deserted by her fiancé?”

Calverly's long, pale face reddened; he bent forward, and wrung his long fingers together between his knees. “Oh!” he murmured, in a low voice; “oh, Mr. Allingham!”

“Still, even to save Olympia, you'd draw the line at cooking the books?” the banker pursued, tilting back idly in his chair. “To be virtuous, we must sometimes be cruel, eh? I suppose your virtue is what keeps you up to the scratch, as whiskey does other men, doesn't it, Calverly?'”

The cashier tilted his head to one side, with a distressed expression, but was silent.

“Oh, you're no fun, Calverly—you're stupid!” exclaimed Allingham, impatiently. “Is there anything else?”

“No,” said the other, rising. “But I think I understand—you've relieved my mind—I know that if you knew anything”

“Oh, go to the devil!” chuckled Allingham. “I'd ask you to dinner, but Stephen will be there, and you'd have no appetite. Only one hundred and sixty-seven thousand left in the safe, is there? And my house is worth about twice as much; furniture, say a hundred thousand; real estate and other investments, maybe a million. Liabilities, two million odd, was it? Yes, that bank examiner will knock spots out of us, won't he? Make a good scandal for the newspapers, won't it? Been in business quarter of a century; possessed the confidence of the entire community, and turned out rotten, after all! Too bad,really! I say, Calverly, I want to ask your opinion on one point.”

The cashier, who had moved slowly to the door, turned round. He had been reassured by his employer's remarks, or, rather, by the scornful and mocking manner of them; it would have been impossible to speak in that way had anything been really wrong. As for the contemptuous, sarcastic tone, he could put up with that; he was used to it. But the changed voice in which the banker now spoke startled him, and it was with some return of apprehension that he met his look.

“What age does a man, hitherto honest, have to reach, before he may be considered past all danger of embracing a criminal career?” Allingham asked, quite gravely, but with that fire in his eyes which Calverly had occasionally seen, and always dreaded.

The cashier stood bewildered, unable to make any rejoinder.

“Come, brace up, my man,” continued Allingham, after a pause, during which he had looked straight into the cashier's fixed eyes. “Am I too old—supposing me to have been honest until now—to begin stealing? Answer that!”

Calverly found his voice with difficulty. His thoughts stammered, like his words.

“I—Mr. Allingham! You, the father of … For twenty years I have looked up to you as of inviolable integrity. I can no more conceive of such a thing than… I beg your pardon … Oh, I am sure you are jesting!”

Allingham lifted his black brows, threw himself back again in his chair, and laughed gently and pleasantly.

“Oh, found me out at last, have you? All right; trot home and sleep sound. I must try to be more serious in future. The bank will go on all right, Calverly. Good-bye.”

“Good afternoon, Mr. Allingham, and again I beg your pardon,” replied the other; and he went out with a lighter heart than he had come in with. Of course it was all right; there were resources in that man that could never be exhausted.

The banker, left alone, sat quiet in his chair for a while, twisting his beard and gazing at the floor. “Well!” he said, at last. Then he closed his desk, took his hat and went home, with the light step that speaks a free mind.

were only the family and Stephen Bentinck at dinner at Mr. Allingham's that evening. It was a quiet and comfortable partie carrée, with old Philip Dorpe, the butler, waiting on them.

Stephen's head was high above the ears, full and deep; his features were marked, and his cheeks hollow, but with a healthy color in them. In body he was athletic and slender. He had a slow, grave smile, which was delightful to see; it brought a lovely, sparkling, gentle light into his eyes. He had kept pure the high ideals of conduct of his youth. He was of great diligence in his profession, learned and conscientious, and a natural thinker, which gave him the valuable quality, in medical practice, of originality and initiative. In general society he was retiring, reticent and shy; but with those he liked and trusted he was genial, playful and expressive. He was not an easy man to become familiar with; but it was not difficult for those who came in contact with him to perceive that he had a large, luminous, equitable mind, a feminine tenderness of nature, and, underneath, a sinewy masculine fiber, giving assurance that in emergencies he would never fail to show the true manhood of a man.

“There was another of those awful cases of a bank cashier taking the funds of the bank and running away, in the paper this evening,” observed Mrs. Allingham, in her plaintive voice. The good lady was perhaps morbidly religious, and very sensitive to moral lapses in members of the community; and this sensitiveness was kept alive by her habit of perusing the daily journals, and dwelling upon those features in them which recount the frailties of the race. “He is said to have been a church member, too,” she went on. “I'm sure there will come some terrible visitation upon mankind for all this wickedness. There seems to be no respect for the laws of God or man.”

“What do you say to that?—are we growing worse or better?” demanded Allingham, cheerfully, looking up at Bentinck with his inquisitorial smile.

“It seems to me, the worst thing is hypocrisy,” the young man said. “Such cases as Mrs. Allingham speaks of show that the man could not any longer bear to do evil while everybody believed he was doing good; he preferred to break out and be known for what he was. The community is like the body: when the disease appears on the surface, it is uglier to look at, but less deadly than internal lesions. There is more hope of curing them.”

“Oh, that's a sagacious doctrine,” laughed Allingham. “The worse we appear, the better we are! That ought to satisfy both sides. Quite diplomatic!”

“Don't mind him, Stephen,” said Olympia, with the confident optimism of girlhood. “Nobody hates deception so much as papa. He even likes to pretend he's bad when he's good.”

“Wealth is a new thing with us,” Stephen continued; “we don't understand it yet, and so we think it all the more desirable. It divides us into a few giants among a lot of pigmies. But when the novelty has worn off, nobody will care to be a giant, and then the temptation to try to become one, which causes more than half the crimes, will be gone. There are never many people strong enough to turn from anything that really tempts them; when there is constant temptation, there will be more yieldings than usual, but not on that account more intrinsic wickedness, do you think? We are passing through a phase of growth, which always weakens temporarily; but experience will cure it.”

