“What’s this room?”
“The Directors’,” the other answered.
“I’ll use it,” Cheever informed him. “Now, Mr. Wines, I want the checks from Hackett’s window all brought in here. Have one of the clerks do it quietly, let’s see. every half hour.”
“What are you going to do with them?” Wines asked in surprise.
“Play solitaire,” Cheever grinned.
“Don’t you want to look over the bank any farther?”
“No, Mr. Wines, I’m satisfied. I like this room. It’s private and handy, though not a good listening post. Don’t let any one bother me, and don’t forget to send me Hackett’s checks, all of them too, every half hour. And Mr. Wines,” he added, “the clerk won’t need to open the door very wide. Just let him knock and then stick them in through the crack.”
He entered the directors’ room, turned on the light and closed the door, while the considerably mystified President proceeded to carry out his rather remarkable orders.
III
“What do you make of him?” the cashier inquired as Wines returned to the front office.
“He puzzles me,” the President answered frankly. “Right now he’s preempted the directors’ room.”
“He’s spying on the customers,” Ector hazarded.
But the President shook his head doubtfully.
“He’s gathering in the checks that pass through window number one; asked me to have a clerk pass them through the half-opened door, mind you.”
“What’s the idea?”
“I can’t guess. However, he told me that he was going to play solitaire with them, or maybe he said solo. I take it from that that he didn’t care to tell me just exactly what he did propose to do.”
“I believe he’s just beating the air, hoping that he will stumble onto something,” the cashier sniffed.
“It may be,” Wines agreed wearily, “but we’ll give him a fair chance at any rate.”
In the meantime, Cheever lighted his pipe and then quite leisurely examined the directors’ quarters. It had but one door, though windows opened out, both into the lobby and onto the President’s room. All were covered with tightly drawn blinds, so by switching off the light and lifting a curtain slightly Cheever was able secretly to observe the string of customers lined up before window number one. By similar methods he could spy equally on the President’s office, he also ascertained, though he tarried there but long enough to demonstrate that fact.
A knock at the door announced the arrival of the first batch of checks, and now the detective took them from the clerk’s fingers and proceeded to lay them out separately on the table, face up. They formed two tolerable rows pretty well across the length of the big mahogany table, proving that Hackett’s job was at least not a sinecure.
A cursory inspection showed that he was dealing with people accustomed to think in considerable sums, for Cheever found checks among them ranging up to five thousand dollars.
“Handles the big bugs,” the detective grunted. “No penny-ante bunch this time, Dan.”
With the checks laid out end to end, Cheever, beginning at the upper left hand corner, subjected each in turn to a careful and exacting scrutiny. To use the legal phrase, “all four corners,” were examined both with the naked eye and later with the aid of a powerful reading glass. He had scarcely completed this, when the second handful of checks arrived. These in their turn were treated in the same manner as the first. By noon the top of the table was carpeted with long lines of checks, as if so many giant snowflakes had fallen and lay there still unmelted.
“Mr. Cheever,” a voice which he recognized as that of President Wines called from the passageway.
The detective opened the door, and the thick eddying tobacco smoke which poured out made the President fairly gasp.
“I work best under the cover of smoke screen,” Cheever grinned.
“Well, you’ve got a real one if I’m any judge,” Wines declared with conviction. “I dropped round to take you to lunch.”
“I’m not eating lunch, today,” Cheever assured him dryly. “All I want is a drink of water.”
“There’s a drinking fountain back in the cloakroom yonder,” and Wines jerked a thumb toward an arched doorway in the rear of the bank. “But how’s this? Do detectives subsist solely on smoke?”
“When I’m on a job, I’m on the job,” Cheever answered sententiously. Now he drew a bunch of keys from his pocket, found a skeleton that fitted the door, locked it nonchalantly, and sauntered along to the cloakroom whistling a medley of popular airs. The President watched him in undisguised wonder till he passed out of sight, if not of sound.
In a few minutes he was back and, re-entering the room, closed the door behind him. Quite mechanically his eye swept the table with its long lines of checks, then paused abruptly in its roving contemplation. One of the spaces mas empty!
It was the first check in the seventh line, a check for five hundred dollars he remembered, though the name of the maker eluded him. An odd name though, and one he would know if he chanced to glimpse it again. The door was locked when he returned after his brief absence. How, then, had it been removed?
Then it occurred to him that it had probably been blown from the table by the draft caused by opening the door, but a careful search failed to bring it to light.
Cheever stood up and considered the perplexing problem. After a moment he began to try the windows in turn, to at last discover that one opening out on the President’s office was unlocked, though closed. Without doubt a person could have entered the room by that window.
And now as he stood there lost in this most amazing mystery, his glance wandered again to the empty space and lingered there. A bit of ash was visible, as if flicked from the tip of a cigarette, a pale thin drift, and yet visible on the mahogany background. With a heavy glass he studied it long and carefully, finally testing it gingerly with a wet finger-tip. Then with a puzzled frown he swept this bit of evidence into an envelope and stowed it away in an inside pocket.
The bank closed at noon on Saturdays, and now Cheever, gathering up the checks, stepped out into the corridor and halted back of cage number one. Hackett was struggling with his figures, and now he turned about at the sound of the detective’s footsteps, showing a pale, twitching countenance, the face of a man well gone on the road to a nervous collapse.
“Mr. Hackett,” said Cheever, “you’ll be short again.”
“Again?” the teller stuttered.
“Yes, again, five hundred at least.”
Hackett buried his face in his trembling hands.
“Is that all you can tell me?” he moaned bitterly.
“Well, not all perhaps—” But before the detective could finish he was interrupted by President Wines who had appeared unnoticed along the corridor.
“What’s that you were saying, Mr. Cheever?” he broke in impulsively. “Do we stand another loss?”
“Only five hundred this time,” Cheever assured him coolly. “You’re getting off — lucky today.”
“Lucky?” came the explosive reply.
“Yes, it might have been five thousand instead of five hundred. "
“You don’t seem very badly cut up over it,” Wines remarked pointedly. “We could have determined that fact without bringing you clear from Chicago to tell us.”
“Mr. Wines,” Cheever said coldly, “there are trains running back to Chicago even from Wallula, I understand. "
“I didn’t mean it that way, quite,” Wines apologized hastily. “Of course we want you to go ahead in your own way.”
“Well, I will then. I’ve an idea, too. that Monday will see the end of this business.”