by Unknown
The grizzled cashier--his name was Robert Milton--left the clubhouse early for his rooms. It was snowing, but the wind had died down. Contrary to his custom, he had taken two or three glasses of wine. His brain was excited so that he knew he could not sleep. He decided to read "Don Quixote" by the stove for an hour or two. The heat and the reading together would make him drowsy.
Arrived at the bank, he let himself into his rooms and locked the door. He stooped to open the draft of the stove when a sound stopped him halfway. The cashier stood rigid, still crouched, waiting for a repetition of the noise. It came once more--the low, dull rasping of a file.
Shivers ran down the spine of Milton and up the back of his head to the roots of his hair. Somebody was in the bank--at two o'clock in the morning--with tools for burglary. He was a scholarly old fellow, brought up in New England and cast out to the uttermost frontier by the malign tragedy of poverty. Adventure offered no appeal to him. His soul quaked as he waited with slack, feeble muscles upon the discovery that only a locked door stood between him and violent ruffians.
But though his knees trembled beneath him and the sickness of fear was gripping his heart, Robert Milton had in him the dynamic spark that makes a man. He tiptoed to his desk and with shaking fingers gripped the revolver that lay in a drawer.
The cashier stood there for a moment, moistening his dry lips with his tongue and trying to swallow the lump that rose to his throat and threatened to stop his breathing. He braced himself for the plunge, then slowly trod across the room to the inner, locked door. The palsied fingers of his left hand could scarce turn the key.
It seemed to him that the night was alive with the noise he made in turning the lock and opening the door. The hinges grated and the floor squeaked beneath the fall of his foot as he stood at the threshold.
Two men were in front of the wire grating which protected the big safe that filled the alcove to the right. One held a file and the other a candle. Their blank, masked faces were turned toward Milton, and each of them covered him with a weapon.
"W-what are you doing here?" quavered the cashier.
"Drop that gun," came the low, sharp command from one of them.
Under the menace of their revolvers the heart of Milton pumped water instead of blood. The strength oozed out of him. His body swayed and he shut his eyes. A hand groped for the casement of the door to steady him.
"Drop it--quick."
Some old ancestral instinct in the bank cashier rose out of his panic to destroy him. He wanted to lie down quietly in a faint. But his mind asserted its mastery over the weakling body. In spite of his terror, of his flaccid will, he had to keep the faith. He was guardian of the bank funds. At all costs he must protect them.
His forearm came up with a jerk. Two shots rang out almost together. The cashier sagged back against the wall and slowly slid to the floor.
* * * * *
The guests of Mrs. Selfridge danced well into the small hours. The California champagne that Wally had brought in stimulated a gayety that was balm to his wife's soul. She wanted her dinner-dance to be smart, to have the atmosphere she had found in the New York cabarets. If everybody talked at once, she felt they were having a good time. If nobody listened to anybody else, it proved that the affair was a screaming success.
Mrs. Wally was satisfied as she bade her guests good-bye and saw them pass into the heavy snow that was again falling. They all assured her that there had not been so hilarious a party in Kusiak. One old-timer, a trifle lit up by reason of too much hospitality, phrased his enjoyment a little awkwardly.
"It's been great, Mrs. Selfridge. Nothing like it since the days of the open dance hall."
Mrs. Mallory hastily suppressed an internal smile and stepped into the breach. "How do you do it?" she asked her hostess enviously.
"My dear, if you say it was a success--"
"What else could one say?"
Genevieve Mallory always preferred to tell the truth when it would do just as well. Now it did better, since it contributed to her own ironic sense of amusement. Macdonald had once told her that Mrs. Selfridge made him think of the saying, "Monkey sees, monkey does." The effervescent little woman had never had an original idea in her life.
Most of those who had been at the dance slept late. They were oblivious of the fact that the storm had quickened again into a howling gale. Nor did they know the two bits of news that were passing up and down the main street and being telephoned from house to house. One of the items was that the stage for Katma had failed to reach the roadhouse at Smith's Crossing. The message had come over the long-distance telephone early in the morning. The keeper of the roadhouse added his private fears that the stage, crawling up the divide as the blizzard swept down, must have gone astray and its occupants perished. The second bit of news was local. For the first time since Robert Milton had been cashier the bank had failed to open on the dot. The snow had not been cleared from the walk in front and no smoke was pouring from the chimney of the building.
CHAPTER XXIV
MACDONALD FOLLOWS A CLUE
Macdonald was no sluggard. It was his habit not to let the pleasure of the night before interfere with the business of the morning after. But in the darkness he overslept and let the town waken before him. He was roused by the sound of knocking on his door.
"Who is it?" he asked.
"It's me--Jones--Gopher Jones. Say, Mac, the bank ain't open and we can't rouse Milton. Thought I'd come to you, seeing as you're president of the shebang."