“Well, it's no new philosophy that society stimulates crime in the individual,” rejoined Allingham. “The strong men must come out on top; what is the real top, is the question. As long as we think it's wealth, there'll be crime, because we don't know how to give wealth to everybody; besides, wealth makes people polite and pleasant to you, and we all like that. A time may come when people will be polite chiefly to beggars—as I believe is the way in India—but meanwhile, those who have or can get wealth are bound to keep or seize it, by fair means or foul. As for hypocrisy, in three cases out of five, a man is a hypocrite, not for his own sake, but for his wife and children's; they believe in him, and he can't find the nerve to undeceive them. What is wickedness, anyway? It's just a bad name for doing the best we can for ourselves; and that's instinct!”

“Then don't you think criminals ought to be punished, papa?” asked Olympia.

“If you can catch 'em—by all means,” said her father, laughing; “but the punishment will always be not for their crime, but for letting themselves be found out. For getting found out shows a weakness in them somewhere; and weakness is unforgivable. We're like a pack of wolves; as soon as one of us is wounded, the others tear him to pieces.”

“You are very radical!” said Stephen, encountering the other's eyes, and gradually smiling.

“Oh, it's terrible!” lamented Mrs. Allingham. “I really think, James, you ought not to jest in that way in the presence of young people. You confuse their ideas of right and wrong.”

Olympia arose and kissed her father, and stood beside him, looking down on him with radiant confidence, her arm around his neck. “Papa never confuses me,” she said. “He's the best and dearest man in the world—he and Stephen, I mean!”

“You see the way hypocrites are made!” said Allingham, laughing at Stephen.

Dorpe came in and said: “If you please, Mr. Allingham, there's a—a gentleman in the anteroom; says he called by appointment, sir. Shall I show him into the drawing-room?”

The dinner was over; they had been at nuts and raisins for sometime. Allingham stood up, and put his daughter's arm from his shoulder. He drew his napkin across his bearded lips, and threw it down with a frown. But in the same moment his brow was clear again.

“That's all right,” he said. “Take him into the study. I'm coming.”

“These business people ought to see you in your office, and not come after you here,” Olympia declared. “You belong to us, here; we don't go bursting into your office, and disturbing you there.”

“Oh, this man is a special case,” replied her father, taking her hand and patting it. “It wouldn't do to have him seen around the bank. He's a great financial genius; if our credit were to go down, he's the man to restore it. But if it were known that he and I were plotting together, the depositors would be tumbling over one another to-morrow to draw out their balances; and I shouldn't be able to afford you a trousseau.”

“I don't like such a man,” said Olympia. “Send him away, papa—or let me come into the study with you and hear what he has to say.”

She was half in earnest, and held him by the sleeve.

He seemed to hesitate a moment, and gave her an intent look Then he drew his arm away.

“No—it's too late!” he said, briskly and laughingly. “He has me in his toils, and I must sign my name in his book! Go and play with Stephen. I can't risk slipping up on that trousseau of yours, you know! Go in and play. I'll be back presently.”

Light and alert as usual, he passed from them down the wide hall. Just before he disappeared, he turned and saw them standing in the light of the chandelier; Stephen had given his arm to Mrs. Allingham, and Olympia was close to his other side, and she waved her hand and kissed her fingers to him. He returned a quick, bright nod, and was gone into the shadows.

“I know it's somebody come to beg money of him, and papa doesn't want it known, and that's why he wouldn't let him come to the bank,” said Olympia. “Papa does more good that nobody knows of than any other man in town—except you, beloved.” And she laid her cheek for a moment on her lover's shoulder.

The visitor, standing invisible in the unlighted study, saw this picture of the young man between the old woman and the girl, and the girl's gesture of love. It shone out on him, and vanished, like a glimpse of heaven. But it had found its way into a dark and stern heart. Its image remained there after the active, erect figure of his host had intervened in the doorway, and the door had closed behind him as he came in. Then the host pressed an electric button, and the room was flooded with light.

The Rubicons of life often seem to be crossed swiftly and easily; but it is only because the last step of the crossing is the first one that we take note of. There have been many previous ones, and, at each one, the chance to draw back. Allingham's soul had been, longer than he himself perhaps imagined, preparing for the culmination which had now arrived. The dark influences that guide us to evil, disguise, as long as possible, the increasing perils of the path; and when, finally, the disguises are thrown off, they have acquired other means to hold us. We may believe we are freest at the moment when we are first irrevocably slaves.

The electric light softly flooded the room; but in the same instant, the last rays of an inner light were withdrawn, and the spirit upon which they had rested stood in darkness.

and his visitor now stood face to face, and scrutinized each other with interest.

The room in which this interview took place possessed individuality. It was the private retreat of its owner, and, more than any other part of the house, reflected his traits. Both the intellectual and the emotional qualities of the man were intimated in it. It was a spacious room; the walls, to the height of a man, were lined with books in handsome cases; above them glowed pictures, uttering beauty, sublimity, or passion; in one corner, a bronze group by Rodin portrayed a girl led downward by a satyr. Beneath a stained-glass window was a deep divan, with silk cushions, and low-seated easy-chairs stood by glistening tables, with magazines and portfolios. Upon the carved mantelpiece stood tall Venetian glasses; and all those things spoke of culture, slightly tinged with the voluptuous.

