Here he turned suddenly and confronted the big man.
“Mr. Esseltine,” he asked pleasantly, “didn’t you overdraw your account a trifle just now.”
“Who are you to ask so insulting a question?” Esseltine asked coldly.
“Who am I?” the detective replied evenly. “Oh, I’m Dan Cheever of Chicago. Lucky that I got here Monday instead of Tuesday, eh, Esseltine? I see that we understand each other, which simplifies matters. You’ll come quietly of course, which proves your good breeding. Hayes and I will step down to your office with you for a little friendly chat.”
V
Just at closing time Cheever reentered the bank and sauntered over to the President’s office. Entering, he seated himself leisurely in a leather chair and, waving aside the tumbling questions with which the excited President bombarded him, asked for teller number one.
“Sit down, Hackett,” the detective said genially when the teller appeared.
Then he turned on him a quizzical eye as he asked:
“How much were you short last week, remember?”
“I’d think so, Mr. Cheever,” Hackett assured him gloomily. “A man isn’t likely to forget four thousand dollars.”
“Four thousand,” Cheever mused, “plus five thousand today, makes nine thousand dollars. A tidy little sum, Hackett?”
“Five thousand today,” Hackett gasped.
“Sure enough,” the detective grinned amiably, “You didn’t expect anything but a grandstand finish, did you?”
“I’d say,” the irascible Wines flared up at this point, “that your levity is just a little misplaced, Mr. Cheever. Losing nine thousand dollars may seem a huge joke to you but most emphatically it’s mot to me.”
“Losing it is not so hard,” the detective chuckled, “if you get it back. See what Esseltine returns with his compliments.”
Then with deliberation he drew from his pocket a roll of bills wrapped about with a bit of string and tossed it carelessly across the table to the teller.
With an inarticulate cry, Hackett seized the roll, untwisted the string, and with feverish haste thumbed over the bills.
“About nine thousand there?” Cheever inquired when the count was finished.
“Just,” the teller nodded, "though I can hardly believe it. It seems too good. I’m certainly a grateful man, Mr. Cheever.”
“How did he get five thousand dollars today?” Wines asked excitedly.
The detective leaned back in his chair and lighted his pipe before he answered.
“Simplest thing in the world, Mr. Wines. He drew out his account twice, that’s all. Once at noon, when Dykes was at the window, and a little later when Hackett got back from lunch. You see,” he continued, “he was probably about ready to quit — a game like he was playing can’t go on forever — and when he read that little article in the paper this morning he figured his day’s work was done. And if I hadn’t interfered,” he added, “the bank would have been short nine thousand, permanently.”
“What makes you think that,” Wines inquired.
“Because it’s a hundred to one bet that you’d have never even suspected Esseltine of the crooked work.”
“With two of his checks in our hands, both of them drawing out his entire balance?” Wines sneered. “You fail to give us credit for even average intelligence, Mr. Cheever. Why, we’d have had the wires hot all over the United States within an hour after the bank closed its doors tonight.”
“Provided you had two checks,” Cheever said quietly.
“Why, what do you mean?” the banker exclaimed excitedly. “Didn’t you say that he cashed one with Dykes and one with Hackett? When did one plus one cease to be two?”
“Mr. Wines,” Cheever grinned cheerfully. “Your arithmetic is above par, but the simple fact remains that you now, at this present writing, have but one check for five thousand dollars signed by Gabriel Esseltine. And now don’t go into apoplexy just yet,” he advised the banker, “but listen a moment while I propound a simple question to Hackett here.”
“Hackett,” said he, “a man carrying an account with this bank cashes a check at your window for one hundred dollars. Now suppose you lose that check in the course of the day, where would you be at night?”
“A hundred dollars short, of course,” Hackett answered promptly, “but there’s so little chance—”
“I said suppose you do lose it?” the detective cut in. “You’d be short, wouldn’t you?”
Hackett nodded, dimly conscious that back of this simple question lay a whole realm of mystery which this calm-faced man had already explored.
Then with startling suddenness he turned to President Wines.
“Let me see that check I gave you for safe keeping,” he demanded.
Mechanically the banker arose, unlocked an inconspicuous drawer in his private desk and reached within, then turned about slowly, empty fingers working spasmodically.
“It’s gone,” he croaked.
“ ‘Where the woodbine twineth,’ ” Cheever quoted softly. He sat there a moment before he continued:
“Naturally you want to know how I unraveled this thing. Now you’ll remember that I took the checks which passed through Hackett’s window and lined them up on that table in the directors’ room. And, Mr. Wines, you’ll recall that when I left the room at noon Saturday, to get a drink, I locked the door after me?”
Wines nodded his remembrance.
“Well, when I came back not more than ten minutes later, I found that one of the checks had disappeared.”
The President started to ask a question at this point but Cheever forestalled it.
“Wait a moment,” he protested. “A careful and thorough search proved conclusively that it was not in the room. Now the door being in plain sight, I discarded it as a probable means of entrance, but I did find that this window here, which leads into the directors’ room, was unlatched.”
“Some employee then,” Wines exclaimed, but the detective again cut him off.
“I think that is the conclusion the average man would come to,” he said enigmatically, “and there was but one bit of evidence, a tiny rift of ashes on the spot left vacant by the removal of the check.”
Abruptly he turned to Hackett.
“Ever notice any ashes mixed up in your checks?” he asked sharply.
“No — yes, I have too!” the teller fairly stuttered in his excitement.
“Mr. Cheever,” Wines said with finality, “the employees of the bank are not allowed to smoke in the building, so—”
“Where there’s ashes there’s fire,” the detective assured him dryly. “Now that little drift of ashes on the table interested me. I collected it carefully, and Sunday spent some anxious moments over it. Of course a novice can tell pipe ashes from cigarette ashes—”
“Which was it?” Wines cut in eagerly.
“Mr. Wines, it was neither.”
“Neither?” the banker echoed.
Cheever leaned nearer.
“Not tobacco ashes at all, Mr. Wines, but the ash left when paper is eaten up with certain chemicals! You see it now of course. Esseltine cashed with you, among his others, some checks treated with powerful chemicals, whose mutual reaction was so timed that in a brief while, at least within an hour, the check literally disappeared. Hayes and I tried the mixture at his office just before I came back this afternoon and it’s odorless and colorless, with absolutely no sensation of heat or cold. It was certainly uncanny to sit there and watch a piece of paper disappear before your eyes. That explains the losses at Hackett’s window. Esseltine cashed checks that were converted into ghosts of checks in short order.”