The mine-owner got up and began to dress. "Probably overslept, same as I did."
"That's the point. We looked through the window of his bedroom and his bed ain't been slept in."
In three minutes Macdonald joined the marshal and walked down with him to the bank. He unlocked the front door and turned to the little crowd that had gathered.
"Better wait here, boys. Gopher and I will go in. I expect everything is all right, but we'll let you know about that as soon as we find out."
The bank president opened the door, let the officer enter, and followed himself.
The sun had not yet risen and the blinds were down. Macdonald struck a match and held it up. The wood burned and the flame flickered out.
"Bank's been robbed," he announced quietly.
"Looks like," agreed Jones. His voice was uneven with excitement.
The Scotch-Canadian lit another match. In the flare of it they saw that the steel grill cutting off the alcove was open and that the door had been blown from the safe. It lay on the floor among a litter of papers, silver, fragments of steel, and bits of candle.
The marshal clutched at the arm of the banker. "Did you see--that?" he whispered.
His finger pointed through the darkness to the other end of the room. In the faint gray light of coming day Macdonald could see a huddled mass on the floor.
"There has been murder done. I'll get a light. Don't move from here, Jones. I want to look at things before we disturb them. There's no danger. The robbers have been gone for hours."
Gopher had as much nerve as the next man--when the sun was shining and he could see what danger he was facing. But there was something sinister and nerve-racking here. He wanted to throw open the door and shout the news to those outside.
By the light of another match the mine-owner crossed the room into the sitting-room of the cashier. Presently he returned with a lamp and let its light fall upon the figure lying slumped against the wall. A revolver lay close to the inert fingers. The head hung forward grotesquely upon the breast.
The dead man was Milton. His employer saw nothing ridiculous in the twisted neck and sprawling limbs. The cashier had died to save the money entrusted to his care.
Macdonald handed the lamp to the marshal and picked up the revolver. Every chamber was loaded.
"They beat him to it. They were probably here when he reached home. My guess is he heard them right away, got his gun, and came in. He's still wearing his dress suit. That gives us the time, fo
r he left the club about midnight. Soon as they saw him they dropped him. Likely they heard him and were ready. I wouldn't have had this happen for all the money in the safe."
"How much was there in it?"
"I don't know exactly. The books will show. I'll send Wally down to look them over."
"Shot right spang through the heart, looks like," commented Jones, following with his eye the course of the wound.
"Wish I'd been here instead of him," Macdonald said grimly. His eyes softened as he continued to look down at the employee who had paid with his life for his faithfulness. "It wasn't an even break. Poor old fellow! You weren't built for a job like this, Robert Milton, but you played your hand out to a finish. That's all any man can do."
He turned abruptly away and began examining the safe. The silver still stood sacked in one large compartment. The bank-notes had escaped the hurried search of the robbers, but the gold was practically all gone. One sack had been torn by the explosion and single pieces of gold could be found all over the safe.
Macdonald glanced over the papers rapidly. The officer picked up one of dozens scattered over the floor. It was a mortgage note made out to the bank by a miner. He collected the others. Evidently the bandits had torn off the rubber, glanced over one or two to see if they had any cash value, and tossed the package into the air as a disgusted gambler does a pack of cards.
The bank president stepped to the door and threw it open. He explained the situation in three sentences.
"I can't let you in now, boys, until the coroner has been here," he went on to tell the crowd. "But there is one way you can all help. Keep your eyes open. If you have seen any suspicious characters around, let me know. Or if any one has left town in a hurry--or been seen doing anything during the night that you did not understand at the time. Men can't do a thing like this without leaving some clue behind them even though the snow has wiped away their trail."
A man named Fred Tague pushed to the front. He kept a feed corral near the edge of town. "I can tell you one man who mushed out before five o'clock this morning--and that's Gid Holt."
The eyes of Macdonald, cold and hard as jade, fastened to the man. "How do you know?"
"That dog team he bought from Tim Ryan--Well, he's been keeping it in my corral. When I got there this morning it was gone. The snow hadn't wiped out the tracks of the runners yet, so he couldn't have left more than fifteen minutes before."
"What time was it when you reached the corral?"
"Might have been six--maybe a little later."
"You don't know that Holt took the team himself?"
"Come to that, I don't. But he had a key to the barn where the sled was. Holt has been putting up at the hotel. I reckon it is easy to find out if he's still there."
Macdonald's keen brain followed the facts as the nose of a bloodhound does a trail. Holt, an open enemy of his, had reached town only two days before. He had bought one of the best and swiftest dog teams in the North and had let slip before witnesses the remark that Macdonald would soon find out what he wanted with the outfit. The bank had been robbed after midnight. To file open the grill and to blow up the safe must have taken several hours. Before morning the dogs of Holt had taken the trail. If their owner were with them, it was a safe bet that the sled carried forty thousand dollars in Alaska gold dust.