But, peeping forth here and there, like untoward visages through interstices of fair foliage, were indications of another tenor. Squatting in a compartment of one of the bookcases, between books of religious and social philosophy, was an exquisitely-wrought but horrible Japanese wood-carving of a man committing hara-kiri. Under the allegorical form of the sacred Dove, in the stained-glass window, hung a stuffed South American bat, with outspread dusky wings and hideous face. Some of the most handsomely bound books bore the names of the grossest French and Italian writers. A small alcove was fitted up as a chemical laboratory, but it was noticeable that most of the drugs and solutions were poisons. On a wall of this alcove hung a drawing, badly executed, but wonderfully expressive, of a peculiarly revolting Voodoo rite. The catalogue need not be extended. Such features might be regarded simply as the excursions of a mind resolved to become philosophically conversant with all parts of nature and human nature: but, the more they were examined, the more did they seem to imply a voluntary perversity, a pregnant outlawry, a vicious curiosity, a flattered rebellion of the dark against the bright. The first impression was of an unwelcome discordance; the final one was of the deliberate profanation of good, and mockery of truth. And, doubtless, though a man may dwell long in the mere imagination and histrionics of the unlawful, a time will arrive when the facile dream stiffens into unchangeable reality, and the beguiling slave changes abruptly into the master.

Allingham's bidden guest was a sturdy man of middle height, with a powerful head and face and dark auburn, short-curling hair. He was well but unobtrusively clad in dark garments; his hands were small but very muscular; in one he carried his black derby hat, the other rested on the gold head of an ebony cane. His bearing was studiedly undemonstrative, and his countenance expressionless; but his half-closed gray eyes gathered all details and significances in a glance.

“You're Mr. Dexter Gunn, are you?” said Allingham, after a pause. “And you're the top of your profession?”

“I call myself by that name, Mr. Allingham,” replied the visitor; “and I suppose I have my points, as you have yours.” His voice was smooth and unmodulated, though with evident force behind it.

Allingham made another short pause, as if to give the personality of his interlocutor time to stamp itself upon his senses.

“Well, you look the part—I guess you'll do,” he then said. “The door of this room is locked; no one cam hear anything said here. Sit down, Mr. Gunn; we were bound to meet some time; I preferred it should be at my invitation. What will you drink?—wine?—spirits?”

“Nothing, till we've done our business. A cigar I wouldn't mind.”

The banker opened a cupboard in the writing-table, and put a box of cigars within his guest's reach. He then took one himself, and lighted it. He half sat on the edge of the table, and smoked a whiff or two; then he laid down the cigar in the ash-receiver. He had become conscious of a strange, tumultuous life welling up in him. It forced him to vibrate in unison with itself; it shook his heart and his lungs, so that his breathing was disturbed. He was grotesquely reminded of how water bubbles in a vacuum; so he, the pressure of orthodox and moral atmospheres being removed, was aware of a spiritual effervescence or exhilaration, not to be entirely concealed. He paced slowly up and down the room, forcing himself to measure his paces, and subdue the impulse to throw out his limbs violently, and to shout aloud. He tried to steady himself by glancing at the familiar contents of the room; but the aspect of all things seemed changed, disordered, and even unreal. He glanced at his own figure in a looking-glass, and was surprised to behold the decorous, succinct evening dress, and the neatly-trimmed beard and accustomed countenance; he did not know what he expected to see; but he felt that this image and himself were ridiculously dissimilar. Outrageous conceptions rioted in his mind, and words of abandoned license stuttered for utterance on the tip of his tongue. Why not utter them? He had summoned a congenial companion; let the foul flood rush forth! But he feared to do this; he had not gaged the limits of this new spirit that had entered into him; it might rend and destroy him. He must keep control of the rudder, no matter whither he steered. He found himself again standing in front of Dexter Gunn, who sat immobile, smoking his cigar. It seemed to him that years had elapsed since he last spoke to the man. He put forth all his strength, and crushed down the symptoms of insurrection within himself. But when he spoke, his voice sounded in his ears like that of a stranger.

“You've done time, of course, Mr. Gunn,” he said, grinning between his teeth. “You know the inside of 'Copper John's'? Probably think you know what solitary confinement with hard labor means? Well, you don't know anything about it; but I know it. I was sentenced fifty years ago, and this is the first hour of liberty I've had ever since! What's more, if all comes out right, it'll probably be the last. It's you let down the bars, and after you've gone, they'll put themselves up again.”

“You're a bit nervous, Mr. Allingham; it'll wear off,” said Gunn, in his low monotone. “Maybe, if we talked business, it would quiet you down.”

The banker forced himself into a chair. The paroxysm was abating a little.

“Of course, I did all my thinking before sending for you,” he remarked, after a while. “There'll be no explanations, or sentiment, or rot of any sort. I suppose you've guessed what I want of you?”

Gunn made a movement with his thick eyebrows, but remained silent.

“We can speak out, you know,” rejoined the other, with a sneering inflection. “Understand, you're in no danger here; and neither am I. Go straight from me to the captain of the precinct, if you like, and tell him all I shall tell you; I shall deny it, and it will be the word of Dexter Gunn, expert bank-burglar, against bank-president James Thorpe Allingham's, the most respected citizen of Pennborough. On the other hand, we can be of use to each other. There's the situation, in two words.”

“What can I do for you, Mr. Allingham?”

The banker hated the formal address; he would have liked his companion to call him “Jim,” and slap him on the shoulder; yet he was a man with whom no one had ever ventured to take a liberty. But he was tuned to other music now.

“I want you to rob the Roystone Bank!” he said, letting his voice out harshly.

“Steady!” said Gunn, coldly. “We don't shout in our profession. You'll find etiquette everywhere, Mr. Allingham. I follow my business; but I try to be respectable, in my way. I do what's necessary—no more and no less. I know a little about banks and bankers; you and I are after the same thing, only on different lines. But once in a while you get caught foul, and then you … May I put a question?”

“Go ahead!”

“You're insolvent, of course; speculated with the funds, and they're gone; mortgaged your house and furniture; owe three or four times what you can pay. Blinds will be up in another week. All right. Then why don't you skip, in place of calling in me?”

Allingham laughed. “Oh, I've a wife and daughter; and I expect to be a father-in-law next Fall. Besides, I don't care to be beat; I mean to carry on here.”

Gunn meditated a moment. “The young lady and gentleman I saw through the door just now?”

The fire reddened through Allingham's eyes. “They're not what we're here to discuss,” he said, angrily.

“I'll be the judge of that,” returned the other, impassively. “If you care for the girl, or for anybody else, it's an element of risk. If she should suspect anything, and come at you wheedling, maybe you'd give the thing away.”

Allingham reflected, and controlled his temper; but a satanic expression twisted across his face. “A risk?” he chuckled. “Well, take it or leave it! If I didn't care for her, you wouldn't be having the biggest chance of your career. Do you think I look so soft?”

“That isn't the trouble with your kind, Mr. Allingham,” replied Gunn. “I've seen some of your sort before. When you go crooked, the danger is of your going too far—until you get used to it. Is this your first job?”

An irrational fury flamed up in the banker; his muscles grew tense, as if for a spring. But he realized his own irrationality, and finally replied, quietly but sardonically: “Oh, Mr. Gunn, you flatter me! No, I'm a virgin.”

Gunn meditated again. “I don't like the looks of it over well. What is there in it for me?”

“There's a hundred and sixty-five thousand in the safe to-day,” answered Allingham, now finding himself speaking more naturally. “If you can get to it, that's your wages. You must chisel it open, or blow it open, of course; there must be no doubt about the robbery. Then you'll get credit for having taken a couple of millions, and the bank for having lost that amount. I shall call a directors' meeting, and they will vote to make good. How does all that commend itself to your judgment?”

“Does anybody except you and me know of the scheme?” Gunn inquired. “Your Mr. Calverly, for instance?”

“Calverly? You've studied us up a little, I see! But you evidently don't know Calverly. No, if I could have talked to any one else, I wouldn't be talking to you. My rope was a long one, but I've come to the end of it, and I don't mean to hang myself with it. I'd heard of that New York adventure of yours, a year or two ago; and—well, here we are!”

“That's all right. But I could tell you of a banking man, as it might be yourself, being caught like you are, gets a young clerk of his to grab a few hundreds, and skip over to Canada. The bank gives out he got into them to the tune of as many hundred thousand, the directors pony up, and the clerk is taken care of. That's one way. But if your Mr. Calverly isn't that kind of a sport, it wouldn't work.”

“And it counts for nothing, from your point of view, that the plan involves the ruining of a clerk; whereas mine only gives a crook another opportunity to be crooked?” added Allingham, sarcastically.

“Why, as for that, Mr. Allingham,” said Gunn, some overt insolence creeping for the first time into his tone, as he folded his hands before him, and held his cigar between his teeth, “if you measure the bank-presidents and the bank-burglars up against each other, I don't know but what you'd find, of the two sorts of crooks, that the bank-presidents were as bad as the burglars, and a good bit meaner and more cowardly. We do our jobs, under the noses of the cops, and we keep ourselves to ourselves, or we get jugged, as may be; you live in your houses and do the society fling, while all the time you're picking the pockets, not only of the rich folks that come to your parties, but of the poor tradesmen whom you're too refined to allow among your acquaintances. And if the cops, or the judges, get wind of you, you know how to fix them; you don't take the chances we do. I'll tell you another thing, Mr. Allingham—and you may as well sit tight and hear me, for I'm your master at any game you can put up in this room to-night, and I don't have the chance every night to chat sociably like this with a gentleman of your standing and intelligence—as I was saying, there's your daughter, a nice-looking young lady, and good, I make no doubt, and going to get married to a nice young doctor, and both of 'em thinking the world of you. Now, I'm called a bad man, and I don't say otherwise, and if you corner me when I'm cracking a crib, and there's no other way out, I'd kill you all in the day's work, and think no more of it. But I saw you to-night, coming from that girl to me, and she kissing her hand after you; and when we're through with our business, you'll go back to her and kiss her good night; and all the while, you're a thief and a crook, with no more right to her good thoughts—barring that you're her father—than I have. You've lived on velvet all your life; been to college, most likely, and had the pick of the best right along from the start. I'm a crook, and have lived with crooks, and if I've education enough to talk straight, I can thank myself for it. But if a young lady like your daughter was to look and act and feel toward me as she does to you, I should feel queer—I wouldn't want to stand for it. I'll tell what you don't know, and maybe won't believe, but it's truth just the same, we crooks put a limit—we draw the line; it may be low down, but it's there. But a gentleman that goes crooked, like you, Mr. Allingham, draws no line at all; he's rotten clear through, lock, stock and barrel. And between you and me, sociably, here by ourselves, that's what I take you to be. So,” added Gunn, taking his cigar from between his teeth, and knocking off the ash into the receiver, “when you talk about the shame of corrupting a poor innocent clerk, and preferring to hire a professional like me, I say to myself, 'This is from the gentleman who feels nothing queer in setting up his rottenness on a pedestal for a good young girl and her intended to worship and fondle and take into their hearts, and giving it out to the folks he's robbing that he's the innocent victim of the robbery.” And that's why I don't take your rebuke so hard as I might otherwise, Mr. Allingham. I shall take on this job, for, as you say, that amount don't often come my way so easy; but if things were to go wrong with you after this, and you came into the profession as a regular, my sort wouldn't want to work with you; you'd have to go down among the pickpockets, if they'd have you. Well, I believe that lets me out.”