So far the mind of the Scotchman followed the probabilities logically, but at this point it made a jump. There were at least two robbers. He was morally sure of that, for this was not a one-man job. Now, if Holt had with him a companion, who of all those in Kusiak was the most likely man? He was a friendless, crabbed old fellow. Since coming to Kusiak old Gideon had been seen constantly with one man. Together they had driven out the day before and tried his new team. They had been with each other at dinner and had later left the hotel together. The name of the man who had been so friendly with old Holt was Gordon Elliot--and Elliot not only was another enemy of Macdonald, but had very good reasons for getting out of the country just now.
The strong jaw of the mine-owner stood out saliently as he gave short, sharp orders to men in the crowd. One was to get the coroner, a second Wally Selfridge, another the United States District Attorney. He divided the rest into squads to guard the roads leading out of town and to see that nobody passed for the present.
As soon as the men he had sent for arrived, Macdonald went over the scene of the crime with them. It was plain that the dynamiting had been done by an old-time miner who knew his business, but there had been brains in the planning of the robbery.
"There is no ivory above the ears of the man who bossed this job," Macdonald told the others. "He picks a night when we're all at the club, more than half a mile from here, a stormy night when folks are not wandering the streets. He knows that the wind will deaden the sound of the dynamite and that the snow will wipe out any tracks that might help to identify him and his pal or show which way they have gone."
The coroner took charge of the body and Wally of the bank. The mine-owner and the district attorney walked up to the hotel together. As soon as they had explained what they wanted, the landlord got a passkey and took them to the room Holt had used.
Apparently the bed had been slept in. In the waste-paper basket the district attorney found something which he held up in a significant silence. Macdonald stepped forward and took from him a small cloth sack.
"One of those we keep our gold in at the bank," said the Scotchman after a close examination. "This definitely ties up Holt with the robbery. Now for Elliot."
"He left the hotel with Holt about five this morning the porter says." This was the contribution of the landlord.
The room of Gordon Elliot was in great disorder. Garments had been tossed on the bed and on every chair and had been left to lie wherever they had chanced to fall. Plainly their owner had been in great haste.
Macdonald looked through the closet where clothes hung. "His new fur coat is not here--nor his trail boots. Looks to me as though Mr. Gordon had hit the trail with his friend Holt."
This opinion was strengthened when it was learned from a store-owner in town that Holt and Elliot had routed him out of bed in the early morning to sell them two weeks' supplies. These they had packed upon the sled outside the store.
"It's a cinch bet that Elliot took the trail with him," the lawyer conceded.
All doubt of this was removed when a prospector reached town with the news that he had met Holt and Elliot traveling toward the divide as fast as they could drive the dogs.
The big Scotchman ordered his team of Siberian wolf-hounds made ready for the trail. As he donned his heavy furs, Colby Macdonald smiled with deep satisfaction. He had Elliot on the run at last.
Just as he closed the door of his room, Macdonald heard the telephone bell ring. He hesitated, then shrugged his shoulders and strode out into the storm. If he had answered the call he would have learned from Diane, who was at the other end of the line, that the stage upon which Sheba had started for Katma had not reached the roadhouse at Smith's Crossing.
Five minutes later the winners of the great Alaska Sweepstakes were flying down the street in the teeth of the storm. Armed with a rifle and a revolver, their owner was mushing into the hills to bring back the men who had robbed his bank and killed the cashier. He traveled alone because he could go faster without a companion. It never occurred to him that he was not a match for any two men he might face.
CHAPTER XXV
IN THE BLIZZARD
"Swiftwater" Pete, the driver of the stage between Kusiak and Katma, did not like the look of the sky as his ponies breasted the long uphill climb that ended at the pass. It was his habit to grumble. He had been complaining ever since they had started. But as he studied the heavy billows of cloud banked above the peaks and in the saddle between, there was real anxiety in his red, apoplectic face.
"Gittin' her back up for a blizzard, looks like. Doggone it, if that wouldn't jest be my luck," he murmured fretfully.
Sheba hoped there w
ould be one, not, of course, a really, truly blizzard such as Macdonald had told her about, but the tail of a make-believe one, enough to send her glowing with exhilaration into the roadhouse with the happy sense of an adventure achieved. The girl had got out to relieve the horses, and as her young, lissom body took the hill scattering flakes of snow were already flying.
To-day she was buoyed up by a sense of freedom. For a time, at least, she was escaping Macdonald's driving energy, the appeal of Gordon Elliot's warm friendliness, and the unvoiced urging of Diane. Good old Peter and the kiddies were the only ones that let her alone.