During the few minutes while Gunn was speaking, Allingham passed up and down a gamut of emotions. A burglar was taking an authoritative tone with him, was criticizing him in an insulting and degrading manner, and was actually reading him a sort of moral lecture. The banker's sense of humor bade him laugh in mockery; his masculine instinct challenged him to resent the attack physically; but in both directions he found himself met by an unfamiliar and alarming impotence. Hitherto in his career he had been the master or leader of his associates; but now, having abandoned his own ground for another's, he had found a master in him. The late exhilaration of defying old boundaries had unmasked itself as the fatal inherent weakness of the criminal, increased by that criminal's desire to retain his social prestige. The romance of evil had quickly been replaced by its debasing ugliness. His shield of society was lost, his sword of character blunted, and without these he discovered that his personal equation was helpless. He could do nothing. He dared not even—now that it had gone so far—discontinue the negotiation. Possibly, however, he might find a way to revenge himself secretly or indirectly; and it was with this undefined hope that he went on. His brains at least were left him, and the resource of the defeated—dissimulation.

“You have the best of the argument, Mr. Gunn,” he said, pleasantly. “I'm in a hole, and I'm willing to sacrifice anything to get out—except one thing—my social standing, and I regard that mainly for the sake of persons dear to me. No doubt, your position in the matter is more decent than mine; anyhow, you're the man to help me through, and I think the price for your services ought to satisfy you.”

Gunn assented with a movement of the lips. “What about the details?” he added.

“I'll give you keys to the doors of the building, and I'll see that the night-watchman is out of the way. You must look after the policeman on the beat yourself; he's an Irishman. The safe you must tackle for yourself; the worse you wreck it the better. As for the time, to-morrow night would suit me.”

Gunn took his hat and stood up. “One hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars, you said?”

“There may be a few drafts or deposits to-morrow; but that is about what you'll find there.”

Gunn looked him in the eyes for a moment. The banker divined the significance of that look, and it roused a helpless fury in him. But he smiled.

“I'll have to take your word for it,” said Gunn, at length, and he turned to go.

“You must drink a glass of wine with me now,” said Allingham, bringing a bottle out of the cupboard. He filled two glasses, and lifted his. Gunn did the same; the glasses touched. They drank, and again looked at each other.

“That's good stuff,” Gunn remarked, as he set down his glass. “If all goes right, I shall go South after this; you won't hear of me in the profession again. I've had enough. That girl of yours will be the better for this job—but don't let her know!”

“Good luck to you!” said Allingham. He stood twisting his pointed beard, and smiling; he was ready to shake hands, should Gunn offer it. But the latter again turned, and put his hand on the handle of the door. Allingham accompanied him into the hall.

“Papa!” called Olympia's voice, from the drawing-room, “won't your friend come in and have a cup of tea with us?”

“Will you come? Why not?” said Allingham, laying a hand on the other's arm.

Gunn shook the hand off, with a low, surly laugh. That laugh humiliated and enraged Allingham more than anything else that had passed between them that evening. He thought it meant, “And you pretend to care for her!”

As Gunn descended the steps to the street, an unobtrusive, round-shouldered figure passed him, and glanced into his face with a pair of deep-set, steady gray eyes. It was Calverly, who often thus patrolled the sidewalk at night before the house where lived the girl he loved. Gunn gave him no attention, and walked off in the opposite direction. But many years' training at the cashier's window had given Calverly the faculty of quickly stamping a face on his memory, and, though without suspicions, he never forgot that grim countenance.

the Arabian fairy-tale, the prince, setting out to journey toward the object of his desire, is attended by two servants, one white, the other black. The former tries to dissuade him from his purpose, assuring him that harm awaits him; the other removes all the obstacles interposed by the first, and whispers to him of gain and pleasure. Between the two, the prince is left free choice; and his choice is evil.

It is an old and a true wisdom that confesses that the path to good is never closed to man, and that in the deepest temptations he is wooed, by all means that do not involve his freedom of action, to take it. Love and honor wooed Allingham during that evening, and the day following. It seemed as if Olympia had never clung so close to him, had never expressed such trust in him and pride in him; at times he could almost have believed that she was acting with knowledge of what impended. She was accustomed to serve his breakfast to him alone in the mornings, Mrs. Allingham rising late; and she spoke of her feeling that love was the greatest thing in the world, and that she and Stephen Bentinck had been telling each other that they meant to do without help from him in their married life, and that the thought of comparative poverty made them happy, because it would keep them more livingly conscious of each other's loving presence. and support. “Oh, a few thousand dollars to square the bills at the year's end won't do love any harm, you'll find,” returned her father, with an effort to maintain his customary air of good-humored sarcasm; but the girl put her arms round his neck and said, “No, father; I think we think too much of money, or the kind of good it gives us. It does not make us happy. I think you are not always happy, papa, though you have so much money. I love you with all my heart, but I would love you more if you were poor.”

This pure, unselfish atmosphere stifled him. He put her away, laughing between his teeth, and went earlier than usual to the bank. There he found a couple of the directors waiting for him, and for a moment his heart stopped, but they had come to remind him that this was the twenty-fifth anniversary of his conduct of the bank, and that the board of directors requested his presence at a reception that night, when a testimonial of their esteem and confidence would be presented to him. The two gentlemen were very cordial and cheerful, and at parting wrung his hand with most friendly heartiness. “Till to-night!” said they, and he nodded brightly, and thought, “To-night!” Then a voice, so clear that he started at it, seemed to say in his ear, “Confess all to them now—quick, before they are gone!” But he hardened himself, and stood, panting; and it was too late.

At the noon hour, he sent out for some luncheon, deciding not to go home, and presently there was a knock at his room door, and, at his sharp and nervous, “Come in!” Calverly entered. He said, with some hesitations and embarrassed hiatuses, that he cared more for the honor and credit of the bank, and of those concerned with it, than for anything else; that his salary was more than sufficient for all his wants; that he had, indeed, laid by a considerable sum, which had been increased by fortunate investments, and now amounted to about twenty thousand dollars; that he was aware this was relatively an insignificant amount, measured by the financial standards of the bank, but that sometimes even a little space might bridge the distance between safety and danger; that he had not been able to rid himself of the notion that some danger existed; in fact, that certain facts and rumors which had come to his knowledge within the past day or two had led him to apprehend that the bank might even be threatened by some peril from without; and that—but at this point Allingham impatiently broke in upon him.

“For mercy's sake, Calverly, what ails you? Do you know me so little as to come to me with rumors and hearsay? Aren't you satisfied with fancying the bank is going insolvent, but you must now think we're going to be burglarized?—for I don't know what else you can be hinting at. And what's this about your savings. I almost believe you are going to offer them to me to fill the gap your imagination has created? Is that it?”

The cashier reddened painfully, but the intensity of his feeling gave him power to go on. “Please don't be offended, Mr. Allingham; I meant no disrespect or impertinence. The one satisfaction I can have in this world is to be of service to you and yours. Let me pay in this small sum to the credit of the bank. It can do no harm, and it might—it might'”

Allingham interrupted with his mocking laugh; but he saw that the time had come when he must lie, not merely constructively or indirectly, “There, but precisely and definitely. you're a good fellow, and I appreciate it, and all that,” he said; “but—sit down here; we'll have this thing out once and for all. I haven't told you this before, because, to be frank with you, it's none of your business; but just in confidence, between you and me, here it is. I have in this drawer”—he laid his hand upon an inner receptacle of his desk—“something like two and a half million of gilt-edged securities, as good as bullion, or better, and this afternoon I shall, with my own hands, put them in the safe and lock them up. The bank has been engaging in large enterprises lately, and I can understand your uneasiness, but we have been especially favored by—well—in some very high quarters indeed, and to-day we are in better shape than we have ever been before. I don't say we're safe, simply; I say we're absolutely invulnerable. Look here, Calverly, I ought to be fired out of office for taking you into my confidence like this—even the directors don't know the facts—so I'm at the mercy of your discretion! But that face of yours makes me really unhappy. Do, now, for pity's sake, shorten it up again, and come to dinner to-morrow—Stephen is to be in New York, I believe, at a meeting of the Medical Society—and let me hear you talk of something else than my insolvency and your savings! Now get out of here, and leave me to my luncheon.”

So that was over, and the banker's spirits revived. He felt strong enough to face the event that was at hand. Heaven had appealed to him on all sides and had been rejected, and he was now attuned to receive advances from an opposite direction.

Calverly, meanwhile, though once more somewhat comforted by Allingham's assurances, could not rid himself of a certain disquiet, occasioned not so much, now, by fears for the financial stability of the Roystone Bank, as by some reports which had reached his ears relative to the suspected presence in town of two or three suspicious characters. The tale had come to him in a roundabout way; an acquaintance of his in an insurance office had told him that he had heard from a friend of his in a detective agency that some well-known crooks had recently left for Pennborough, from New York. The story might not be true, or it might mean nothing, and Calverly had not had the courage to repeat it explicitly to Allingham, but he could not prevent it from haunting his mind. Thus it happened that, near midnight of that pleasant Summer night, his uneasy spirit drove him forth from his lodgings and led him down Walton street, on which the Roystone Bank stood. There was no moon, and soft clouds were drifting in masses across the sky. The bank stood next door to an old brick building, which had been recently vacated by the tenant, and was to be torn down; there was a small courtyard in the rear of it, into which opened a back-door of the bank. A person leaving the bank by this exit, and crossing the yard, could reach the neighboring cross street through a short alleyway.

A private night-watchman had his post in this region, and there was also a policeman who covered it in his beat every ten or fifteen minutes. After standing in front of the bank for a while, Calverly was surprised to note that neither of these protectors of property made his appearance. At this juncture, the steps of a man walking swiftly were audible coming down Walton street, and the figure became visible rapidly approaching. As he came up, he slackened his gait, and he and Calverly mutually recognized each other. It was Stephen Bentinck, returning home from a professional call.

“Mr. Calverly!” he exclaimed. “Is it a bad conscience, or need of fresh air, that drives you abroad at this hour?”

His full, pleasant voice was welcome in the cashier's ears, for though the young physician was to marry the girl that Calverly loved, the latter's honest heart had never borne him a grudge, and had always recognized his manly and winning qualities.

“I feel uncomfortable about the bank, Dr. Bentinck,” he said, in tones that faltered a little. “I heard that there was a party of thieves come to town; the night-watchman and the patrolman are both absent, and I can't help thinking there may be something wrong.”

Bentinck gave him a frank, penetrating look and smile.

“You don't mean you think there are burglars in there now?”

“I was thinking that perhaps I would as well step in and see, doctor.”

“In that case, hadn't you better let me come with you?” said Bentinck. “Two knights-errant are better than one, in such a case, and I used to be good at a scrap when I was in college. Have you got the keys? Come on!”

“Well, I'm sure it's very kind of you, doctor,” replied the cashier. “Of course, I suppose it's only my foolishness, but, if you don't mind, I suppose it can do no harm.” And so saying, he unlocked the door of the bank, and he and Bentinck entered.

had made his dispositions with the prudence and circumspection of an experienced general. The watchman had been disposed of, as agreed, by Allingham; the policeman, Tom MacBride, had been beguiled away by a smart-looking young Irishman, who wished to consult with him as to the best way to get on the force. The aspirant had money, and seemed anxious to spend it, and MacBride and he spent several very important hours in the back parlor of a neighboring hostelry. The outside coast being thus cleared, Gunn, with a single assistant, waited his opportunity to get into the bank unobserved, and immediately set to work on the safe. It was an imposing-looking fortress, but, as the burglars saw at a glance, not built according to the latest ideas in safe-architecture. Nothing would be needed beyond the screw and the jack; the men worked hard and eagerly, sweat pouring from their faces in the confined room, for burglary keeps both body and mind on the stretch. In less than fifteen minutes, the massive door yawned open, and before them lay fortune, and a life of ease and comfort in Mexico or Chili.

“This is too easy!” muttered Gunn's companion, wiping his forehead. “Seems almost a shame to take the money!”

“Get hold of it first,” Gunn answered. “I don't half believe in that silver-headed old scoundrel, yet!”

For the next few minutes no words were spoken; the two men were busy opening drawers and boxes and pulling over bundles of papers. There were documents enough, but as yet neither negotiable bonds nor bank-notes.

“Here's three hundred in fives, to begin with!” exclaimed the pal, tearing open a small package, and running over the contents between his thumb and finger.

“Three hundred!” returned Gunn, in a grim whisper. “Where's the rest of it?”

Once more they pursued their search, with growing dismay and rage. In a short time, the big safe stood empty. Everything in it had been examined in vain. There was nothing else of value—nothing! Three hundred dollars was the total of the booty!

As the men realized this, they stared in each other's faces. The pal uttered a curse. Gunn rose to his feet.

“It was a clever trick, Mr. James Thorpe Allingham,” he said, in a very gentle voice. “But it will cost you something, and that I promise you.” He brushed the dust from his hands and trousers, and began to pick up the tools. “You're having your health drunk at the directors' meeting at this minute. I'll give you blood to drink before you get home.”

“They're on to us!” cried the other, hoarsely in his throat, making a leap to close the door of the partition; but he was not in time.

Stephen Bentinck, supple and athletic, had his shoulder against the panel, and exerting his strength, forced the door back against the burglar. The latter aimed a blow at him with the jimmy; Stephen evaded it, and it struck Calverly, who was close behind, a glancing blow on the head, knocking him down and partly stunning him. The fellow turned and fled through the back entrance, and so out through the yard and alley, leaving Dexter Gunn to shift for himself.

“Do you resist arrest?” demanded Stephen. His eyes glowed, his kindly, handsome face was alight, the blood of battle was singing in his veins. His heart was steeled for a struggle, but far in the depths of it was the image of Olympia, and his love for her.

“Keep clear of me, young fellow,” said Gunn, quietly. “It's not you I wish to hurt. Let me go peaceably. There's been no harm done here.”

Stephen, confident in his skill as wrestler and boxer, stepped warily forward. Then he saw Gunn's hand move toward his pistol pocket, and leaped at him. They strained together for a few moments; Gunn was far the stronger, but Bentinck had the science of the game. There was a sudden twist and whirl, and the burglar was down, with Bentinck on top of him. His hands were on Gunn's windpipe; and the latter, at the same moment, saw Calverly rising unsteadily to his feet. Gunn's right arm, as he fell, had been twisted under his back. With a furious heave of his body, he got it out, and found his revolver.

“Let me out!” he growled.

“You're my prisoner,” panted Stephen.

Then the burglar pressed the mouth of the revolver against the other's heart, and fired. Stephen held himself up for an instant, then fell, relaxed, across his antagonist's body. Gunn rolled him to one side, and rose. Calverly, uttering a cry, staggered toward him. Gunn, with a sidewise swing of the foot, knocked the cashier's legs from under him, and he fell headlong. With a gloomy glance at the body of his other assailant, he turned and passed out.

Calverly, dragging himself dizzily to his knees, found himself alone with the dead. He shook his head confusedly from side to side.

“Why couldn't he have killed me!” he groaned. “I knew him—I knew him! and oh, God, now I know it all!”

Allingham's overcoat pocket, as he walked home from the reception at half-past twelve that night, was a golden salver, beautifully wrought, with an inscription testifying to the honor and esteem in which his friends held him. It was to be handed down as an heirloom to the latest generations of his happy posterity. Allingham had appeared in excellent spirits and form that evening, and had made one of his wittiest speeches in response to the address of the donors. Now, as he stepped briskly down the elm-shadowed street, he glanced at his watch. Was that job at the bank accomplished yet? On an impulse of characteristic audacity, he determined to go home by way of the bank—it was not much further—and have a look at the building. He turned down Webster street, and soon came to the northeast corner of Walton. A man was walking rapidly away from him, down the side street from the bank. It was Dexter Gunn, but Allingham could not recognize him at that distance. Had Gunn happened to walk in the other direction, the two men would have met, and Gunn was in a murderous mood. But fate had arranged things otherwise.

As Allingham came opposite the bank, he paused a moment, and eyed it curiously. Had his friends the burglars yet discovered the trick he had played upon them? It had been played on the spur of a moment—an inspiration to pay off the grudge against the fellow who had insulted him. Gunn would have to swallow his medicine; he would dare make no complaint. Meanwhile, the money thus stolen from the thief could be usefully applied to his own expenses during the coming few weeks of turmoil and excitement. He chuckled to himself. The bank appeared quiet and undisturbed, and Allingham walked on. At that moment, Calverly, within, was summoning energy to grope his way out from the wrecked safe and the dead body, and give the alarm. But before he could do this, Allingham had passed out of hearing.

On reaching home, he let himself in softly, and went to his room. For some hours he was wakeful, thinking of the immediate future, and preparing the rôle he would have to play. There would be much vain hue and cry, meetings of the directors, great sympathy and condolence; finally, reorganization, and himself as president once more. It would be rather amusing. Then, in the Fall, Olympia's wedding. Perhaps, after they had started on their wedding journey, he himself would slip away for a few months' vacation in Europe, to rest himself from the shock and fatigue of the calamity. There was a smile on the banker's face as he fell, at length, into a heavy sleep.

Olympia, who always rose early, was awake sooner than usual this morning. She went out on the front porch, to smell the roses that clambered over the trellis, and with a hope in her heart, too, that Stephen might be passing—as he sometimes did—and then they would exchange a kiss and a few words, and she would give him the loveliest of the roses.

She selected and plucked the rose, but Stephen did not come. Presently, however, the newspaper-boy came hurrying up the drive, with papers under his arm. As he caught sight of Olympia, he gave her a strange, frightened glance, tossed a paper to her feet, and then set off again at top speed.

Amused at his aspect and behavior, she picked up the paper, and smoothed it out, ready for her father's perusal; he liked to have her bring him the morning paper. As the poor girl opened it, the black headlines, crowding across the top of the first page, caught her eye. She read them, and became very still.

Something must be wrong with her eyes—with her head. She had never before been affected in this way. Her arms, too, seemed like lead, and her fingers were numb. With an effort, she lifted the paper once more, and again fixed her eyes on the page. How the words danced! She could not make them stand still. She remained staring at them a long time.

At last, with a low, whimpering cry, she stretched out her arms, and murmuring: “Stephen—papa—help—help me!” she turned to reënter the open door. On the threshold she fell prone, with the rose in her bosom, and the paper open beside her.

Allingham sat in his study, and Calverly stood before him. A week had passed since the robbery of the Roystone Bank. The inquest, at which Calverly had given testimony, had taken place; the police had begun their futile pursuit of the murderer; Stephen Bentinck's funeral had been held, and now the former cashier and the president faced each other in an interview which the former had requested.

“Sit down, won't you, Calverly?” said Allingham, in a dull, indifferent voice. “You know I don't see callers now, but I made an exception in your case, because … suppose you've come to ask about the reorganization. That's a question for the directors to settle. I presume it will take place ultimately. I'm not able to think of these matters at present. Mrs. Allingham has been laid up ever since—and Olympia … anxious about her … But, sit down.”

“I'll stand, if you please, Mr. Allingham,” replied the cashier. “I have some statements to make to you—some statements which I ought to make to you, I think—which I did not think it right to make at the inquest.”

“Oh, I have nothing to do with that,” said Allingham, wearily. “You should go to the chief of police. I am making no investigations.”

“I should say, in the first place,” continued Calverly, not noticing the banker's words, “that whether the bank resumes or not, I sha'n't be in it any more.”

“Really? Well—oh, you want a recommendation? All right, I'll”

“I want nothing from you, Mr. Allingham. I—” his voice failed him, but after a pause he went on—'I want to speak of the night before the robbery. You had a caller here that night. You received him in this room, alone.”

There came a singing in Allingham's ears, and a sensation of nausea; his nerves had been failing him of late. He could not keep a faintness out of his voice as he replied: “Was there? Did I? Possibly; I often see persons here. What?”

“I was passing the side door into the street as he came out. I saw his face, Mr. Allingham—I saw it distinctly. I could not have forgotten it in years. But it was only a little over twenty-four hours when I saw him again. I knew him! Oh, I knew him!”

An irrepressible tremor, which he strove to disguise by grasping the arms of his chair, passed through Allingham's body. “You saw him?”

“I recognized him as he stood up after shooting Dr. Bentinck through the heart. I could have begged him to shoot me. For I understood it all then; and I'd rather have been dead. I had always believed in you, and looked up to you. Oh, my God!”

The passion that trembled hoarsely in his usually mild and subdued tones rang through the room, and struck cold on the banker's heart. But the innate courage of the man rose, after a few moments, to meet the deadly emergency. He sat erect in his chair.

“Let us understand each other, Calverly. I comprehend your insinuation. What do you intend to do? Do you wish to profit by this information—this?”

The cashier put up his trembling hands. “Oh, Mr. Allingham—oh, Mr. Allingham! Nothing you've ever known of me gives you the right to make that suggestion. I pretend to have no evidence that could be used against you in law; but if I had, what would be the difference? No law that man has made can punish you. You and I and that murderer know what you are, and what you've done; no one else will ever know it. You are her father—you are her father, Mr. Allingham. She must never suspect—she must always believe in you. I would kill you myself, rather than she should suspect. But I felt it was right that you should know that I know you. I couldn't keep it to myself—I had to tell you. The murderer must escape; if he were captured, the truth would come out. You must protect the man who killed your daughter's husband that was to be. You must go through life being honored and trusted by everybody, for her sake. You mustn't commit suicide, Mr. Allingham, for that would be confession. Every night and every morning, you must let that girl put her arms round your neck and kiss you, and believe in you, and you must pretend that you deserve it. What is the use of our talking about human law? What could human law ever do to you, Mr. Allingham, to be compared with what you've done to yourself? You are dead and in hell already, and yet you must live, and make that angel believe that you are worthy to be her father.”

He stopped abruptly; and the emotion which had given fire to his dull eyes and dignity to his homely and common features dropped from him like a prophet's mantle. He seemed visibly to dwindle and grow cold.

“That's all, I think, Mr. Allingham,” he said, uncertainly. “I don't quite know what I've said; but I believe that is all. I shall remain an inhabitant of this town, for I don't wish to be where she couldn't reach me, if she needed my help. But you won't see any more of me, Mr. Allingham, so I bid you good day.”

He had moved away, and got to the door, when Allingham spoke.

“Good-bye, Calverly. I've always thought you a poor, feeble creature, and despised you. But some power, greater than we are, has given it to you to put me to shame and crush me down. You're quite right about it all. I'm glad you found me out, too. It's a comfort to have one human being know that I'm a hypocrite, and a coward, and a scoundrel. I'd have gone cracked, otherwise, I believe. Good thing that you're going to stay in town. I shall look you up once in a while, just to feel that you know me still. Yes, it'll be a hard job to keep that halo of mine in commission; but I promise you I'll do it, till it kills me. Well, good-bye.”

Mr. Allingham survived his honors and prosperity three years more; he seemed a very old man when he died. When death came, he met it with a smile that was almost a laugh. His wife and daughter are still living, much devoted to charities. Calverly calls on them occasionally; they see very little of society. In Olympia's room are pictures of her father and of Stephen Bentinck, and she always keeps fresh flowers blooming before them.